Woman who admitted to starving son is impoverished, intellectually disabled, lawyer says
In an unusual move, a Columbia public defender spoke out Saturday on a young mother’s behalf in response to what he called a “one-sided, misleading and, in many ways, inaccurate” portrayal of a case and sentence by 5th Circuit Solicitor Dan Johnson in a news release a day earlier.
Ashley Cheatham, a 24-year-old Columbia mother of three, was given a suspended sentence and three years’ probation after admitting that she starved her infant son in 2014 even though she had vouchers for free infant formula.
Cheatham’s attorney, Robert Bank, said the woman wasn’t trying to starve her son, even though Johnson’s office had urged the judge to send her to jail.
She could have faced 10 years in prison for inflicting great bodily injury upon a child and unlawful conduct toward a child, but the judge chose otherwise, Johnson said in a news release Friday.
Cheatham’s sentence, handed down this week by Judge Clifton Newman, “was both appropriate and just” given that she is “an intellectually disabled woman, living in poverty, who has never been arrested for a felony or accused of abusing a child in her life,” Bank said in an emailed statement Saturday.
Cheatham was arrested two days after bringing her 2 1 / 2-month-old son to the the Palmetto Health Richland hospital emergency room in July 2014 because he was having seizures. The child, doctors found, had life-threateningly low sodium and glucose levels after being fed only water for about a week, Johnson said in his news release. Bank, however, said Cheatham had watered down her son’s formula. He said the child is now healthy and living in a different home.
Bank defended the judge’s decision not to send Cheatham to jail, saying that Cheatham “faced the unfortunate reality of attempting to raise a child in poverty.”
“This unfortunate reality is one that can sometimes result in a person having to choose between stealing formula to feed their child or diluting the formula that they have to make it last longer. In this circumstance, Ms. Cheatham chose the latter,” Bank said.
“Simply put,” Bank continued, “this was not, as the Solicitor’s Office argued, a case of a mother attempting to harm her child. This was a case of a young mother who required special needs classes to even obtain her high school diploma who was also suffering the harsh reality of being unable to provide for her child.
“She rushed her child to the hospital as soon as she saw that he was in danger and because of this, saved his life.”
In his Friday news release, Johnson indicated that while her baby starved, Cheatham had eaten “oodles and noodles, onion rings, hot dogs, bologna sandwiches, corn, rice, okra, tomatoes, chicken tenders smothered in gravy, bake (sic) chicken, fry (sic) chicken and grits and bacon.”
During that time, Johnson said, Cheatham failed to redeem vouchers for infant formula she got from the WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program, Johnson said. In addition, the state Department of Social Services earlier had put her on probation and removed two older children from her care, he said.
Cheatham was sentenced to eight months (time already served) and three years’ probation by Judge Newman. A 10-year prison sentence was suspended.
This story was originally published July 23, 2016 at 6:51 PM with the headline "Woman who admitted to starving son is impoverished, intellectually disabled, lawyer says."