The bat belonged to Jerome Kerrigan Jr. whose partial prints would be discovered on it. And also on the bat, partial prints belonging to Lionel Kerrigan.

The brothers must have agreed not to testify against each other. Not to incriminate each other. Which of them had actually swung the bat when Hadrian Johnson was struck down would not be known with certainty though Walt Lemire and Don Brinkhaus said that they thought that Jerr had kept possession of the bat during the attack—“It was his. He wouldn’t have let anybody else have it.”

Each was quick to say that he hadn’t touched the bat—not for a second. And it had all happened “so fast”—just a few minutes, or seconds, before Jerr yelled at them to get back in his car, and drove them away.

The bat was considered incontrovertible evidence. O’Hagan and the other lawyers advised their clients to cooperate with police, or to give the earnest impression of cooperating with the police; they advised them to plead guilty, not to homicide charges but to manslaughter. Tentative accounts of Hadrian Johnson as a drug dealer, Hadrian Johnson having provoked the attack, Hadrian Johnson having been attacked by other, black assailants which Jerome Kerrigan Jr. and the other boys had only happened to see while driving on Delahunt Road, were immediately dropped, and did not find their way into the local media.

In this way plea bargains were negotiated with county prosecutors, first-degree manslaughter for Jerome Kerrigan Jr. and Lionel Kerrigan, second-degree manslaughter for Walt Lemire and Don Brinkhaus.

Because he was just sixteen Walt was sentenced to five years at a Niagara County youth facility, to be released at the age of twenty-one. Don Brinkhaus was sentenced to seven to ten years at a medium security prison. Jerome, the oldest, received the most severe sentence—nine to fifteen years at Mid-State Correctional Facility at Marcy, New York.

Lionel was sentenced to Mid-State Correctional as well. At seventeen, he’d had to plead guilty as an adult; his sentence was seven to thirteen years.

Of course, all the sentences were immediately qualified—with the possibility of parole.

At least there would be no trial. I was spared having to testify against my brothers in court and South Niagara was spared reliving a terrible crime. Spared having to hear the arguments of the defense that in some way the victim had brought his own death upon himself

The black community in South Niagara protested that these were overly lenient sentences considering the brutality of the attack on Hadrian Johnson and the fact that Hadrian had done nothing to provoke the attack. Some members of the white community (including former South Niagara mayor Tommy Kerrigan interviewed on local TV) denounced the sentences as too harsh, evidence of “black racism” and “black bigotry” in South Niagara.