Woman gets 15 years for drowning son
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Louise Desnoyers of Montreal reacts during her sentencing hearing at VT District Court in North Hero, on Wednesday, July 1, 2009. Desnoyers was sentenced to 15 years after pleading no contest to second degree murder for drowning her eight-year-old son, Nicholas, in 2006. AP Photo |
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By WILSON RING The Associated Press - Published: July 2, 2009
NORTH HERO — A Montreal woman who drowned her 8-year-old son in Lake Champlain three years ago was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Wednesday after a judge rejected calls for leniency from dozens of her supports.
Louise Desnoyers, 51, a former elementary school teacher, pleaded no contest in March to a charge of second-degree murder in the August 2006 death of her son, Nicholas Desnoyer-Langlois. He was killed off the shore of Isle La Motte, a place Desnoyers had traveled after learning of the impending break up of her marriage.
Before being sentenced Wednesday, psychiatrists for the prosecution and defense offered conflicting versions of her state of mind on Aug. 14, 2006 after she left Montreal and traveled to Vermont. The defense argued she was not sane at the time she held her son under water and drowned him, while prosecutors said she was troubled, but knew what she was doing.
Before that night, Desnoyers had lived an exemplary life as a teacher and friend, Vermont District Court Judge Michael Kupersmith said.
"Every premature death is a tragedy," Kupersmith said in the packed courtroom. "I think this one, the death of Nicholas, is remarkable because he was a very young innocent child. It's also remarkable because he died at the hands of his mother."
He said no one would ever knew for sure what was going through Desnoyers's mind as she killed her son, but one psychiatric report talked of her fighting to hold him under.
"I am convinced from what I've heard and read that Mrs. Desnoyers knew what she was doing, Kupersmith said. "Whatever her thought processes were, one would think that when one sees one's child in this situation one would be brought back to reality."
Desnoyers sobbed frequently during her court appearance. Prior to hearing her sentence, she gave a 40-minute statement in heavily accented English in which she said she was sorry for what she had done and she hoped one day to be able to give something back to society.
"Your honor, I want you to know that the sentence you impose to me can't be worse than the sentence I have to live with every day, for the rest of my new life. Not a moment goes by without my son filling my thoughts," she said.
Desnoyers told the court that her husband had told her that morning that their life together was over. She said she didn't know how she and Nicholas ended up in Isle La Motte, an island in Lake Champlain just south of the Canadian border where her family had vacationed.
Dozens of teachers and friends filled the courtroom. In a video played in court, they described Desnoyers as a caring person who always put the needs of others ahead of her own. When Desnoyers was led out of court after the hearing, many shouted their support for her.
Police found Nicholas's body attached to a buoy just offshore. Desnoyers was found in a shed where she had tried to commit suicide by cutting herself and drinking windshield washer fluid.
Desnoyers' attorneys had considered trying to use an insanity defense, but agreed earlier this year to the plea agreement. The defense had asked for a 10-year-prison sentence.
After she is released from prison, Desnoyers will remain on probation for the rest of her life, but she will then be allowed to return to Canada.
Dr. David Rosmarin, a forensic psychiatrist from Belmont, Mass., who testified for the defense said Desnoyers remained an "ongoing, chronic, risk for suicide."
"This is a woman who had built her life around kindness and concern for children, her own children, the children at the schools where she taught. This was a woman who was meek. She has no history of being able to stand up for herself. There's no history of verbal aggression with anybody."
Desnoyers has been held at the Vermont State Hospital in Waterbury. It's unclear when she would be transferred to the Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans, the state's only prison for women.
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