A mother who had been found guilty of killing her son by poisoning him slowly with salt had been sentenced 20 years to life in prison by a New York court on Friday.
Lacey Spears, a 27-year-old mother had been convicted of second degree murder in February. It had been found that Spears had been inserting sodium into her son Garnett’s feeding tube from infancy, which in due course led to his death in 2014. Spears had been active on social media during Garnett’s illness. She had been writing a blog about their life and her son’s deteriorating health and had been very regular with her updates of Facebook and Twitter.
He sentence was less the maximum 25 years to life that she possibly could have received for her actions.
The State Supreme Court Justice Robert Neary said that what Spear’s did was “unfathomable in its cruelty” and brought her son “five years of torment and pain”. But he said he was not compelling the maximum penalty of 25 years to life because, “one does not have to be a psychiatrist to realize you suffer from Munchausen by proxy.”
Munchausen syndrome by proxy is a psychological condition that, in a number of cases, sees that caregivers injure children so that a situation is created which will necessitate or appears to necessitate medical attention.
The prosecutors have stated that level on which Spear’s had planned the poisoning her son, which had included her moving him from state to state seeking medical treatments from a variety of doctor for diseases that he never even had, projected that she was fully aware of her actions and had not lost contact with reality.
Assistant district attorney Doreen Lloyd said, “She continued to portray him as a sick child for her own bizarre need for attention.
“She used that feeding tube as a weapon to kill him,” she added.
Spears did not testify at her trial, and had not showed any emotion as she was being sentenced. Her attorneys did not look for to using the condition as a defense at her trial, and neither did the prosecution try to claim that her actions were a result of the psychological condition.
Subsequent to Spears’ sentencing, defense lawyer Stephen Riebling said it was strange for the judge to bring it up because Spears “hasn’t been diagnosed with any mental illness.”
