In 2004, Horry County police charged a couple in the death of their 4 month old daughter.
In April, a Horry County jury convicted the father, Wesley Smith, of aiding and abetting another in the death of his daughter, Ebony Smith.
Circuit court judge Edward Cottingham sentenced Smith to 20 years in prison following the trial.
Smith’s wife, Charlene Dandridge, pleaded guilty Tuesday afternoon in Conway to a charge of unlawful conduct toward a child.
Circuit court judge Larry Hyman sentenced Dandridge to 5 years in a state prison.
Prosecutors charged Dandridge with unlawful conduct toward a child in 2004 after authorities said she failed to get her daughter medical attention for a broken leg.
During the Smith trial, Dandridge testified that she didn’t want to be seen as a “bad mother” and didn’t want her family torn apart by allegations of abuse as part of the reason she didn’t report the injuries.
Dandridge testified against Smith in the trial.
Investigators charged both Smith and Dandridge after their daughter’s death on Valentine’s Day 2004.
At the plea hearing Tuesday, prosecutor Sam Graves told the judge that prosecutors are not accusing Dandridge of giving the baby the lethal dosage of cough medication, or causing the broken ribs.
Graves said the state is only accusing Dandridge of failing to report the injuries and placing the child in harms way.
Investigators said the pair let a spiral fracture of their daughter’s leg go untreated for months before her death and medical examiners reported finding 17 broken and fractured ribs at the time of her death.
Many of the ribs had healed over, which showed the baby lived with and died with tremendous pain, according to experts who testified during Smith’s trial in April 2008.
Doctors testified that the leg fracture was discovered after the pair took their daughter, who was then 2 months old, to the hospital for a checkup in December 2003.
The Department of Social Services started an investigation into the injuries, then returned Ebony Smith to her parents in January of 2004.
About a month later, the 4 month old was dead.
Prosecutor, Bert Von Hermann, argued that Smith was the only one with Ebony Smith at her time of death and was responsible for the rib fractures and giving the baby the cough medicine found in her system.
Examiners also testified that the 4 month old had more than four times the adult dosage of cough medication in her system at the time of her death.
The jury did not convict Smith on the homicide by child abuse charge during the trial, but did find him guilty of aiding and abetting another in the death of his daughter.
Defense attorney, Stuart Axelrod argued that Smith couldn’t be convicted on the aiding and abetting charge because prosecutors didn’t indict him on the charge.
Smith remains jailed at the state department of corrections where he’s serving his 20 year sentence.
Dandridge will spend some time at the J. Reuben Long Detention Center before heading to Columbia where the DOC will assign her a cell at one of its facilities.
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