“If the end goal is rehabilitation, then that youth's mental health concerns are going to have to be front and center,” she said. “I think the judge has to ask the question, when this kid walks out—and this kid will walk out eventually—how is this kid going to be better?”
Hall's killing attracted national attention when it happened on May 1, 2011 -- and not just because of the defendant's age.
Hall, an out-of-work plumber, was also a regional leader of the National Socialist Movement who organized neo-Nazi rallies at synagogues and day labor sites and had hosted a meeting for the group at his house the day before he died. Hall, 32, ran unsuccessfully for a water board in 2010 and alarmed voters with his white supremacist rhetoric.
Prosecutors said the boy shot his father behind the ear at point-blank range as he slept on the sofa after coming home from a night of drinking. The child took the .357-Magnum from his parents' bedroom and later told police he was afraid he would have to choose between living with his father and his stepmother, who had been fighting and were headed for a divorce.
Updated on: October 25, 2013 11:28 IST
