ZACHARY ULENGCHONG - 1 yo (1998) - Richland County SC

A Richland County jury convicted
Andrea Person on Friday night of killing a 1-year-old child in 1998,
rejecting claims her 2007 confession was the result of intimidating
interrogation.Judge Allison Lee sentenced Person, who had no prior criminal record, to 22 years in prison for the death of Zachary Ulengchong.Person
was convicted of homicide by child abuse. The minimum sentence under
state law was 20 years. She had faced the possibility of a life
sentence. Person did not
react as the clerk read the verdict shortly after 9 p.m., but her
family wept softly in the benches behind her, and some eventually had
to be escorted from the courtroom."I'm
sorry," Person stammered into the microphone shortly before her
sentencing while sheriff's deputies waited behind her with handcuffs.
"I want peace."Person was operating a day-care business out of
her home in 1998 when 1-year-old Zachary died. The coroner originally
attributed Zachary's death to pneumonia, but the deaths of two other
children under Person's care in 2001 and 2007 prompted investigators to
reopen the case.Jurors in her trial this week were not told about the other children's deaths.In
April 2007, Person admitted to investigators she had held her hand over
Zachary's nose and mouth for 15 to 20 seconds because he was fussy and
she wanted him to sleep.Zachary stopped crying and Person laid
him in his crib for 15 to 20 minutes, she said, but found he wasn't
breathing when she went back to check on him."I should have
chosen a different way to handle him. I should not have put my hand
over his face. It was not my intent to kill him," Person had told
investigators. "I'm tired of holding on to this. It feels good to say
it to someone."Person, 42, attempted to distance herself from those statements
during her week-long trial in the Richland County courthouse.On
Friday, jurors heard testimony from a defense witness billed as an
expert in false confessions and heard the passionate pleas of attorneys
giving their closing arguments.The defense team, led by Richland
County public defenders Doug Strickler and Fielding Pringle, questioned
Saul Kassin, a psychology professor at the John Jay College of Criminal
Justice in New York City, for most of the day.Kassin, who has
co-authored a book and numerous articles about false confessions, told
jurors police interrogation methods can often elicit false confessions
because the length and intensity of the questioning confuses people and
makes them believe they can leave if they tell the officers what they
want to hear."Common sense to me makes me want to smack my head
and say, 'What makes you think if you confess to a crime you can go
home,'" Kassin said. "But (the interrogation) leads people to infer
leniency."Kassin said indicators of false confessions include
apologizing to a victim or the victim's family, which Person did
repeatedly in her statement to investigators. A second indicator is
giving incorrect details, a sign Kassin said should raise red flags
with investigators.Strickler seized on those points during his
closing argument, pointing out that Person told investigators she was
distracted at the time of the child's death on Dec. 2, 1998, because
she had just had a hysterectomy."Her hysterectomy was Aug. 19,
1999, nine months after the fact. Why is she supplying that," Strickler
told the jury. "She walked into a three-detective buzz saw."But
5th Circuit Solicitor Barney Giese dismissed Kassin's and Person's
testimony, telling jurors Person was trying everything to separate
herself from that statement."Those statements that she made ... are damning.
They convict her," Giese told jurors.Giese
made repeated references to Person's education, saying someone who was
two courses shy of a psychology degree at UNC Chapel Hill knew what she
was doing and would not have been vulnerable enough to give a false
confession.And, Giese said, Person had been interviewed by investigators earlier
in the week and had left before confessing."Yet now she claims that she didn't t
hink she could leave," Giese said, referring to Person's testimony Thursday.
Judge Lee wrestled with how long to sentence Person, who is married and has two teenage children."As
to what really happened, no one really knows but Mrs. Person," Lee said
during the sentencing. "I still don't believe I have the words to say
what I really think or I really feel."Person still faces
homicide by child abuse charges for the deaths of 4-month-old Elijah
Brown in 2001 and 2-month-old Michael Harris Walker in 2007."We
will meet with the other families in a couple of weeks and make a
decision on how and when we are going to proceed on those," Deputy 5th
Circuit Solicitor John Meadors said after the trial.