BROCKTON - Joseph Nee, one of the two former Marshfield High School students convicted of plotting a Columbine-like assault, was ordered yesterday to serve six months in prison.
After Superior Court Judge Charles M. Grabau handed down the sentence, the 21-year-old Marshfield man was handcuffed by court officers and taken into custody. Grabau ordered him to serve nine months of a 2 1/2-year sentence in the Plymouth House of Correction, crediting him for 92 days he served following his arrest in 2004.
Plymouth District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz said he was comfortable with the outcome of the case, in which Nee faced a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
"I'm satisfied with the sentence he received," Cruz said. "He committed a serious offense."
After he is released, Nee will be on probation for two years. He will have to stay drug- and alcohol-free, submit to urinalysis, and undergo a mental health assessment, Grabau ordered.
Nee's Boston-based lawyer, Thomas Drechsler, said he was disappointed with the sentence and has filed an appeal. Drechsler filed a motion for a stay of the sentence pending appeal, but the judge denied it. Nee could be out of jail when his appeal is heard.
"I would have liked to have seen a more lenient sentence," Drechsler said.
Nee's father, Thomas J. Nee, president of the Boston Patrolmen's Associ ation, also expressed concern over the outcome.
"Obviously, being his parents, we're heartbroken," he said after the sentencing.
The sentence followed a four-day trial that included testimony from a dozen witnesses. Nee was convicted last week of conspiracy to commit murder and acquitted of two other charges: promotion of anarchy and threatened use of deadly weapons at a school.
The charges date to September, 2004, when Nee was a student at Marshfield High School. He went to police with two classmates and told officers that a former friend - Tobin Kerns, then 16 - was planning to launch an attack on the school in April 2005, similar to one carried out in 1999 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.
The trio told police the plan involved taking ammunition and explosive devices into the school, securing the exits with bicycle locks, and shooting students and staff. Police arrested Kerns the following day. Police arrested Nee a month later, after friends of Kerns's implicated Nee in the plot.
The two teenagers had been close friends; Nee had even lived at the Kerns's home for a few weeks in the spring of 2004. Kerns's father, Ben, vehemently defended his son in the media and said the teenagers had had a falling out. He believed Nee was trying to frame his son.
A grand jury returned indictments against Nee and Kerns in October 2004. Kerns and Nee pleaded not guilty to the same charges. Daniel Farley and Joseph Sullivan, the two students who reported the plot along with Nee, were given immunity in exchange for their testimony.
Kerns was found guilty of threatening to use deadly weapons and conspiracy to commit murder. Sentenced to 10 months in prison, he is scheduled to be released next month from the Plymouth House of Correction.
Nee's mother, Gayle, submitted a four-page letter to Grabau yesterday asking him to "show compassion and mercy" while deciding her son's fate.
In the letter, a copy of which was given to the Globe by the family, she stated that her son had studied at home in order to graduate from high school in June 2005. For the past three years, he had spent his days working as a full-time laborer at a Boston excavation company and his nights attending classes at Bunker Hill Community College. She feared that a prison sentence would "nullify all of the hard work and progress he has made to reestablish himself in his family and in his community," she wrote.
She described how "the constant barrage of media hype . . . had a profound impact on our family," adding that "we were virtually prisoners in our own home."
Nee's younger sister, Katherine, wiped away tears as she expressed her disappointment to a throng of reporters waiting in the lobby.
"This ruling sends the message to everyone that if you know something bad is going to happen, don't speak up, because you'll be crucified," she said.
Emily Sweeney can be reached at esweeney@globe.com.
rising
falling 