Youth Gets 8 Years for Killing Honor Student : Crime: Teen-ager pleaded guilty and will testify against four others charged in New Year’s Eve beating.

One of five teen-agers accused in the New Year’s Eve slaying of honor student Stuart A. Tay has been sentenced by a Juvenile Court judge to eight years in the California Youth Authority.

In an emotional five-hour hearing Thursday, Charles Bae Choe, 17, who pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and promised to testify in the case, apologized for his misdeeds and asked to be sent to a private, locked treatment facility in Wyoming rather than jail.

But Presiding Juvenile Court Judge Francisco Briseno said the severity of the crime forced him to order the maximum penalty of 25 years to life in prison.

But Choe will serve only eight years because the state youth authority releases all prisoners by age 25. He was allowed to remain in the juvenile justice system because he admitted his guilt and offered to testify against the four other Sunny Hills High School students charged in the killing.

“He had the choice. He could have made the choice and saved Stuart,” said Linda Tay, the victim’s mother, after the hearing. “Stuart never had a choice. . . . Stuart was our joy, our pride, our future. This is what these guys did, they took everything away.”

Meanwhile, the district attorney’s office has decided not to seek the death penalty against Robert Chien-Nan Chan, 18, the alleged ringleader of the crime in which Tay was bludgeoned for 20 minutes with baseball bats and a sledgehammer, then buried in a Buena Park back yard. Trial for the four remaining defendants, scheduled to begin Sept. 27 in Orange County Superior Court, have filed motions to dismiss special circumstances charges that make them eligible for stiffer penalties, including life in prison without the possibility of parole.