A 29-year-old accused of killing her baby and burying him in Druid Hill Park pleaded guilty Wednesday to involuntary manslaughter and was given a 10-year suspended sentence.
While Lakesha Haynie was able to walk free for the first time since her arrest 10 months ago, she will be on probation for five years, must report to the Department of Social Services if she becomes pregnant again and is forbidden to have unsupervised contact with children ages 6 and younger. She must also attend a counseling program at Planned Parenthood on Jan. 24.
Baltimore Circuit Judge Charles J. Peters told Haynie that if she violates any of the terms of her probation, "this court will not hesitate to put you in jail" for the rest of the 10-year sentence.
Haynie was charged in March with first-degree murder and child abuse in the death of 1-month-old Rajahnthon, whose skull was found to be fractured after his body was discovered, in a tethered bag, in a shallow grave in the park. The boy also showed signs of asphyxia, according to an autopsy.
The defendant, wearing a checkered shirt and jeans, her hands cuffed behind her back, pleaded to the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter after what prosecutor Julie Drake told the judge were extensive negotiations with the woman's attorneys.
Her case had earlier led Maryland social service officials to address a loophole in a new state law by extending their supervision of women who have previously lost their parental rights. Haynie's four other children were removed from her custody before her last baby's birth.
Drake said the defendant's other children had been removed from her care before Rajahnthon's death because of "neglect," and that she had lost parental rights to at least three of them. In the case of her youngest child, Drake said, Haynie showed "gross and wanton negligence" in her treatment of him during his brief life, even refusing to deliver the baby in a hospital for fear that the authorities, having taken her other children from her, might remove her newest son too.
According to the prosecutor's account to the judge, Haynie told the boy's father, Soleme Smith, that she had put her hand over the baby's mouth "to keep him from crying and that he had stopped breathing." After the infant's death, Haynie took Smith to the park to show him where she had buried the baby, took the body out of the grave, "held it for a few minutes and then put it back," Drake said.
Two weeks later, after Smith was unable to persuade Haynie to turn herself in, he went to the police and told them what had happened, according to the prosecutor. Under questioning, Haynie told detectives that she had "found the baby dead in bed" and that his death might have been caused by Smith's rolling over on top of him, Drake told the judge.
Two or three days before Rajahnthon died, he suffered a skull fracture that "would have caused considerable crying," Drake said, reading from a medical examiner's report. The autopsy also showed other injuries that would have prompted suffering and "changes in behavior that would have been apparent to an attentive parent." In addition, there were "numerous air spaces in the baby's lungs" that could have been evidence of "past asphyxial events," Drake said.
"Their presence is consistent with multiple efforts to quiet the baby by placing a hand over the baby's mouth," the prosecutor said. While the medical examiner "could not rule out an accidental asphyxiation," she went on, the manner of death was declared to be homicide.
A new law went into effect in October 2009, requiring that state agencies check birth records against a database of people who have earlier lost parental rights, in the hopes that such tragedies could be prevented. But officials were not looking at cases in which rights were terminated before the law's passage. After Haynie's arrest, they expanded the look-back period through 2006.
When asked by the judge if she had anything to say Wednesday, Haynie said she did not. Smith, the baby's father, who was in the courtroom but was not charged in the case, was also invited to address the court. "I don't have anything to say," he replied.