By Roger McKinney

rmckinney@joplinglobe.com

COLUMBUS, Kan. - Two Riverton High School students will spend the upcoming school year on probation and performing community service after pleading guilty Wednesday to a misdemeanor charge.

Three other defendants accused in an alleged school-shooting plot pleaded innocent, and the attorneys for two of them said they will continue to fight the charge in court.

James Tillman, 16, and Robby Hunt, 17, both pleaded guilty to a single count of misdemeanor conspiracy to riot. It's the same charge that's facing all the defendants after Cherokee County Attorney Michael Goodrich on Monday reduced the charges from felony counts of criminal threat and incitement to riot.

Coy New, 18, Andrew Jaeger, 15, and Caleb Byrd, 16, each pleaded innocent to the misdemeanor charge.

Labette County District Judge Robert Fleming found Tillman and Hunt guilty, and sentenced them to probation during the upcoming school year and ordered them to perform two hours of community service a week. He did not specify a project but said it should be something that builds character.

Jury trials requested

The five were arrested April 20. Cherokee County Sheriff Steve Norman said they had planned to carry out a school shooting targeting students and school staff members. It was the seventh anniversary of the school shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado. An indirect threat posted on New's site on Myspace.com initially caught the attention of school officials, but they said their questioning of four of the students did not reveal any signs of a plot, and school officials did not seek assistance from the Sheriff's Department.

Originally, the state had taken the case, but Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline last week referred the case back to Goodrich. Jan Lunsford, a spokesman for Kline, said the attorney general's office does not typically handle juvenile cases.

Attorneys with Kline's office initially had sought to prosecute the juvenile students as adults but later dropped that motion. New, at 18, is legally an adult.

Before the attorney general returned the case to the county for prosecution, attorneys dismissed the most serious charge against any of the students: a charge against Tillman of solicitation to commit first-degree murder.

Fleming said the initial probable-cause affidavit and felony charges frightened him.

"I think we can take some comfort that this wasn't as serious as it was presented months ago," Fleming said Wednesday, noting that he had not read or heard any of the evidence.

Goodrich said the misdemeanor charge alleges that the students discussed logistics regarding carrying out an act of violence at Riverton High School, including discussing the locations of doors, windows and video cameras. Tillman's attorney, Sam Marsh, and Hunt's attorney, Doug Steele, said they did not contest Goodrich's account.