Baltimore Sun

A 16-year-old former McDonogh School student pleaded guilty this morning to clubbing his mother to death with a baseball bat.

Lewin C. Powell III’s plea to a single count of first-degree murder came in a Baltimore County Circuit Court hearing attended by his father, whom the boy also attacked after killing his mother last year, and several other relatives and family friends.

Powell, who will be sentenced on April 3, had initially pleaded not guilty, stipulating that he was not criminally responsible — Maryland’s equivalent of an insanity plea. Under a plea agreement, prosecutors dropped three other charges and said they will seek a sentence of life in prison. The boy could be eligible for parole in 15 years.

Shanell Kathleen Harleston, one of Powell’s attorneys, said after the hearing that she would ask Judge Kathleen G. Cox to refer him to the Patuxent Institution, a maximum-security facility with a psychiatric and educational treatment program for young offenders. The defense plans to ask the judge to suspend all but 15 years of the agreed-upon life sentence.