Staff photo / Ed Runyan Kyle Patrick, left, listens as Judge John Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court announces Patrick’s new sentence in the 2012 murder of Michael Abinghanem in a home on Youngstown’s West Side. At right is Patrick’s attorney, John Juhasz.

YOUNGSTOWN — Judge John Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court heard from Kyle Patrick, an expert witness, two attorneys and two family members Friday before deciding Patrick should get an opportunity for his first parole hearing in 13 more years, not 15.

The Ohio Supreme Court ordered Durkin in December 2020 to resentence Patrick, now 27, saying Durkin failed to show he considered Patrick’s young age at the time he sentenced Patrick to life in prison with parole eligibility after 33 years in a 2012 murder. Patrick was 17 at the time he was involved in the killing of Michael Abinghanem in a home on Youngstown’s West Side.

He was convicted of aggravated murder and other offenses after a trial.According to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, Patrick was due for his first parole hearing in 2037 before Friday’s hearing. That will drop to 2035 under Durkin’s new sentence, which is life in prison with parole eligibility after 23 years.

A change in state law involving those convicted of murder as a juvenile had already reduced the amount of time before Patrick was eligible for his first parole hearing to 25 years.

During a hearing before Durkin announced the new sentence, Patrick’s mother, Jonnie Wright gave a detailed account of her son’s formative years growing up in Youngstown without a father and hanging around with older boys in the neighborhood.

She said the day of the killing, “his friends asked him to do something, and he did it.”

Patrick was the youngest of about six boys in the house at the time and “was not the lead offender. He was not the ringleader of these boys,” she said.

She said her son did not understand when he took the case to trial instead of taking a plea he could be convicted even if he was not the person who pulled the trigger, she said.

“He was not the shooter,” she said, noting other defendants in the case got much less or no incarceration for their role in the case.

Ralph Rivera, an assistant Mahoning County prosecutor, said Patrick had “an extensive juvenile record prior to this case. There were two burglary offenses, an assault, menacing, breaking and entering, so this was not an isolated incident.”

Rivera asked the judge to sentence Patrick again to the 33 years to life the judge gave him in 2017. Rivera said one of the arguments the defense has made is that Patrick was not the shooter, but under Ohio law, the people involved in the robbery, including Patrick, “are just as guilty” as the person who pulled the trigger.

“There was certainly overwhelming evidence that the defendant had a major hand to play in this robbery,” Rivera said.

John Juhasz, Patrick’s appeal attorney, said one of the other boys involved in the killing reached a plea deal for 13 years in prison and others “mentioned throughout the course of this case appear never to have been prosecuted” and “every one of them was older than Kyle Patrick,” some as much as four years older.

Juhasz said he believed the judge should try to achieve “some sense of proportionality” in Patrick’s sentence compared with the others involved.

Patrick admitted the gun used in the crime belonged him, Juhasz said.

In his remarks when he announced the sentencing, Judge Durkin said he agreed that it is “important to consider proportionality” of punishments given to other people committing similar offenses, including the “co-defendants in this case. I think it would be irresponsible of me” not to consider that.