Sue Klang's head dropped to her hands Monday after Sauk County Circuit Judge Patrick Taggart ruled 16-year-old Eric Hainstock would stand trial as an adult for fatally shooting her husband Sept. 29.
Minutes later, Klang chose her words carefully for the media. "We are satisfied he's staying in adult court," Klang said. "I don't want him out free."
But she wasn't happy, she said - that word wasn't fitting for a tragedy all around.
"There's no good that comes out of this," she said. "There's no 'happy' there."
Monday ended a five-day hearing - a minitrial really - on a defense request that Hainstock be waived from adult to juvenile court, where, if convicted, the state would have been forced to release him at age 25.
Instead, he faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole if convicted of first- degree intentional homicide.
Klang, widow of Weston School Principal John Klang, said treating Hainstock as a juvenile would have only encouraged those who use the Internet to exhort teenagers to school shootings and violence. "There are people out there to whom Eric Hainstock is a god," Klang said.
Klang said she doesn't blame anyone for the events. "I don't know if there is a blame - the school and social services were identifying problems (with Hainstock), and the family wasn't following through."
Hainstock is accused of shooting Klang three times in the hallway of the school outside Cazenovia as the principal tried to wrestle a handgun away from him. Hainstock was 15 at the time.
When he was arrested, he had a box of 12 shotgun shells and 44 bullets for the handgun in the pouch of his hooded sweatshirt, state Department of Justice special agent Elizabeth Feagles testified Monday.
Sauk County District Attorney Patricia Barrett, who opposed treating Hainstock as a juvenile, said he faces an arraignment and a trial on the charges. But defense attorney Rhoda Ricciardi said Hainstock's defense team would have to decide first whether to appeal Taggart's ruling.
Ricciardi argued Hainstock would not get adequate treatment for his depression, hyperactivity and other personality disorders in Wisconsin's adult prisons.
She also told Taggart that Hainstock's behavior reflected untreated trauma in Hainstock's childhood, including sexual and physical abuse.
Hainstock, she argued, reacted violently to being touched unexpectedly, and defense witnesses testified that the teenager had no ability to carry out a plan to murder the principal.
After he was arrested the day of the shooting, two videos were made of Hainstock in the Sauk County Jail. In the first, the youth said he didn't intend to kill the principal, that he just wanted to talk to Klang about classmates who picked on him and called him a fag.
In the second, much shorter video, Hainstock is shown telling a jailer that he doubts his lawyer will be able to get him out of jail. "I doubt that'll happen since it's attempted (sic) homicide, I guess," the teenager said. "Which really sucks 'cause I can't ever hunt now."
A bit later on the video, Hainstock said to the jailer, "I have a question. Does (sic) felonies go away when you are 18? 'Cause that's what I was told was when you turn 18, your felonies are dropped because you're not a juvenile anymore."
Making the ruling, Taggart agreed that Hainstock probably wouldn't get adequate treatment in adult prisons.
But Taggart said the evidence showed "a level of organization" that demonstrated intent by Hainstock, and the judge said he had to consider whether juvenile court penalties would be severe enough to deter other potential school shooters.
On a police video shown Friday, Hainstock said he wanted to talk to Klang and his teachers about classmates who regularly called him a fag, rubbed up against him and punched him.
He told police he ate breakfast that Friday morning, then waited until his parents, Shawn and Priscilla Hainstock, went to work before getting two of his father's guns from locked cabinets and loading them, getting gasoline out of a lawnmower and putting it in a truck, then driving to school.
That "does show a level of organization toward a goal," Taggart said.
Ricciardi argued Hainstock's plan was to make somebody listen to his complaints.
"His plan was not to kill somebody," she said. "He was grabbed. He freaked out. Please listen to him now."
Sue Klang said she opposed Hainstock's transfer into juvenile court at least partly because she believes that's what her husband would have wanted.
She also said the same people who revile her on Web sites as "a liar" and "a poor excuse for a Christian" would be encouraged if Hainstock faced more limited, juvenile court penalties.
No trial date was set.
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