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da "www.canada.com"
Ottawa Citizen August 12, 2009
OTTAWA — An Ottawa mother who suffocated her newborn baby in an apparent state of panic and confusion seconds after his birth has been sentenced to 18 months of house arrest as part of a conditional sentence.
Angela Kuehl, who admitted to tying a plastic bag around the baby's head before dumping his body in a garbage can, cried as Ontario Superior Court Justice Lynn Ratushny handed down a conditional sentence of two years less a day, which included 18 months of house arrest, 200 hours of community service and a $1,000 donation to the Children's Wish Foundation.
In her sentencing decision, Ratushny said she accepted that Kuehl, who pleaded guilty to infanticide in February, did not plan to kill the child.
The killing only occurred, Ratushny said, after the then-25-year-old was forced to face the "reality" of a baby after long denying her pregnancy and seven hours of "pain and fear and complex physiological and mental changes beyond her control."
Ratushny said the "absolute impulsiveness" of placing a bag over the baby's head, and then removing it — albeit too late — in the midst of her "panicked and confused state" right after his birth was another important mitigating factor.
"As difficult as it is to understand how she could kill her baby and as impossible as it is to condone what she did, I accept that her moral culpability at the time was diminished by her mental state," said the judge.
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