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Copyright © 2018 Albuquerque Journal

Nearly six years after he shot and killed his parents and three young siblings, Nehemiah Griego sat quietly in an orange jumpsuit and shackles Monday morning as prosecutors recounted the facts of his case and asked a judge to sentence him as an adult.

The courtroom was sealed while Griego’s defense team presented its opening statements to Children’s Court Judge John Romero, who must decide whether the now 21-year-old has been rehabilitated and should be released from custody.

Attorneys have agreed that portions of the weeklong hearing that relate to Griego’s treatment will be closed to the public to keep medical and mental health information confidential.

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Griego was 15 years old on the January 2013 night when he shot his mother, Sarah, as she slept, then woke and killed his brother Zephaniah, who had been sleeping beside her. Next he shot his sisters, ages 5 and 2, who were crying in another bedroom.

Hours later, he killed his father, Greg, when he returned to the family’s South Valley home from his night shift.

Romero sentenced Griego as a minor after a similar hearing in 2016, but his determination was reversed by the Court of Appeals, which found that he overlooked certain elements that showed Griego would not respond to treatment. He must, this time, consider the grisly nature of the crime, among other factors.

Griego faces up to 120 years in prison if he is sentenced as an adult. Otherwise, he would be freed because the juvenile detention system cannot hold anyone past his or her 21st birthday. He is now being held in the Metropolitan Detention Center as he awaits resolution of his case.

“This finding would require that your honor finds the defendant has sufficiently been rehabilitated, and therefore he would be released into the community,” prosecutor Mari Martinez said in her opening statement. “There would be no safeguards to ensure protection of the community.”

According to Martinez, the Griegos were devout Christians who spent much of their time at Calvary Chapel, where Greg had once worked as a pastor. Sarah homeschooled their children.

The couple ran a protective household, partly because Greg had years before been mixed up in gangs and didn’t want that life for his own kids. Martinez said Greg was a “gun enthusiast” who taught his son how to use firearms because he had launched an outreach program for former gang members, and “understood that maybe the people he was trying to help could be unreliable.”

Griego’s defense team has asserted in previous hearings that Nehemiah suffered abuse and beatings from his father, including one that left him unconscious.

Two former Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office detectives who investigated the homicides were the first to testify, and they each told the court about their findings and about the ways in which the case affected them.

“It was the coldness of how they were killed,” former detective Kyle Hartsock said. “The disposability of their lives in such a cold and calculated way was not something that I’d run into before.”

The hearing is expected to continue through the week, with testimony by one additional witness at a later date. It is not clear when Romero will make his determination.