Woman Gets 10 Years in Baby’s Death : Court: Rejecting pleas for probation, judge hands down harshest sentence possible on felony neglect charge involving starvation of infant daughter.

Rejecting arguments that an Ojai Valley woman was a delusional drug addict who deserved leniency for starving her baby to death earlier this year, a judge Wednesday sentenced Pamela Rother to 10 years in prison, the harshest possible penalty.

“It’s hard to imagine a more agonizing death than starving to death,” said Ventura County Superior Court Judge Allan L. Steele after he rejected defense pleas for probation. Steele convicted Rother, 32, of felony child neglect after a non-jury trial in August.

Rother’s 64-day-old daughter Rachael died Feb. 22 in the same place she was born--in her mother’s dilapidated and unkempt trailer near The Wheel bar north of Ojai.

Defense attorney Douglas Daily had asked that Rother be placed on probation, claiming that Rother had deep psychological problems that were aggravated by her drug use, rendering her unable to care properly for the baby.

Rother refused to appear in the courtroom Wednesday, claiming “it would blow her cover” as an undercover federal agent, Daily said. Instead, she peered at the proceedings from her open holding cell next to the courtroom.

She displayed no emotion when Steele handed out her punishment.

“The sentence is kind of hollow,” prosecutor Michael Frawley said. “It’s not enough.” He said Rother will only serve half her sentence and be free to have more children.

“We are all going to cringe when she gets out,” he said.

The Ventura County grand jury refused Frawley’s request to indict Rother for murder and instead handed down the neglect charge in April. Grand jury proceedings are secret and no reason for the indictment on the lesser charge was given.

Steele said Rother was fortunate that she was not charged with homicide and that the manner of the baby’s death persuaded him to impose the maximum penalty.

Steele said the infant was not fed for two weeks and “suffered a lengthy and painful death.”

Before Steele ruled, Daily called psychologist Patrick Barker to the witness stand. Barker told Steele that Rother was “quite delusionary” and paranoid.

“She spoke at length about being a special agent for the federal government,” Barker said of a two-hour interview he had with Rother in July. “She talked of being on the payroll of a senator and the President.”

He further testified that heavy methamphetamine use can cause psychosis. Daily argued that Rother’s methamphetamine addiction clouded her judgment and contributed to the child’s death.

“It’s not doing drugs that do these horrible things,” Frawley replied. “It’s horrible people who put drugs in their system who do these things.”

Daily also argued Wednesday that government officials should also share some of the blame for the infant’s death. It was an argument he used unsuccessfully during the trial and it again failed to persuade Steele on Wednesday.

Daily said Ventura County officials are partly responsible for the baby’s death because they failed to take proper action before the infant died.

Officials with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and Public Social Services Agency took the baby from Rother in January after receiving reports of neglect. But the baby was returned to Rother later the same day, which Daily said was a mistake.

“The overwhelming evidence in this case shows an error was made,” Daily said.

But an internal investigation of the matter concluded that child-welfare caseworkers acted properly, said James E. Isom, head of the PSSA.

“I really find that [charge] unconscionable, that they are trying to pin the death of this baby on somebody other than the mother,” Frawley said.

Steele did not respond directly to that allegation. But he said he imposed the toughest sentence because the crime was so senseless.

“It does not make sense,” he said. “How does a mother let her own infant starve to death?”