Mother Blamed in Infant Son’s Death Is Freed

Three months after she began serving an 18-month sentence for the death of her infant son in a car accident, Lesia Smith-Pappas walked out of jail Friday and into the arms of her husband.

A cold drizzle fell as Smith-Pappas, who has launched a campaign to combat what she calls an out-of-control child welfare system, tearfully embraced her husband Edward outside the Sybil Brand Institute for Women.

After stopping at a Burbank processing facility to pick up a transmitter she will wear around her ankle during the six-month remainder of her sentence, Smith-Pappas was reunited with her remaining three children at their home in Canyon Country.

“Maybe now we can grieve over the baby we lost because we never have had the opportunity,” said an embittered Edward Pappas who, like his wife, says justice was not served.

“I still don’t think I should have done any jail time whatsoever,” said Smith-Pappas from her home Friday evening.

Smith-Pappas said she would be confined to her home until Monday when, she was told, a caseworker would brief her on the conditions for the remainder of her house arrest.

She said her lawyer told her that in time she will be allowed to walk her children to school and go to the grocery store and church.

She doesn’t know when she will be allowed to drive, but vowed: “As soon as I’m able to, I’m going to go get my driver’s license.”

Smith-Pappas’ early release was based on a combination of factors including time served, good behavior and jail overcrowding.

On learning that she would be allowed out of jail, her prosecutor called her release outrageous.

“For a woman like this to be released from jail after serving so little time just becomes a tremendous fraud on the public,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Foltz Jr. “Events like these take any meaning out of sentences handed down by the courts.”

In August, a jury convicted Smith-Pappas of vehicular manslaughter, a year after her 3-month-old son Alex was crushed to death in an accident in which she lost control of her car on Bouquet Canyon Road and hit another car. He was in a car seat that was not properly secured.