Do you think this woman received a fair sentence?

I’m pretty comfortable with it.

As the sheriff said, there are lots of alternatives that she had – drop the kid at a church, fire station, wherever. leaving the kid to die on a garage floor is just heartless.

I also have no sympathy for her = at age 24 a long time cocaine and heroin user. So this girl has been screwed up for ages. No real excuse for it – she grew up in a time where all sorts of help is available.

What would be a more suitable punishment?

I don’t think the punishment fits the crime. I think it shows a lack of empathy for a woman who was probably scared, panicking, in extreme pain, and not thinking rationally, just after giving birth alone. I also don’t think her cocaine and heroin addictions should be used against her, because they are not relevant except in how they may have hindered her decision-making abilities. Also, we don’t know what kind of help she really had access to.

I don’t know. I feel really bad for her. It makes me wonder what I would do if I found myself in her position.

I think that the heroin and cocaine history is very relevant, because it shows poor decision making for years. Having the baby and leaving it to die was not the first stupid thing she did.

I mean you can compare her sentence to the one just handed down to a man who raped a seven-year-old and left her to die: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/james-clifford-paul-gets-10-year-prison-term-for-attack-on-girl-7-1.3540618

He got ten years.

@elbanditoroso so what? She was on trial for the crime of leaving a baby to die, not the crime of using drugs (which shouldn’t be a crime, in my opinion – but I digress). It shouldn’t factor into her sentencing.

Some people use drugs and don’t get addicted. Other people are not as lucky. Drug addicts deserve treatment, not incarceration.

If it was a live birth she could have left it on hospital steps or otherwise made sure it would be discovered and cared for.

The most troubling part for me was “where he died two days later.”

She had plenty of time to change her mind, and the baby died a slow, agonizing death.

I agree the sentence seems excessive, but all I have to go on is the brief news story, not the trial.

The woman needs help, both psychological and through drug rehabilitation. Will she receive it while in jail?

@Pied_Pfeffer probably not.

She got life, which is what she deprived the baby of, fair seems highly inappropriate

I agree with you, and @Pied_Pfeffer. Our punishment-based system is a huge problem.

Are we forgetting that she had THREE other children who were taken from her by the state?

Things have to be seriously neglectful before the state can act. So, she ruined 3 previous lives and killed this one needlessly, so at least the sentence she received will act as a preventive for her having the opportunity to ruin/murder any more innocents.

Instead of painting her as the poor victim here, how about considering the REAL victims who did nothing to deserve the treatment they received at her hands?

She did not have to leave an infant to die a slow agonizing death. There were many options available to her (including birth control to assure not getting pregnant AGAIN)

If nothing else, jail will prevent her from damaging/murdering future lives. It’s pretty obvious she lacks the ability to learn from her mistakes so depriving her of the opportunity to keep making the same mistakes is perhaps the best, if imperfect solution, to this situation.

It’s not ideal, but at least it takes her off the playing field.

We don’t have the details provided the judge or jury, but the verdict appears sound. The sentence on the other hand makes me uneasy. Judging from her history, the woman is clearly inept and certainly worthy of close supervision. It may well be that the real crime is that despite rather obvious evidence of her judgemental shortcomings, she wasn’t flagged until the death of her 4th child. Well perhaps she will now have the close supervision necessary in the primary institution left to pen up the mentally troubled.

It’s a horrifying story, not only for the way she callously abandoned a newborn infant – which she had elected to carry to term! – to die, cold, alone and hungry in a garage, and then disposed of the body in the trash (not that I personally object to that so much, because I consider a human corpse to be “nothing more than decaying trash” – which I realize is kind of an extreme perspective that isn’t widely shared – and if she hadn’t formulated and articulated such a reasoned perspective, then that would also be perceived as heartless and cruel, and “public disposal” is not the way to express that kind of thought!) but also for WTF is going on in her head to prompt her to act in such ways?

Aside from that, there is no such thing as “a fair sentence” that involves prison.

That’s what I mean. I don’t know what qualifies as deranged, but from the facts presented, my verdict is “the woman’s crazy”.

What crime doesn’t involve a little bit of crazy?