Mom gets 20 years in salt-poisoning murder of son

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- A judge sentenced Lacey Spears to 20 years to life, less than the maximum requested by prosecutors.

Prosecutors were seeking the maximum sentence for Spears, who was convicted of killing her 5-year-old son by poisoning him with salt. Spears of Scottsville, Ken., was found guilty last month of second-degree murder in the death of Garnett-Paul Spears at a suburban New York hospital.

Spears, 27, force fed heavy concentrations of sodium through the 5-year-old's stomach tube, resulting in his death in January 2014.

Citing her mental illness, Munchausen by proxy, the judge said Wednesday that he is showing Spears the mercy she did not provide her son.

The maximum that could have been imposed was 25 years to life. The minimum was 15 to life.

Defense attorneys said the evidence did not prove murder. They have promised an appeal of the conviction. Spears did not testify at the trial.

Spears blogged for years about her son's constant health woes and barely flinched as the jury foreman read the verdict after the two-week trial. Her sister and father consoled each other at the time.

"She's probably in shock to some degree, but I'm not going to speculate about that," defense attorney Stephen Riebling said at the time. "I didn't ask her how she was doing, but I mean if you put yourself in her position, you can understand how she's feeling."

Prosecutors said Spears demonstrated utter disregard for her son's life by poisoning him with a lethal dose of sodium inserted through the boy's feeding tube, all in a desperate attempt to attract attention and gain sympathy.

Alternate juror Andrew Digiacomo heard all the arguments and listened to all the testimony.

"Every piece of medical evidence suggests that the only way that he could have reached that high level of sodium was if he was poisoned," he said. "And the only person that could have poisoned him was her."

Spears will be sentenced in early April, and she can expect no sympathy from the district attorney.

"My office will be asking the court to sentence Miss Spears to the maximum sentence allowed under the law, which is a life sentence," DA Janet DiFiore said.

Riebling portrayed Spears as a caring mother and her son as sickly, but the prosecution argued that Spears reveled in the attention Garnett's illness brought her. Video showed Spears twice taking the boy into a hospital bathroom with a connector tube and the boy suffering afterward.

"The motive is bizarre, the motive is scary, but it exists," Assistant District Attorney Patricia Murphy said in closing arguments Thursday. "She apparently craved the attention of her family, her friends, her co-workers and most particularly the medical profession."

She suggested that Spears eventually killed the boy because she feared he would start telling people she was making him ill. Her actions were "nothing short of torture," she said.

Several doctors testified that there was no medical explanation for the spike in Garnett's sodium levels that led to his death.

But Riebling argued there was no "direct evidence" of a crime and drew out from witnesses that Spears seemed devastated by her son's death. He said the hospital video was edited to eliminate tender scenes between mother and son, including one where Spears puts two pairs of socks on Garnett.

"If she's planning on killing him, why does she care whether his feet are cold?" he asked the jury.

He also said the hospital was negligent and dehydrated the boy - an assertion Murphy called "just ridiculous."

The evidence included two feeding bags found in Spears' apartment that were heavily tainted with salt, including one that Spears asked a friend to hide. One bag had the equivalent of 69 McDonald's salt packets in it, a forensic toxicologist testified.

Also in evidence were many of Spears' postings on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and a blog and her online research into the dangers of sodium in children.

Spears, an Alabama native, was living with her son in Chestnut Ridge, N.Y., when he died. She moved to Kentucky afterward and was living there when she was arrested.

There was no mention at the trial of a disorder known as Munchausen by proxy in which caretakers secretly harm children to win sympathy. Some experts believe that disorder fits Spears' actions.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.