Murder charges were dropped against a 9-year-old boy from St. Johns, Arizona when he pleaded guilty Thursday to negligent homicide for shooting dead his father and another man in November.

The plea bargain spares the third grader from prison time and is likely to be placed under intensive probation, counseling and possible detention.

An Arizona judge last week found a 12-year-old boy guilty of murdering his mother after the two got into an argument over chores.

The Cochise County Superior Court judge ruled prosecutors showed the boy acted intentionally when he shot his mother, Sara Madrid, eight times last year. He was found guilty of premeditated murder.

An 8-year-old boy who confessed to shooting to death his father and a man renting a room from his father in Arizona earlier this month, had told authorities he kept a log recording the instances his father and stepmother hit him.

According to a search affidavit from a St. Johns, Ariz. Police officer, the boy told Child Protective Services agents that 1,000 spankings was his threshold.

Proposition 8 may have lost last week in California, but gay couples still have an alternative wedding venue at Connecticut. Hartford will start to issue marriage license and solemnize weddings of gay and lesbian couples beginning Wednesday following a final judgment from Superior Court Judge Jonathan Silbert.

The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled on Oct. 10 that gay couples have the right to wed instead of just being joined by a civil union law. With the ruling, Connecticut joins Massachusetts as the only U.S. state that legalize same-sex marriages following the defeat of Proposition 8 in California and similar proposition in Arizona and Florida.

Police in the small community of St. Johns, Ariz. arrested an 8-year old boy on premeditated murder charges after they say he shot and killed his father and another man Wednesday.

The boy, whose name has not been released because of his age, was charged Friday with two counts of premeditated murder in the deaths of his father, 29-year-old Vincent Romero and 39-year-old Timothy Romans, St. Johns Police Chief Roy Melnick said.