Jessica Santiago sentenced for killing her son

A Rochester mother will spend the next 20 years to life behind bars. That was the sentence handed down Wednesday for Jessica Santiago. The 25-year-old mother was convicted last month in the murder of her own child.

She got just five years short of the maximum sentence. Jessica Santiago will spend at least the next 20 years behind bars. The 25-year-old mother was convicted of smothering her two-year-old son Lashawn Dunbar to death in May of 2006.

"This mother held a comforter over her child's head until he stopped breathing and then left him for 19 hours until he began to decay," said Assistant District Attorney Kristina Karle.

The case divided a community - Assistant District Attorney Kristina Karle received letters questioning why she would prosecute a mother, for that she has a simple answer.

"How could we not prosecute a mother who is responsible for the death of her son?"

But Santiago’s godmother Shirley Thomas argued the system failed her.

"I would not believe it and I would always love her and I would always trust her word," said Thomas.

When the sentence came down, Santiago cried...tears that were lost on the prosecution.

"When you see her cry, it's not tears for her son. If she cared about her son and his life she wouldn't have been able to sit on that couch and go to sleep for 19 hours without checking on her son," said Karle.

Santiago told the court she didn't have the heart to hurt her own child...words that meant little to Lashawn's grandmother. The judge told her she'd taken no responsibility.

"I don't understand why she just couldn't say what she did. I don't understand it. She wanted to blame everybody else, she did it, you just gotta own up to what you did," said lashawn’s grandmother Beverly Dunbar.

When given the chance to speak said she was innocent and wrongly convicted.  She says she will appeal. 

Santiago has three other children that now live with their aunt.