Princeton , West Virginia

A former police officer was sentenced to home confinement.

Mercer County Circuit Judge William Sadler sentenced Christopher Winkler, 27, a former Princeton police officer, to a 10-year suspended sentence on Monday and instead sentenced him to up to five years of home confinement, Assistant Mercer County Prosecutor George Sitler said. That sentence will be re-evaluated at the conclusion of the first year.

Earlier this year, Winkler was sentenced to up to five years on home confinement on a bribery charge to which he pleaded guilty.

In October, he pleaded guilty to meeting up with a 17-year-old boy and trying to get him to perform a sexual act on him, to pay off a debt, back in March of 2011. Winkler was allegedly dressed in his uniform at the time of the incident.

Prosecutors reportedly agreed to the lighter sentence because there was no evidence of actual sexual contact between the pair.

Winkler made headlines back in April 2010, when he was knocked unconscious during a training exercise at the West Virginia State Police Academy located in Institute.

Winkler's mother said another instructor had to pull two troopers off her son when they allegedly continued to hit him, once he was down.

Winkler was involved in a multiple-assailant training scenario at the time.

Both then-Gov. Joe Manchin and Kanawha County Prosecutor Mark Plants requested investigations into the incident at the academy. Neither of those investigations found fault with the instructors' actions.

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