Post by CC on Nov 7, 2009 6:14:54 GMT -5
Prison or treatment for woman who starved stepdaughter?
Fifteen months after a King County sheriff's deputy responding to a routine call found an emaciated girl at her Carnation home, Rebecca Arwen Long is set to be sentenced for methodically starving her stepdaughter.
The degree of Long's punishment, though, remains to be seen as her attorney has requested that she be sent to a mental hospital for alleged -- and prosecutors claim, entirely contrived -- psychological maladies rather than prison.
Having entered a modified guilty plea in August, Long argues through her attorneys that she should receive the court's leniency when King County Superior Court Judge William Downing sentences her Friday for denying her stepdaughter food and water over a period of years. The abuse was so severe, according to court documents, that the girl lost all but six of her teeth and actually lost weight between in the five years before her Aug. 13, 2008 rescue.
Her codefendant and the girl's father, John Pomeroy, previously pleaded guilty to an identical charge, first-degree criminal mistreatment. He was sentenced to a 3½-year prison term, the maximum sentence available within the standard sentencing range.
Fifteen months after a King County sheriff's deputy responding to a routine call found an emaciated girl at her Carnation home, Rebecca Arwen Long is set to be sentenced for methodically starving her stepdaughter.
The degree of Long's punishment, though, remains to be seen as her attorney has requested that she be sent to a mental hospital for alleged -- and prosecutors claim, entirely contrived -- psychological maladies rather than prison.
Having entered a modified guilty plea in August, Long argues through her attorneys that she should receive the court's leniency when King County Superior Court Judge William Downing sentences her Friday for denying her stepdaughter food and water over a period of years. The abuse was so severe, according to court documents, that the girl lost all but six of her teeth and actually lost weight between in the five years before her Aug. 13, 2008 rescue.
Her codefendant and the girl's father, John Pomeroy, previously pleaded guilty to an identical charge, first-degree criminal mistreatment. He was sentenced to a 3½-year prison term, the maximum sentence available within the standard sentencing range.