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BURRILLVILLE -- Nicholas C. Plante, the Burrillville teenager who was convicted of raping a classmate when he was 17 and she was 15, will face the Parole Board for the first time this month -- one year and six days after he was sentenced to serve four years at the Adult Correctional Institutions.

Plante's hearing is set for Jan. 20, according to Parole Board chairwoman Lisa S. Holley. Four of the seven members of the board, including Holley, will meet with Plante that day and discuss the crime, Plante's "institutional adjustment," any prison programs in which he is enrolled and whether he has been disciplined for behavior problems, Holley said.

Plante, who is now 19, does not have "that many infractions compared to other inmates his age," Holley said. Typically, younger inmates have more infractions than older ones, she said.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Gerald J. Coyne said yesterday that he will meet with the Parole Board this morning to discuss various requests for parole, including Plante's.

"We're not supporting it," Coyne said of Plante's parole application.

After a five-day jury trial in October 2002, Plante was convicted on three counts of first-degree sexual assault and one count of second-degree sexual assault. All four of those charges stemmed from an assault that took place in Plante's bedroom on Dec. 5, 2001.

Last Jan. 14, Plante was sentenced to three 10-year sentences, with four years to serve and six to be suspended with probation, for the first-degree assault charges. For the second-degree charge, he was sentenced to five years, with two to serve and three suspended with probation. All sentences were to run concurrently.

Superior Court Judge Edward C. Clifton also ordered Plante to undergo sexual offender counseling, to register as a sexual offender upon his release and to have no contact with the victim or her family members.

Inmates are first eligible for parole after serving one-third of their sentences, Holley said.

Plante comes before the Parole Board one year and six days after his sentencing date because Clifton granted him credit for time served while awaiting trial. As of yesterday, Plante did not have an attorney scheduled to represent him at the hearing, Holley said.

After Plante was waived out of Family Court before his trial, he was taken to the ACI in January 2002, when he spent a weekend in prison, according to court documents and ACI records. He was then placed on very strict bail conditions and was put under the observation of the state's Home Confinement office, according to ACI spokesman Albert A. Bucci Jr.

Plante was monitored by the Home Confinement office until he violated the terms of his bail that May. The four months that he was under the Home Confinement program count toward his four years to serve because he was considered an incarcerated inmate during that time, Bucci said.

In order to be seriously considered for parole, Plante must have had no infractions at the ACI for the past six months and he must have participated in the sexual-offender treatment program that the ACI runs, Holley said.

Plante has had no infractions for the past six months, Holley said. She said she cannot say whether he has enrolled in the sexual-offender treatment program because that information is protected under the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).

The Parole Board should reach a decision on Plante's parole request the day of the hearing, Holley said. The following day, once minutes of the hearing have been transcribed, the reasons for the board's decision should be available, Holley said.

The Parole Board normally looks for inmates convicted of violent crimes to have served two-thirds of the time they were sentenced to serve before releasing them, Coyne said.

There was a time when the Attorney General's Office objected to "every single Parole Board application," Coyne said. But since such automatic requests lacked credibility, the AG's office has really focused on certain inmates' parole applications, Coyne said. That includes those with longer sentences, where victims may not be accessible anymore, and those with unique facts that the office can bring to the Parole Board's attention, Coyne said.

In most cases, inmates facing the Parole Board have landed in the ACI on a plea bargain, Coyne said. If the inmate and the Attorney General's Office have agreed to a plea bargain that includes an 18-month sentence, that inmate will first be eligible for parole after six months in prison.

"We don't have a ton of credibility to go down to the Parole Board and say, 'Object. Object,"' Coyne said.

The office has trusted the Parole Board with the discretion to handle such cases, Coyne said. Plante's appearance before the Parole Board is not one of those.

"This case is different because it's a violent crime, it was a trial, and we recommended more than he got, so this doesn't fit into that category," Coyne said.

The prosecutor in Plante's case, special assistant attorney general Denise Choquette, requested a 25-year sentence for Plante, with 15 years to serve. First-degree sexual assault carries a sentence of 10 years to life in prison. Second-degree sexual assault carries a sentence of 3 to 15 years.

Plante's victim -- a Burrillville girl who has been identified in The Journal by only her first name, Laura -- said yesterday that she wasn't sure yet whether she would speak to the Parole Board before Plante meets with the board. She has the right to do so.

"I just feel like I've said everything I need to," Laura said.

Laura and her family have spoken extensively with The Journal about the effects of the crime. She said that she spoke yesterday with the Attorney General's Office and knew they were going to object to Plante's parole request.

Reporter Kate Bramson can be reached by e-mail at kbramsonXXXprojo.com