A New York mother who snagged headlines for allegedly poisoning her son to death with salt was found guilty of second-degree murder on Monday.
Lacey Spears barely reacted as the jury's guilty verdict was delivered for the death of 5-year-old Garnett-Paul Spears, who died at a Westchester County hospital in 2014, The Journal News reported. She faces a maximum sentence of 25 years to life in prison.
During Spears' 14-day trial, prosecutors accused the 27-year-old of "torturing" her son by injecting dangerous amounts of sodium into his feeding tube. Garnett's brain swelled and his condition worsened until he died Jan. 23.
Doctors previously said it was impossible for the child's sodium levels to naturally spike. After his death, investigators recovered feeding bags that were laced with sodium.
Prosecutors also said the defendant spent years making her son sick on purpose to gain attention from sympathizers. Scores of message Spears wrote on Facebook and her blog documented Garnett's health problems, which dated back to the first year he was born.
Garnett had already been in the hospital 23 times by the time he was age 1, The Journal News reported.
But defense attorneys pointed out there was still no official explanation as to what caused Garnett's death. They blamed a hospital Garnett previously stayed at, and not the defendant, for the tragedy.
"We are disappointed with the verdict that was rendered in this case," Stephen Riebling, Spears' lawyer, told the newspaper. "It is our client's intention to appeal the decision."
Jurors were instructed to consider first-degree manslaughter or the murder charge in their deliberations. There was a question of whether Spears suffered from Munchausen by proxy- a disorder where caregivers sicken patients for attention- but prosecutors did not present the theory at trial because the current evidence was enough, the newspaper reported.
Spears is expected to be sentenced April 18.
