A plea agreement has been reached in the deliberate homicide case of Kevin Lino, the man accused of beating, torturing and shooting a transient, Gilbert 'Jack' Berry, last summer.

Chief Deputy Missoula County Attorney Jason Marks told KGVO News that the agreement was worked out with Lino's attorney Thomas Bartleson, and will send Lino to the Montana State Prison for 40 years.

At his court appearance on Friday, Lino, in hand and leg restraints, told District Judge Karen Townsend that because he has such a severe alcohol addiction, that he started every day by drinking a large volume of alcohol, and because of that fact, could not remember anything that happened the day of the murder.

He told the judge that the evidence that would have been presented at trial would have convicted him of the charge of deliberate homicide, so he entered a plea of no contest, meaning he gave up his right to appeal his sentence at a later date.

Lino, 27, along with Kenneth Hickman, who has already reached a plea agreement, are charged with beating Berry. It is alleged that Lino then urinated on the man, burned him with cigarettes and carved gang symbols into his skin before shooting him in the head with a handgun and dumping his body in the Clark Fork River, where it was found days later by a local fisherman.

Lino fled the area and was later found in Shreveport, Louisiana, where he refused extradition three times, until a governor's warrant was issued for him to be transported to Missoula.

Judge Townsend made it clear that she did not have to abide by the plea agreement.

Lino will be sentenced later this summer. Until then, he was remanded back to the Missoula County Jail.

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