ROBBY COX - 3 Months (2008) - Wichita KS

Wichita KS ---- A Great Bend woman who pleaded no contest to second-degree
reckless murder in the death of her infant son this morning received a 109-month sentence.
In 2008, three and a half months after Robby Cox was born, he
died while he was in a Wichita
hospital from severe head injuries, a coroner concluded. While he was alone
with his mother in his room at Wesley Medical Center, he suffered skull
fractures and rib fractures, authorities said.
This morning in Sedgwick County District Court, Megan Mott's
public defender, Steve Osburn, asked Judge Anthony Powell to grant her
probation.
But Powell rejected Osburn's argument that she deserved leniency.
Powell said giving probation would send the message "that the people of
this community don't care about this child."
"It's more than a tragedy, Powell said. "It's an atrocity.
"Payment has to be made for the death of your son," he told Mott.
Robby's death on Feb. 1, 2008, marked the second of seven
child-abuse homicides in Wichita that year, a string that alarmed the
community.

Megan Mott still maintains that she did not intentionally kill her 3
1/2-month-old son when she was alone with him in his Wichita hospital
room, her public defender said in court Thursday.
Early one morning in 2008, she picked her son up and stumbled,
and he hit his head on the edge of his hospital crib, her attorney said,
arguing that she deserved probation.
But a prosecutor contended that Robby Cox's head fractures and
other injuries showed "this was a child that was violently ... abused."
After hearing it all — and Mott softly say, "I wish you'd give me
a chance" — Sedgwick County District Judge Anthony Powell sentenced the
25-year-old Great Bend woman to 109 months, a little more than nine
years.
Under a plea agreement, she had pleaded no contest to a charge of
second-degree reckless murder.
With credit for time already served behind bars and with
potential credit for good behavior in prison, Mott would serve about
eight years.
Robby died from severe head injuries, a coroner concluded. While
he was alone with his mother in his room at Wesley Medical Center —
where he was hooked to monitors and being treated for "failing to
thrive" — he suffered
skull and rib fractures, authorities said.
Powell rejected the argument of Chief Public Defender Steve
Osburn that Mott deserved leniency. Powell said giving her probation
would send the message "that the people of this community don't care
about this child."
"It's more than a tragedy, Powell said. "It's an atrocity.
"Payment has to be made for the death of your son," he told Mott.
Osburn said Robby had been ill since his birth, that he probably
would have died on his own even if he hadn't been fatally injured in the
hospital room.
Osburn gave this account:
Mott had been urged to come from Great Bend to the Wichita
hospital to be with her son. She lacked money and resources. She slept
in a chair in her son's hospital room.
Early one morning, he woke up fussy in the hospital room, she
picked him up to rock him, but it was difficult because of wires
attached to his crib and other equipment. As she tried to walk with him
in the dark, she stumbled, dropped him,
then caught him.
Robby had a V-shaped indention in the back of his head where his
head struck the corner of the crib, Osburn said.
Since then, Mott has had a "1,000-yard stare. She's been dead,
pretty much," Osburn said.
She couldn't have handled what would have been an emotional jury
trial, he said. She would have had "to see the pictures and live through
it all again."
She has "maintained steadfastly that she didn't do anything
intentional to cause the death of this child.
"She's lost her child. I can't think of a harsher penalty than
that," Osburn said.
When the prosecution got its turn, Chief Deputy District Attorney
Kim Parker said that problems with Robby showed up early. He was born
testing positive for a key component of marijuana, and his mother was
using methamphetamine until
about six months ago. she said.
The hospital "begged" Mott to come to the hospital to see her
son, and for a time she wouldn't, Parker said.
When she did stay with her son, "Maybe she was angry because she
had to come back and deal with this child," Parker said.
"We lost a person that others were struggling to save. ...
"Something has to happen, to stand up for the idea that we care
for babies and we want them to survive."
Robby's death on Feb. 1, 2008, marked the second of seven
child-abuse homicides in Wichita that year, a string that upset the
community.
Mott's husband and Robby's father, Mason Cox, also addressed the
judge, saying, "I believe with all my soul that it was an accident,"
just as his wife described it.
Cox said he asked her repeatedly if she had done what the
authorities alleged, and she responded, "No, no, no."
Mott has another child, a daughter who is about 5, according to
the affidavit she filled out when requesting a public defender.
After hearing everyone, Powell said he couldn't understand how a
mother would allow herself to be found guilty of killing her son — and
be forever branded as a killer of a child — if she thought she was
innocent.