HAMILTON — Ashley Smith struggled to stay alive for almost nine years after she suffered life-threatening brain damage.

        The man convicted of hurting her, John C. Cooper, will serve less prison time than that — and Ashley's adoptive mother, Kathleen Smith, thinks he deserves more punishment.

Cooper

        Ashley “served a life sentence in a body that would not work because of his senseless act,” Mrs. Smith said Wednesday after Judge Michael Sage of Butler County Common Pleas sentenced Mr. Cooper, 31, of Hamilton, to eight years in prison for involuntary manslaughter.

        That sentence is two years shy of the maximum of 10, which Mrs. Smith had advocated.

        Mr. Cooper will serve about 6 1/2 years because he is being credited for time previously served, Assistant Prosecutor Craig Hedric said.

        Mr. Cooper, whom Judge Sage convicted in January, had been held in jail 36 days before sentencing; he also had served about a year in 1991 for a child-endangering charge involving Ashley's December 1990 injuries. Ashley, then an infant, was a daughter of Mr. Cooper's girlfriend, and he was baby-sitting at the time of the injuries, authorities said.

        Ashley was diagnosed with shaken baby syndrome — bleeding in her brain and eyes, presumably caused by shaking. Ashley, who died in October 1999, never walked, rolled over or spoke, and she had to be fed through a tube in her abdomen.

        “There is no reasonable doubt in my mind that what you did 10 years ago caused the death of this child,” Judge Sage said before pronouncing sentence. “Acts like yours are senseless and really are almost incomprehensible to me as a judge.”

        Mr. Hedric said he respects the judge's decision and felt it would provide closure.

        “Kathy needed this, the family needed this, and I think Ashley needed this,” he said, noting that Mr. Cooper received three years beyond the five-year minimum.

        Mr. Cooper's attorney, Mary Dudley, had pointed out mitigating factors. She said her client had been in no other criminal trouble, had kept a job, paid child support for his other child and was a contributing member of society for the past 10 years.

        Mrs. Smith said she wished the law would have allowed Mr. Cooper to be charged with attempted murder at the time of Ashley's injuries — and with murder when she died.

        “This is not child endangering,” she said. “This is just pure and simple mean.”

        Mr. Cooper's family and attorney offered no comment after the hearing, but several of his supporters clustered together in a tight knot, sobbing, in a courtroom hallway.

        “I feel very sorry for his family. They are (victims) as I am,” Mrs. Smith said. “As for John, I am very saddened that he showed no remorse. ... I have not heard him say, "I'm sorry for what I did to that little girl.'”

        Mrs. Smith, however, said Mr. Cooper's family is able to continue contact with their son — something she cannot do with Ashley.

        Clutching a photograph of Ashley, smiling although a tube is feeding oxygen into her nose, Mrs. Smith said, “I just have a small grave in my back field that I can visit.”
       

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