A South Dakota judge on Thursday sentenced a woman to 10 years in the state prison system for her infant son's 1981 death that went unsolved for decades. Judge Bradley Zell called the sentencing of 60-year-old Theresa Bentaas a decision that he belabored for weeks, in part because it was not clear whether her son died from complications during birth or abandonment in the South Dakota cold. Zell suspended nine years of the sentence, meaning Bentaas will likely spend two months in state prison and serve the rest of her time under community supervision, the AP reports.
"This is a terribly sad and difficult human event which now needs to be brought to conclusion," Zell said, acknowledging that the sentence was likely a bitter pill for both Bentaas' family that had begged for her to go free and community members who had pressed for a strict punishment. Bentaas had entered an Alford plea to a first-degree manslaughter charge, meaning that she maintained her innocence but agreed to be sentenced as guilty. Prosecutors dropped first- and second-degree murder charges in the plea deal.
Lawyers defending her maintained that Bentaas had not killed her son, but rather he died soon after a birth that was not expected, even by his mother. During Thursday's hearing, Bentaas' family begged the judge for a lenient sentence, saying she was a caring mother and grandmother who had carried the secret of her first child's death for years. Bentaas' daughter, Melissa Pheilmeier, told the court, "Andrew and my mother are victims of their situation, victims of the culture and the stigma of a young, unwed pregnant girl in 1981."
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