NEWARK, N.J. -- Almost seven years after a late-night dormitory fire that killed three freshmen at Seton Hall University and triggered nationwide changes in fire safety codes on college campuses, two former students on trial for murder pleaded guilty Wednesday to arson and witness tampering, charges that carry five-year prison terms.
Prosecutors said they abandoned the murder charges to accept the pleas for fear that the jury could be confused and unconvinced by a circumstantial case relying on complex scientific evidence.
Families of the three dead freshmen sat solemnly in the courtroom as two former students, Joseph T. Lepore and Sean Michael Ryan, both 26, recounted their crime.
"I, along with Sean Ryan, lit a banner on fire that was draped across the couch in the third floor lounge of Boland Hall on Jan. 19, 2000, at approximately 4 a.m.," Lepore read without expression from a copy of the signed agreement. "When doing so, I did not intend to injure anyone. It was a prank that got out of hand."
The brief session in a courtroom crowded with relatives of the dead and some of the50 injured in the fire was an abrupt end to a trial that had barely begun, with a jury painstakingly selected over eight weeks sworn and charged; copious trial exhibits ready; and months of pretrial motions finally settled. After a flurry of secret negotiations over 48 hours, Judge Harold W. Fullilove announced, in almost a whisper: "I understand that an agreement has been worked out."
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"We can only be as good as our proofs," Essex County Prosecutor Paula Dow said outside the courtroom. "The alternative might have been their walking away with a not-guilty verdict and a smirk on their faces."
The defense lawyers, in turn, said the prospect of the sympathy effect on the jurors, particularly with the expected testimony of badly scarred burn victims who survived the fire, prompted them to avoid the risk of trial. Their clients had faced prison terms of up to 30 years. Now they can be eligible for parole after 16 months, which lawyers said was four months later than most prisoners serving five-year terms.
Joseph and Candice Karol, whose 18-year-old son, Aaron, was one of three Boland Hall residents killed in the blaze, said they were satisfied with the pleas. "We have an admission of guilt and that was what we wanted," Karol said in an interview later at his home.
