Moments after leaving a Mercer County courtroom Wednesday, District Attorney James P. Epstein slumped into a gray plastic chair in his office, pointed at the foot-high piles of paperwork in front of him and said, "You see this, these are the federal documents pertaining to the case of Anthony Parks."

A minute earlier, Epstein had heard Judge Francis J. Fornelli, as expected, accept Parks' guilty plea to third-degree murder and robbery in the Dec. 6, 1989, death of his grandmother, Daisy Parks. Fornelli sentenced Parks to the mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison for the two crimes. Based on the time Parks has served since the murder, he will be eligible for parole before the end of the decade.

The revised sentence is the result of events involving miscommunication, coincidence and obstacles inherent in attempting to retry a case that occurred nearly 14 years ago.

At an evidentiary hearing Feb. 28 and March 1, 2002, to determine whether Parks would be eligible for a new trial, Parks testified that when he entered his guilty plea in 1990, he was under the impression he would be eligible for parole in 15 or 20 years.

According to a transcript of that hearing: