New York mother Lacey Spears was sentenced Wednesday to 20 years to life in prison for poisoning her son to death with salt so she could gain favor with online sympathizers, prosecutors said.
Spears, originally from Kentucky, led her social media and blog followers to believe her 5-year-old son Garnett suffered from a host of medical problems, including Celiac disease and Crohn's disease, according to Reuters.
But prosecutors said the 27-year-old tortured her son for years by intentionally making him sick to "self-aggrandize herself." The abuse culminated with Spears inserting lethal levels of sodium into his feeding tube during a hospital stay in Valhalla. Garnett died at Westchester Medical Center in January 2014.
"Throughout his five years, Garnett Spears was forced to suffer through repeated hospitalizations, unneeded surgical procedures and ultimately poisoning with salt, all at the hands of the one person who should have been his ultimate protector: his mother," Westchester District Attorney spokeswoman Janet DiFiore said following the defendant's second-degree murder conviction last month, Reuters reported.
Spears' defense attorney, Stephen Riebling, said his client did not kill her son and blamed his death on the hospital's negligence. At the trial he cited evidence from a hospital video showing Spears as a loving mother by covering Gernett's feet with a pair of socks to keep him warm, WABC reported.
That same video, however, showed Spears taking Garnett into a hospital bathroom two times with a connector tube and the child falling ill afterwards, according to prosecutors.
Spears is believed to suffer from Munchausen by proxy, an illness that causes a person to make a patient sick in order to gain attention. Upon sentencing the judge said he is showing the mother mercy by not sending her to prison for the maximum of 25 years to life.
"By not imposing the maximum, I'm exhibiting something you didn't show your son - namely mercy," Judge Robert Neary said according to Reuters.
Riebling said he plans on appealing the conviction.
