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       A Maryland man who was convicted of fatally bludgeoning three people and received five consecutive life sentences in 1989 for the crimes he committed when he was 17 could be released in about five years after a judge reduced his sentence Monday.

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       Phillip Clements, 52, already had his sentence reduced in 2019 to 65 years following a Supreme Court ruling that allowed him to assert that his punishment of life for crimes committed as a juvenile was illegal. Clements then requested a hearing for reconsideration of that sentence earlier this year. Both his public defender and prosecutors supported his release, asking that he be resentenced to time served with supervised probation, based on his clean institutional record and his age at the time of the killings.

       At Monday’s reconsideration hearing, Prince George’s County Circuit Court Judge Cathy Serrette instead ordered his sentence reduced to 55 years for the killings of Kathryn Gatlin, 64, and two of her children — Nancy Barowski, 41, and John Brian Barowski, 45. Clements has already served more than 34 years in prison, and based on Maryland parole and probation rules, he could be released in about five years depending on good behavior, according to prosecutors.

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       In court, family members of Gatlin and her two children were opposed to and appalled by Clements’s impending release.

       Clements’s case highlights shifts in local and national criminal justice policies that deem juvenile offenders less culpable than adults for their crimes and more capable of change. Such policies are forcing judges, prosecutors and lawmakers to reconsider decades-old punishments that sentenced youths like Clements to die in prison.

       A 17-year-old murdered 3 people. Have 34 years in prison been enough?

       But for the victims’ family, the pain still remains, and so do the physical scars.

       Gatlin was the matriarch of the family; her daughter Nancy Barowski was a mother of a teen son; and her son John Barowski — who was mentally disabled — lived with them in Laurel. Clements knew the family because he once dated Gatlin’s granddaughter and even stayed with them when he was having trouble at home, according to family and court filings.

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       At Monday’s hearing, the then-14-year-old son of Nancy Barowski, who survived the attack, said he remembers playing video games that morning before hearing his mother’s screams from the other room, and then Clements coming to attack him.

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       Clements bludgeoned the three family members to death with a barbell after Gatlin refused to give the then-17-year-old any cash. He also attacked two other family members who survived, including Nancy Barowski’s son, before fleeing in one of the family’s cars and later confessing to police, according to court documents.

       “He moved my hands out of the way so he could beat me some more,” Nancy Barowski’s son said in court. “This guy had no mercy on me and my family after we had mercy on him.”

       At the time of the killings, Clements was addicted to phencyclidine (PCP) and cocaine and was intending to rob Gatlin to buy crack cocaine, according to court filings. Clements has been sober for decades while in prison, according to attorneys.

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       Though the reconsideration case was not filed under the Juvenile Restoration Act, a law allowing juveniles with life sentences to ask for reduced sentences, Serrette said the factors to consider were relevant.

       Those factors included his age at the time the crime was committed, the nature of the offense — which she said was “truly horrific” — and his institutional history, which included no violent infractions and completion of sobriety certificates and a high school diploma. She also noted that a clinical psychologist deemed Clements a low risk for future violence.

       Upon release, Clements will be on supervised probation for five years and ordered to have no contact with the victims’ family. He must also enroll in a reentry program and pay restitution of almost $15,000 for the three funerals, gravestones and burial sites of the victims. While on probation, any violation or new crime he were to commit would subject him to reinstatement of the life portion of his sentence.

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       At an earlier hearing, prosecutors and the public defender recommended Clements be released to a reentry program in North Carolina. The program would help Clements gain access to employment and provide long-term support, they argued.

       However, North Carolina wouldn’t accept Clements on probation since he has no family members in the state, and the Maryland Division of Parole and Probation denied a request to supervise him remotely.

       Instead, the parties agreed on an alternative supervised reentry program with wraparound mental health and substance abuse treatment services in Maryland. The judge ordered Clements to begin the program, which he would be in for at least a year, upon his release. She did not order quarterly status hearings in court to track Clements’s progress, which was also requested.

       Clements turned to the gallery to face the family in court Monday. He apologized and said, “No words can atone for what happened.” Though he lives with the guilt and shame of the killings, he said, he found worth in his life during his decades in prison and won’t ever stop “trying for redemption.”

       “Hopefully after today you’ll never see me or hear my name again,” Clements said.

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