Paul Henry Gingerich spends his 14th birthday in jail on Feb. 17. Gingerich was 12-years-old when he arrived at the Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility in 2011.
Paul Henry Gingerich spends his 14th birthday in jail on Feb. 17. Gingerich was 12-years-old when he arrived at the Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility in 2011.
"Happy birthday," she said.
It was 6 o'clock. Paul would just as soon been given a few more minutes to sleep.
But in a place where he must ask permission to go to the bathroom, where he eats every meal under close surveillance and where birthdays aren't much different from any other day, it was a nice gesture for one of the state's most controversial inmates.
Paul Gingerich is believed to be the youngest person in Indiana ever sentenced to prison as an adult.
He was still 12 years old when he arrived here at the Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility, the state's maximum security prison for children.
He had such a small frame and such a baby face that one of his new teachers -- the prison has a school -- asked: "What is a 7-year-old doing in our facility?"
Yet Paul was also a killer. He had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder after he and a friend fired four bullets into the friend's stepdad.
Each boy received 25 years, with the possibility that, for good behavior, they could get out in about half that time. They would still be young men, but young men who had grown up in prison.
In Paul's case, that means living in a cell with a steel door and bare block walls in a remote corner of Pendleton.
Home consists of a mattress on a concrete slab, a small desk and a chair and a window spliced with thick bars. Paul's view is of a small patch of grass, a tall fence and rolling wave of razor sharp concertina wire.
Here, in this place, Paul has grown nearly 3 inches to about 5-foot-8, sprouted peach fuzz, popped his first pimples, had his voice change and -- now -- marked two birthdays.
It is also a place that -- should his lawyer pull off an epic reversal -- Paul hopes to soon leave.
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The trouble begins on a playground.
Three boys -- one of them 15, the other two 12 -- meet in a park in the neighborhood where they live in Cromwell, Ind., a small town halfway between South Bend and Fort Wayne. They play in the park for a while, then begin talking about a subject they've been discussing for a couple of weeks now -- running away, out west to California. or maybe to Arizona.
The only problem, according to 15-year-old Colt Lundy, is that his stepfather will never allow it. He'll stop them from going.
The answer to the problem, Colt says, is simple. They must kill Phil Danner.
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Birthdays in prison are typically low-key affairs. There's one party per month thrown for all the birthday boys, usually featuring cupcakes.
Presents -- by regulation books mailed from booksellers -- show up on or around the day. In Paul's case, his mom mailed him an inspirational book. His prison mentor gave him a Bible with multiple versions of the scriptures, even Greek.
Family visits are confined to normal Thursday and Sunday visiting hours. His whole family -- mom, dad and two sisters -- came on Sunday and helped him spend $20 worth of quarters in the visiting room vending machines -- a party featuring personal pepperoni pizzas, egg and sausage hot pockets and popcorn.
On Feb. 17 -- Paul's birthday -- the court announced it will consider granting the boy what amounts to a legal do-over on the 2010 proceedings that led to his particular sentence.
The issue before the court isn't one of guilt, but whether it was appropriate for Kosciusko County Circuit Judge Rex Reed to move Paul into adult court at such a young age and to give him an adult's sentence.
In Indiana, juveniles as young as 10 can be tried as adults. That's younger than many states, but then some states have no age limit. Last year, Morgan County Prosecutor Steve Sonnega could have moved to adult court the case of an 11-year-old boy who killed his 6-year-old brother. But he decided against it.
Paul was 12 years and 2 months old at the time of the killing. He was a sixth-grader at Wawassee Middle School. He had no prior criminal record. A psychiatrist who evaluated Paul said the boy lacked a basic understanding of the court proceedings, and wasn't competent to stand trial as an adult.
Nonetheless, the judge didn't buy the defense's theory that Paul had been bullied into the crime by his older accomplice. He declared them both fit to stand trial as adults and found them equally culpable.
"Phil Danner is dead," the judge said at the time. "Phil Danner was, regardless of what we call this crime, murdered."
The decision was remarkable in light of the fact that, between 2000 and 2010, only 13 children in Indiana were sentenced as adults for murder or attempted murder. None of them were younger than 14.
Reed didn't return phone calls for this story. And voicemails left for the prosecutor also were not returned.
The sentence prompted Dan Dailey, a blogger from Texas who follows juvenile justice issues, to launch a website called "Free Paul Henry Gingerich" and to set up a trust fund for his defense. He also asked for help from Indianapolis attorney Monica Foster, who has defended some of the state's most notorious killers.
Foster agreed -- even setting aside her typical fee of $350 an hour to take up Paul's appeal.
"I would like to have him treated as the 12-year, 2-month-old person that he was, which is a kid," she said. "I don't think he was competent to stand trial. I don't think he was competent to plead guilty."
Specifically, she said, defense attorneys typically are allowed anywhere from two to four months to build an argument for why their young client's cases should remain in the juvenile courts. Paul's lawyers were given four days. Foster also said the psychologist's report should have carried more weight.
National juvenile justice organizations -- the Children's Law Center, the National Juvenile Defender Center and the Campaign for Youth Justice -- have filed briefs in support of her case.
At its core, though, Foster says 12 is too young to write off the life of a child whom she says "doesn't have a criminal orientation."
"He's the most innocent kid I've ever seen in my entire life," she said. "He just really happened to be in a bad place at a bad time and I really believe that's all this case is about."
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After leaving the playground, the boys walk to Colt Lundy's house. Colt goes in alone and finds his step-father there already, in the family room. Colt goes into his bedroom and moves the blinds, signaling for the two 12-year-olds waiting across the street -- Paul and Chase Williams -- to come over.
The plan is for either Paul or Chase to join Colt inside and help him carry out the deed. Paul and Chase talk as they cross the street about who should go in. At first, Chase says he will but thinks better of it. Paul will go.
He climbs in through Colt's bedroom window. Inside, Colt is waiting with two guns -- a .40-caliber Glock and a .38-caliber revolver.
The two boys move into the living room. They talk about whether they can go through with it. Paul, he would later say, thinks they won't go through with it, and tells Colt he's not sure he can. Then Danner appears in the doorway. He sees Colt, sees the gun. Colt fires. Paul points his gun at the man. He says later that he shuts his eyes. He fires, too.
Danner is hit four times. He falls to the floor in the doorway -- dead.
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In handing down his sentence to Colt and Paul, Judge Reed said he tried to account for the youth of the two accused boys: He could have given them 45 years.
Colt was assigned to the "youthful offender wing" at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility in Carlisle. It's a prison that's home to 2,000 male inmates, including some of the people Foster represents in her death penalty cases. His father declined to comment on his son's case or grant The Star access to him in prison.
For a time, it looked like Paul -- 5-foot-2, 80 pounds and sporting a Justin Bieber haircut at the time of this arrest -- would join him there. But corrections officials took one look at the boy and decided he'd never make it. "He would essentially have to learn survival skills, what it takes to survive in an adult facility," said Mike Dempsey, executive director of youth services with the department of correction.
"And he would clearly be victimized relatively quickly."
So Gingerich was assigned to Pendleton Juvenile -- a decision that Paul's mom said "was just the happiest moment of my life."
The difference in the two worlds is dramatic. And it's another reason why Foster is pursing a new trial. Although Paul is at Pendleton now, he could be moved to Wabash anytime prison officials deem it necessary.
At Pendleton, there are juveniles who have committed serious crimes -- murder and manslaughter, sex and drug offenses and property crimes. But at Wabash the concentration of inmates leans toward violent offenders.
At Pendleton, juveniles can earn a diploma or high school credits that, once they're released, count at any high school in the state. At Wabash, juveniles can only earn a GED.
