Oregon Public Broadcasting

Lawyers for Oregon school shooter Kip Kinkel have filed another request for a new trial.

They’re appealing a judge’s ruling last year that Kinkel was competent when he pled guilty to the 1998 murders in Springfield, Oregon.

Correspondent Chris Lehman has more.

In May, 1998, Kip Kinkel killed his parents then killed two classmates at Thurston High School. A year later, the teenager pled guilty and was sentenced to more than 111 years in prison with no possibility of parole.  

Kinkel is now 26, and last year his attorneys tried to get him a new trial.  They claimed he was mentally ill at the time of the guilty plea.

A judge denied the request, and this week Kinkel’s lawyers appealed that ruling.  

Dennis Balske is one of those attorneys.

Dennis Balske:  “Nobody’s trying to, quote, get him off in any sense of the word. And so what the case is about is whether or not he gets to have a trial at which a jury determines whether or not in fact he was insane at the time.”

If a new trial is granted and Kinkel is ruled guilty but insane, he could be transferred from a state prison to the Oregon State Hospital in Salem.

A ruling on the appeal could still be months away.