A Stafford County teenager whose newborn baby had been killed and disposed of before anyone knew the child existed was ordered today to serve five years in prison.
Brittany L. Robinson, 16, came to Stafford Circuit Court today hoping that the nine months she’s already been incarcerated would be deemed enough.
“I’m truly sorry from the bottom of my heart,” the sobbing teen told Judge J. Martin Bass. “If you give me a second chance, I won’t let you down.”
Bass decided that any second chance would have to wait. He sentenced Robinson to a total of 20 years in prison with all but five years suspended.
Robinson, who pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and felony child neglect, will serve her time in adult facilities.
Robinson’s baby, who was posthumously named Angel Robinson, was born late March 31 or early the next morning in a bathroom at Robinson’s home on Good Neighbor Lane. Robinson was 15 at the time.
According to evidence presented by prosecutors Michael Hardiman and Lori DiGiosia, Angel’s lower torso landed in a toilet right after she was born.
The child was later placed in a trash can and taken to a garage, where she was transferred to a “cedar-chip” bag. That bag was placed in an abandoned car, where Detective Joe McDermott found it 36 hours later.
The evidence shows that Brittany Robinson cleaned up the bathroom and the trash can before going to sleep.
Early April 1, according to the evidence, Robinson woke up bleeding and with severe pain in her back.
She was taken to Mary Washington Hospital, where an examination revealed that she had recently given birth.
Robinson initially told police that she’d passed a “large bloody thing” in the toilet and flushed it, but she repeatedly denied having been pregnant.
She finally admitted that she had been pregnant but never told anyone. She claimed the baby was dead at or immediately after birth and told McDermott where to find the remains.
An autopsy showed that the child, a 7-pound, full-term baby, was born alive. The autopsy was unable to pinpoint the cause of death, noting that a number of factors contributed to the child’s demise.
Richard Robinson, Brittany’s father, testified that he’d noticed weight gain in his youngest daughter but said she denied being pregnant. He said her condition wasn’t as obvious as it might have been because of the baggy clothes she wore.
An older daughter, Heather Robinson, had issued a similar denial a few months earlier, he said. Robinson said he didn’t know about that pregnancy until just before Heather’s baby boy was born last year.
John Spencer, Brittany Robinson’s attorney, argued that there was no purpose to further jail time for the teenager. He said she made some foolish decisions, but he asked Bass to consider her age and obvious remorse.
DiGiosia and Hardiman said an extended prison term was merited in light of the “horrible” death suffered by the baby.
“She wanted to erase the existence of this baby from the earth without anyone ever knowing,” DiGiosia said
Referring to testimony about Robinson once trying to rescue a rabbit from one of her 14 cats, DiGiosia added, “she was willing to fight her cat for the life of a rabbit, but she left her own baby in a toilet.”
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