Boy Sentenced to 40 Years for Shooting Death of Father

A 13-year-old California boy sentenced in January to 40 years in the shooting death of his father will spend that time in a state detention facility.

Riverside, Calif. Superior Court Judge Jean P. Leonard, made her ruling Thursday and said that the youth needed substantial mental health and anger management services, according to the San Bernardino County Sun. 

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The boy was 10 when he used a .357 Magnum to shoot his father, 32-year-old Jeff Hall, in his sleep on May 1, 2011. Hall at the time was a regional leader for the National Socialist Movement.

Leonard ruled in January that the boy knew what he was doing when he fatally shot his father and that he was responsible for his actions.

"The decision that I feel the most appropriate is commitment to the Department of Juvenile Justice," Leonard said in her ruling, adding that the boy needs mental health testing and treatment, anger management, family counseling and peer therapy. "This is an individual with exceptional needs."

Leonard, who heard the case without a jury in January, said then that the boy thought about killing his father, wrote the Associated Press. 

The boy's stepmother told authorities Hall abused his son, kicking him and yelling at him for being too loud or getting in the way. Hall and the boy's biological mother had both accused each other of child abuse during a custody battle.

Defense attorney Matthew Hardy told Leonard in January that the boy learned it was acceptable to kill people who were a threat and believed if he shot his dad, the violence would end, noted the AP.

Hardy tried to make Hall's beliefs a factor in the trial, saying that he believed in a white breakaway nation and that he held a neo-Nazi group meeting at his home the day before his death.

The prosecution rejected the injection of race into case, saying the boy had a history of violence since kindergarten.

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