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Mom gets house arrest in death of infant son

Early edition: Nicole Batiste also will serve four years probation and 1,000 hours of community service for allowing her newborn to die after she secretly gave birth.

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published January 11, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Edmund D. Fountain] Nicole Batiste of Spring Hill leaves her sentencing hearing Thursday in Brooksville.

BROOKSVILLE -- The young woman from Spring Hill who hid her pregnancy, gave birth alone on a tile floor in her bedroom and did nothing to help the infant as it gasped and died got no time in prison in a sentencing hearing here on Thursday.

Batiste, 20, today was sentenced by Circuit Judge Jack Springstead to two years of house arrest, four years of probation after that and 1,000 hours of community service.

Aggravated manslaughter of a child is a first-degree felony that can be punished by up to 30 years in prison. Batiste was sentenced as a youthful offender, according to the terms of her guilty plea made in November – but even with those much lower guidelines, she still could have gotten 4 years in prison.

Springstead, a longtime judge in Hernando County who is known for his consistent but stern sentencing, said he based his relative leniency in this case in large part on the wishes of the boyfriend – the father of the child – and the boyfriend’s father. They asked that she receive no jail time.

Prosecutor Pete Magrino said he respected those wishes but also called Batiste’s actions or inactions “cavalier” and “careless” and said he has to answer to his own conscience. He asked for nine months in county jail. Even the presentencing investigation recommended 60 days.

It didn’t happen.

On her way out of the courtroom, Batiste’s mother, Barbara Abrams, said she had no comment.

[Last modified January 11, 2007, 14:47:21]