It seems that the supporters of Kenny Bartley finally got a judge sympathetic to their cause. After many attempts, a judge has thrown out Bartley’s guilty plea, which earned him a 45-year sentence.

In 2005, a then 15-year-old Bartley shot and killed Assistant Principal Ken Bruce and wounded Principal Gary Seale and Assistant Principal Jim Pierce in the offices of Campbell County High in Tennessee.

A now 19-year-old Bartley testified to the following about accepting his plea deal…

“Once I realized what I had truly got myself into, I didn’t want to do it. I felt pressured into doing it. I was so nervous and scared I didn’t know what else to do. I put my trust in my lawyer and he let me down.”

More than likely the real reason he testified to that is he is just trying to get out of his murder conviction.

In my opinion, he’s better off sticking with the deal since if he’s convicted at trial, he’s looking at life without parole, if memory serves me correctly.

He’s probably gambling on a jury that would be sympathetic to the ‘juvenile brains aren’t formed fully’ crowd in order to get a lighter sentence, but in my memory, I can’t think of one murder case that I’ve posted about where that worked.