A Wayne County judge has sentenced a woman to 10 to 20 years in prison for smothering her newborn baby to help conceal her unwed pregnancy.
A jury earlier convicted 30-year-old Emily Portellos of second-degree murder and child abuse in the October 2008 death of her daughter. Portellos was sentenced Wednesday.
Police found the newborn in a trash bag in her Plymouth Township home, about 20 miles west of Detroit.
Prosecutors say Portellos kept her pregnancy a secret and smothered the baby to avoid the shame of being an unwed mother.
The defense argued that the death was the outcome of an unrecognized pregnancy and the bleeding of an unclamped umbilical cord. However it was stated that the child was suffocated or smothered because Portellos feared shame in the Greek Orthodox community.
Defense attorney and family friend Demetra Arapakis Christos told Ryan that Weingarden tried: “to hijack my religion and my culture and brand us into some sort of freakish cult.”
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