Court officers prepare to remove Kerns from the courtoom after the verdict. At left is his lawyer, William McElligott. (GARY HIGGINS/The Patriot Ledger)

By SYDNEY SCHWARTZ
The Patriot Ledger

PLYMOUTH - Tobin Kerns, 19, was found guilty today of conspiring to commit murder and threatening to use a deadly weapon at a school after planning a Columbine-style massacre at Marshfield High School in 2005

Kerns was indicted three years ago for on charges of conspiracy to commit murder and threatening to use a deadly weapon at a school.

Kerns and Joseph Nee, 20, were accused of planning a mass murder to take place on April 15, 2005, patterned after the April 20, 1999, massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.

Nee was also indicted in 2004. He is awaiting trial.

At Columbine, two students fatally shot 12 schoolmates and a teacher before killing themselves.

Kerns allegedly discussed the planned attack with two other friends who were not part of the group that called itself Natural Born Killers.

Kerns was charged with making a threat under a law enacted in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It requires ‘‘the communication of a threat that a deadly, dangerous or destructive device, substance or item is or will be pre sent or used at a specified place or location.’’

It does not require that the threat be communicated to a potential victim, the high court ruled.

Kerns’ trial was largely completed in October 2006. A verdict was delayed because prosecutors and the judge who presided at the trial had differing legal interpretations of a law on making threats to use dangerous weapons at a school.

During Kerns’ trial last October, Juvenile Court Judge Louis Coffin said he believed that Kerns could not be convicted of making a threat unless the prosecution could show that he made a threat directly to one of the in tended victims. Prosecutors said making a threat through an intermediary is a crime.

In August, the state Supreme Judicial Court ruled that Coffin misinterpreted the law. The high court said Coffin’s interpretation of that law could have led to ‘‘a wrongful acquittal of the defendant.’’

If the Supreme Judicial Court had upheld Coffin’s interpretation, convicting Kerns on the threat charge would have been nearly impossible because prosecutors would have had no means for appeal.

Copyright 2007 The Patriot Ledger


Transmitted Thursday, September 27, 2007