At Pendleton, the population amounts to 300 juveniles, with no one older than 21. At Wabash, there are only about 50 juveniles in a population of 2,000 that includes middle-aged child molesters and people who committed multiple murders. The juveniles and adults are kept almost entirely apart.
Still, IDOC's Dempsey says a boy at Wabash can look out his window and see nearly 2,000 adult criminals walking around. "That's stressful," he said. "That's traumatic."
At Pendleton, Paul lives in his own room on a wing where new arrivals spend their first two weeks. He attends school five days a week. He spends time in a common area daily where he can watch television and play games. On his birthday, he and some other residents played spades and "Sorry!"
"I'm getting whupped," he said to the 14-year-old who was beating him in the board game.
Another boy in the unit, who is 16, said he and Paul are the local spades champions.
But his success isn't limited to playing cards. Paul is making straight A's. He was recently promoted to ninth grade because eighth grade classes weren't challenging enough. He occupies a spot on the student council and uses his good behavior credits not for video game time but for extra visits with his mother.
"He is one of my best students," says health and physical education teacher Mark Hargett. "He does what I ask. He is one of the first guys done and he's always willing to help. Basically, around here, he's what I call a model student."
Paul is applying for a prison job doing cleanup duties. He's even looking at moving into one of the prison's specialized programs in scouting, future soldiering or faith-based instruction, which would make him less isolated.
Paul is doing so well, says counselor Michelle Griffith, that had he been given an open-ended juvenile sentence, as nearly all Pendleton Juvenile residents receive, the Department of Correction would probably decide soon that he's ready to go home.
Instead, Paul faces another decade or more in prison.
Joel Schumm, a law professor at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, sees it as throwing away a boy's life.
"As opposed to putting him at home with family and people who are going to support him and give him a positive environment, you are going to put him in a pack of wolves in prison," Schumm said. "And I think it is a terrible idea."
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The two Pauls -- one a well-mannered boy who is a model student, the other a boy who fired two bullets into a man -- are hard to reconcile.
Paul is a boy who who might have fallen under the influence of an older boy, but who now has matured beyond that.
But Paul is also a killer who wears on his wrist a plastic prison bracelet given upon his arrival at Pendleton. It bears the words: "Very High Risk."
Standing in front of the judge, crying, Paul Henry Gingerich told the court simply: "I did wrong."
His mother, Nicole, said she and her husband, Paul, were in divorce proceedings at the time of the shooting. But she said her son was no trouble at home and his only problems at school were talking in class and missing an occasional assignment.
"It was completely out of character for my son to be involved with something like this," she said. "I never imagined that he could ever be involved with it. He's always been a pretty good boy."
Paul has said very little about the incident since, in large part because of his appeal.
When Paul arrived, prison officials could barely coax him to speak. He refused class assignments that required him to talk in front of his classmates.
Griffith, the counselor, said his introversion might have been part of problem.
In an interview with The Star in July, he spoke in short phrases, barely above a whisper.
How's it going? "Um, I'm doing alright."
Are you scared? "I was scared when I first got here, but then like a week passed and I started school and it didn't seem so bad."
Have you thought about why you're here? "No, I don't like thinking about that."
There are signs, though, that he does. One classroom assignment last summer asked the student inmates to write a letter of advice to their future children. Paul's advice: "To choose friends carefully so they don't fall into bad situations."
When interviewed days before his birthday, Paul still seemed reticent to talk about himself, and his feelings, allowing only: "Usually, I'm in a fair mood. I don't have any problems."
But he seems to be finding his voice. In conversations, his voice is now audible more often than not. He has spoken in front of his class. He asks questions of Foster about his case and the appeal. And if you ask him about what he's reading, be prepared for an oral book report.
As for his future and whether he thinks about his chances of freedom, Paul pauses at length. He seems unable to find the words until he says, "Sometimes."
As for what he might have done differently two years ago when an afternoon at the playground turned into conspiracy to commit murder, he pauses again. He struggles once more for words. Then speaks.
"Yeah, I think about it sometimes," he said. "I think I should have gone home."
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