Pleas for Mercy Win Probation for Youth

After pleas for mercy from the victim’s mother and from probation officers, a judge sentenced a Glendale youth who had been accused of a friend’s murder to five years’ probation.

Artiom Badalyan, 19, had pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter with the use of a firearm for the October 1998 killing of Avetis “Avo” Demirchyan, a 15-year-old Herbert Hoover High School student.

Demirchyan was shot in the abdomen after school following a lunchtime argument. Badalyan was charged with murder, but his attorney, Mark Geragos, said the youth, who was 17 at the time, was a “peacemaker” who tried to intervene and take the gun away from another youth but it discharged during the struggle.

“It looked like it was an accident,” Geragos said.

Badalyan was also ordered by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Victor H. Person to perform 2,000 hours of community service and pay $1,000 to a state victim’s restitution fund, according to the court.

He could have faced a maximum state prison term of 14 years, Geragos said, but probation officers, Badalyan’s Juvenile Hall teacher and Demirchyan’s mother all asked for for leniency.

In a letter to the court, Sona Demirchyan wrote: “Artiom has been my son’s friend . . . my son wouldn’t want Artiom to be jailed. I wouldn’t wish for it either. For Artiom to be in jail would not ease my sadness at all.”

A diagnostic report prepared for the court by the California Department of Corrections also recommended probation for Badalyan, noting that the youth “does not appear to be criminally oriented and expresses remorse for his actions.”