By ROBIN SHANNON

L’Observateur

HAHNVILLE — A New Sarpy woman who pleaded guilty to killing her newborn baby last year was sentenced to 30 years of prison time earlier this month, despite claims from a defense attorney that the woman suffers from a mental illness.

State District Judge Emile St. Pierre gave Belinda Wells, 25, three times the minimum sentence of 10 years in the killing of Wells’ child, who was born just minutes before she buried the newborn in the back yard of a New Sarpy home. The maximum sentence for the crime is 40 years.

According to reports on the incident, which occurred in January of last year, Wells allegedly smothered the newborn baby boy after giving birth in a bedroom at her parent’s home. The child’s body was discovered a few days later when it was dug up and mutilated by the family dog.

Wells, who also lived at the home, told authorities she hid the pregnancy from her family and delivered the baby herself. She then buried the child because she believed it was dead. An autopsy report confirmed that it was a live birth because the infant’s lungs were full of air at the time of death.

Although court-appointed psychiatrists determined that Wells was competent enough to stand trial, her attorney, Martin Regan Jr., argued that other doctors who serve the jail population put Wells on suicide watch until she began taking the anti-psychotic drug Haldol. The psychiatrists and prosecutor Kim McElwee believed Wells was trying to feign mental illness.