Mom gets probation in toddler overdose death
A Milwaukee mother whose 2-yearold son died after swallowing prescription painkillers he found in her purse received three years probation Friday.
Martis Dickerson, 40, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of fatal child neglect in the death of her son, James Vessell Jr.
Her attorney and the prosecutor had agreed to recommend a sentence of three years in prison and five years of extended supervision.
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Carolina Stark instead withheld a sentence Friday and gave her three years of probation, online court records show. Stark also ordered her to follow treatment recommendations and rules from child welfare officials.
Dickerson has spent more than a year in Milwaukee County Jail as her case went through the court system.
State child welfare officials had received a complaint about child neglect three months before James overdosed on his mother’s opioid pills. The case was still pending at the time of his death in 2017, agency records showed.
She previously had four of her six children removed from her custody and had been reported to state child welfare workers repeatedly for more than a decade.
On Jan. 26, 2017, Dickerson, then 39, had called 911 when she realized James was not breathing. Paramedics could not revive him. Court documents and medical examiner’s reports described squalid conditions in the lower unit of a duplex on North 41st Street near West Center Street.
Dickerson originally had been charged with second-degree reckless homicide in her son’s death.