An appeals court in Massachusetts will hear arguments on the appeal of a man convicted of conspiring to murder students and teachers at Marshfield, Mass. High School.

 

In 2008, Joseph Nee was ordered to serve nine months of a 21/2-year sentence in the Plymouth County Jail following a jury-waived trial for his role in planning an attack that never occurred. With credit for time served while awaiting trial, Nee spent the next six months behind bars before completing his sentence.

 

Nee and Tobin Kerns, then 16, were charged with planning a mass murder to coincide with the sixth anniversary of the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado in 1999. Now, Nee, 24, wants the state Supreme Judicial Court to toss out his conviction based on his claim of "renunciation."

 

In September 2007, Kerns was sentenced to a 10-month-jail term in September 2007 for conspiracy to commit murder and threatening to use deadly weapons. Nee's lawyers argue that neither police nor school officials were aware of any plot to until Nee came forward.