Judge Dan Green said he'll make a decision as soon as he can on a request to modify Larry Gene Welch's sentences for manslaughter and assault following a fatal accident in 2007.
But Green didn't predict how quickly that decision might be.
The Cole County circuit judge was asked Wednesday to reduce Welch's 15-year sentences for his 2008 involuntary manslaughter convictions, and to change his two five-year second-degree assault sentences so they run at the same time as the longer terms, not consecutively as originally ordered.
Welch, now 62, Russellville, pleaded guilty in 2008 to driving while intoxicated on Nov. 4, 2007, and causing an accident that killed Jean Olsen, 45, and her son, Tobias Olsen, 17 - and seriously injured Johanna Olsen, then 14, and Eric Olsen, 41, father of the two teens and Jean's husband.
Then-Judge Richard Callahan ordered the sentences.
Welch currently is in the state's prison at Bowling Green and, under state law, he's required to serve at least 85 percent of the sentences before he can be considered for release from prison.
But his attorney, James D. Barding, told Green in a motion for a sentence reduction, that Welch's "convictions do not involve "violence or the threat of violence' as defined in any Missouri statute," and that everyone involved with the 2008 sentencing - including Callahan - "understood" that the sentences didn't require the 85 percent rule.
Barding had several people testify Wednesday that, if Welch were released from prison, he would be given a place to stay and be welcomed back into the Russellville community, where many people remain thankful for the many good things he's done over the years.
Welch's twin brother, Gary Welch, told Green: "Good people can make bad decisions, but that doesn't mean they are bad people."
Dr. Earl Miller, Welch's physician before the accident and prison sentence, told Green that Welch's health is deteriorating while in prison.
He had a stroke while in jail before the sentences were imposed and, Miller said, wasn't properly treated for it.
And now he has a hernia that the prison's medical people are ignoring, telling him nothing needs to be done about it as long as Welch can push it back into place.
"He faces significant health care problems," Miller testified. "In prison, there is little opportunity for recovery."
Barding told Green: "I do not believe that the state sought to have him die in prison.
"I do not think the state sought to have him die at all (but), in reality, this is a sentence that is tantamount to death sentence if, in fact, we credit the testimony of the only medical evidence that we have at this point."
But, Prosecutor Mark Richardson countered, Welch knew his guilty plea was a "blind" one with no specific promise of a certain kind of sentence.
"The evidence now doesn't show that he's met the statutory requirements" for an early release from prison or for a reduced sentence, Richardson said - reminding Green that he had rejected a similar motion in 2011.
But, Green told Welch Wednesday: "This is an odd statute, and there's not much case law on it," Green explained at the end of an hour-long hearing.
"I'm going to try to analyze it and do the research that I'm able to do."