The Italian court ruled that Finnegan Elder will serve 24 years in prison, while Gabriel Natale-Hjorth will serve 22. They were originally handed life sentences for their roles in the killing of Carabinieri Vice Brigadier Mario Rega in 2019.

Elder and Natale-Hjorth were found guilty of stabbing the officer 11 times and attempted extortion. They sought lesser sentences due to their age—Elder is now 22, while Natale-Hjorth is 21.

“At 22 years of age and with three years in prison, I had much time to reflect,” said Elder in his appeal. He also apologized to Rega’s family for the “endless suffering” he caused them.

Elder and Natale-Hjorth were students at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, California, when they visited Rome in the summer of 2019. According to testimony, Rega stopped the two men from purchasing cocaine in a nightlife district. Natale-Hjorth was apprehended by a second officer that he struggled with and eventually ran away from during the stabbing.

According to California news station KABC, Elder claims he did not know Rega was an officer, as he did not have a badge and was wearing street clothes. Fearing that he and his partner were mobsters, the California man claims he stabbed the officer in self-defense.

“My son is painfully aware that the actions that he had that night caused the death of a man, and he suffers from tremendous guilt,” said Elder’s mother, Leah, when the appeals hearings began in February. “He is also painfully aware of the injustice that his version of the events were never listened to or believed.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by Elder’s father, Ethan, who told Italian website Fanpage that he supports his son and that there was another truth behind the killing. However, he agrees that Rega’s death still shouldn’t have happened, especially at the hands of his son.

“My son has taken the life of another person, whether it is a stab or a hundred, there is no way of minimizing [it],” Ethan Elder said. “What happened is terrible, it shouldn’t have happened.”

Elder’s attorney, Craig Peters, told KABC in February that their legal argument might hold up in an American courtroom.

“I think that Finnegan has a very good self-defense argument,” Peters told the station. “I think in the U.S., this would be a really good case, I think you could get a defense verdict on this.

“The judges clearly had a bias, they had a bias against the defendants, they had a bias against the defense attorneys. They had a bias in favor of the prosecution, bias in favor of the Carabinieri.”

Update 3/17/22, 10:53 a.m. ET: This story has been updated with their sentences being reduced by an Italian appeals court.