PROVO — Despite a deal with prosecutors who agreed to recommend probation, a judge instead ordered a Pleasant Grove man to prison Tuesday for the death of his girlfriend's baby.
Joshua Jay Harding, 32, pleaded no contest last month to child abuse, a third-degree felony, and negligent homicide, a class A misdemeanor, in the 2012 death of 3-month-old Paxton Stokes. Harding, who is not the child's father, has maintained his innocence but acknowledged in the plea agreement he could not dispute at trial that he was alone with the infant before he died.
In an emotional hearing Tuesday, 4th District Judge Derek Pullan sentenced Harding to a term of zero to five years in prison for the child abuse charge, with an additional year for the negligent homicide. He ordered the sentences to run concurrently.
As part of Harding's plea deal, prosecutors had agreed to recommend to the judge that he be given probation with a possibility of later reducing the felony charge. But Pullan thought a harsher sentence was appropriate.
Harding and the child's mother, Brianna Brown, were originally charged with child abuse homicide, a first-degree felony. Brown, 31, pleaded guilty last year to three counts of endangerment of a child, a third-degree felony, and was sentenced to 90 days in jail.
Paxton was rushed from the Provo home where Harding, Brown and her three other children lived after paramedics responding to an emergency call found the infant limp and not breathing. He was pronounced dead upon arrival at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center.
In addition to the "nonaccidental closed head injuries" that killed Paxton, an autopsy indicated the boy had a number of injuries that a child his age could not have sustained on his own: bruising across his body, abrasions around his neck, injuries to his genitalia, and abnormalities in his femur and tibia that suggested the possibility of previous fractures.
Brown asked for justice for her son as she addressed Pullan at the hearing.
"I trusted someone that I shouldn't have," Brown told the judge.
Harding's mother, Fawn Hamm, wept as she begged the judge for a second chance for her son.
"My son needs a new start, a new era in his life, to have his children who are crying at home," the mother said. "We don't need another father taken away."
Harding did not make a statement at the sentencing. His attorney, Michael Brown, told the judge he didn't believe "(Harding) could make it through it."
Members of Harding's family were visibly emotional when the judge announced the sentence. An uncle who spoke in support of Harding, Rio Honaker, at one point shouted, "You disgust me!" toward court officials.
Honaker was informed he was facing sanctions of contempt of court and was removed from the room. Ultimately, Pullan did not cite the man.
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