Nicholas White

A former Butler County man who shot and bludgeoned his father to death in 1998 will have a chance at parole in another 16 years after being resentenced Wednesday by Judge William R. Shaffer.

Nicholas A. White, 36, was resentenced to a prison term of 35 years to life, wiping out the previous sentence of life without parole for the killing of his father, Robert Grant White, on July 31, 1998, outside the family's home on Route 356 in Summit Township. Shaffer handed down the sentence after a lengthy court proceeding Wednesday that saw White and two of his relatives — his mother, Doreen, and his uncle, Lt. Col. Daniel White — take the stand and present very different opinions on what White's sentence should be.

Doreen White testified that her son's home life was troubled in the years before he killed his father. Her son was a good student and heavily involved in extracurricular activities and sports, but the relationship between Nicholas and Robert White was strained by her husband's alcoholism, Doreen testified. She said the family's home life was unpredictable and adversarial at times, and that her attempts to seek counseling for herself and her son failed after Robert White found out about the sessions and demanded they stop attending.

She asked Shaffer to hand down a sentence that would give White a chance at parole after 25 years, saying that waiting any longer would deprive him of some opportunities for family support after being released, and calling his conduct in prison exemplary.

“He's my son and I love him,” she said. “I don't like what he did, but it happened and I want to move past that. He's proven that he can come back into society and be productive.”

Doreen White also testified that she often intervened in conflicts that arose between her husband and son in Nicholas' teenage years, but on the day of the killing they were home alone.

White, now 36, shot and bludgeoned his father to death on July 31, 1998. He was 17 years old at the time. Prosecutors say White lay in wait for his father at the home before shooting him in the arm with a .30-06 caliber rifle. White then hit his father over the head with the rifle, according to testimony from his 1999 trial, before going back into the home and getting a shotgun.

White shot his father in the chest with that weapon, prosecutors said, and then hit him with a pickaxe before convincing two of his friends to help him load the body into a pickup truck and dump it over an embankment off Coal Hollow Road in Buffalo Township.

White has spent the last 19 years in prison after being convicted of first degree murder in September of 1999 and sentenced to life without parole. But his future was thrown into question by two U.S. Supreme Court rulings — a 2012 ruling that declared life sentences for teenage offenders unconstitutional, and a 2016 decision that ordered courts to apply the sentence ban retroactively.

That ruling triggered new sentencing hearings for inmates across the country, including 517 offenders in Pennsylvania, according to The Associated Press.

When White himself took the stand on Wednesday he testified that he has used the last 19 years in prison to better himself — completing courses on electrical work and computers, and serving as a peer facilitator in a jailhouse program meant to help inmates overcome addiction. He also expressed remorse for the killing of his father.

“I wish I could go back to the day it happened and do any number of things other than what I did,” White said.

White also said that he wanted to “fix broken relationships” with family members if he was ever paroled. But Robert White's older brother, Lt. Col. Daniel White, told the court that he wanted his nephew kept behind bars for as long as possible.

Daniel White testified that he was supposed to be celebrating his retirement from the Army after 25 years on the day his younger brother was killed, and defended Robert White as “a good provider to his family.”

“What should have been one of the best days of my life was the worst day,” he said. “It still is. What happened to him; he did not deserve that.”

Daniel White asked Shaffer to uphold the original sentence of life without parole for Nicholas White.

That's a request that both defense attorney Leland Clark and Gregory Simatic, a prosecutor from the state Attorney General's Office, agreed wouldn't be possible because of the Supreme Court rulings.

But Simatic asked Shaffer to hand down a sentence of 35 years to life, saying that's what the state's statute called for under the circumstances and saying White's murder of his father was “particularly egregious.”

Clark pressed Shaffer to reduce the minimum prison term to 25 years, arguing that a 35-year minimum wouldn't actually constitute a meaningful chance at parole since White would be in his 50s by that time.

After Shaffer handed down a sentence of 35 years to life Clark said it was unclear whether he would appeal the judge's decision or take any other legal action in the case going forward.