Travis Parker, 13, was pinned to the ground by up to three staffers on April 20 after he protested when he was denied food as punishment, according to documents from the Human Resources Department.

The White County district attorney said he is considering dropping or reducing murder charges against six workers charged with restraining and killing a boy at a state camp for troubled youth.

"I may ... drop it," said Stan Gunter, the district attorney who has guided the murder case against workers at the Appalachian Wilderness Camp for two years.

Stressing that he has not made up his mind, and that much depends on an upcoming court ruling on a defense motion, Gunter said he is also thinking about seeking lesser charges or dropping the entire case altogether.

Then again, he said, "I could keep these charges and go forward."

Gunter said he could make a final decision within days. The trials of the workers had been set to start Monday but were postponed indefinitely.

Gunter said he is rethinking the murder charges due in large part to the pretrial testimony of the medical examiner who performed the autopsy, Dr. Kris Sperry.

Sperry linked the death of 13-year-old Travis Parker to his prolonged resistance against the restraint. He said that if Travis had not struggled so long — up to 90 minutes — against the men restraining him, he would not have died.

The case against the camp workers has suffered several setbacks. The camp director testified that the workers applied the restraining hold as they had been taught. None of the camp workers has accepted the plea bargains offered by the district attorney, at least one of which included no jail time.

For the camp workers and their families, the prospect that charges might be dropped or reduced raised hopes.

"Obviously, I'm glad that he's finally thinking about it," said camp worker Mathew Desing, 28. "He's finally maybe looking at the truth."

Desing said that his career of helping children has been derailed for the past two years, and that he must earn a living doing construction and landscaping.

He maintained that he and the other counselors restrained the boy as they had been taught.

"We were trained by the state to do our job, and we did our job to the best of our ability," he said. "Now the state has come up with these murder charges."

If convicted of murder, the workers would face a mandatory life sentence, with a possibility of parole after 30 years. If the prosecution limits the case to the other existing charge of child cruelty, it would carry a maximum sentence of 20 years. A reduced charge of, for instance, felony involuntary manslaughter would bring a maximum sentence of 10 years.

Travis' family had a very different reaction. Golden Griffin, the boy's grandmother and adoptive mother, said she was disappointed. She wants the workers prosecuted for murder.

"They are responsible for his death," she said. "He was brutalized so bad, I couldn't open the casket."

Harold Spence, the attorney who represents the boy's family, said the district attorney told him that he may have to "modify the charges. They may be lesser."

Spence, who has been consulting with the district attorney, said he is concerned that the workers will walk away with no punishment.

"These guys are using the Nuremberg defense, that they were just doing what they were told," Spence said.

Prosecutors have argued against the theory that Travis was largely responsible for his own death, asserting that it wrongly blames the victim.

The dropping or reducing of charges would mark a major shift in the murder case that has taken two years to come to trial.

Early on, authorities said the workers held down the 5-foot-7, 159-pound boy for about an hour and a half until he lost consciousness and later died. The workers — Desing, Paul Binford, Ryan Chapman, Torbin Vining, Johnny Harris and Phillip Elliott — all pleaded not guilty to the charges of felony murder and child cruelty.

At a pretrial hearing last year, Sperry also discounted an earlier report in which Travis was said to have claimed he was having an asthma attack during the restraint. The camp workers were criticized by some child welfare advocates for not fulfilling the boy's request for his asthma inhaler. But Sperry said the boy's yelling was inconsistent with an asthma attack.

More recently, the camp director, Tim McMahon, testified at a pretrial hearing that the workers properly applied the "full basket" hold on Travis and did not use excessive force.

Several of the defense attorneys compared the death of Travis to that of athletes who overexert themselves to the point of having a heart attack.

Sperry testified in May 2006 in White County Superior Court that Travis died because of "extensive acidosis."

Travis reached a point of physical exertion that his heart couldn't function normally and kicked into a lethal rhythm that didn't supply blood to his other organs, Sperry said, according to court documents.

Attorney Daniel Summer, who represents Vining, said the case has been taken off the active calendar at the White County Superior Court, which means it will not be heard this month.

Lawyers in the case are awaiting Superior Court Judge Lynn Akeley-Alderman's ruling on a specific motion, which could come within days.

The motion asserts that the workers applied the restraint as they had been taught, and that camp workers had used the restraint for 20 years with no significant injuries. Consequently, the motion asserts, the workers cannot be prosecuted for an action that they had no idea could result in a crime.

If the judge rules in favor of the motion, it could result in the dismissal of the indictment, said district attorney Gunter.