Mother who killed newborn runs out of second chances

The mother of baby Anndreah was in court last week, asking a judge for another chance to get her life in order. A fifth chance, that is, which would be five more than Anndreah ever got. Demitres Robertson served eight years in prison after ushering her daughter into a far-too-early grave.

Anndreah was 10 days old when she died in 2001. Her intestines were rotted by smoke from crack cocaine that Phoenix police say was smoked most every day in the family’s tiny apartment.

It took then-Detective Anthony Jones nearly a year to get the evidence, and in the end, Robertson pleaded guilty to manslaughter and child abuse rather than face a potential life sentence for murder.

Anndreah’s death so affected Jones that 16 years later, he still carries around the case file — the one containing the only picture believed to have ever been taken of Anndreah: her autopsy photo.

Robertson was sentenced to 10 years in prison, got out in eight and was put on lifetime probation in an effort to help her straighten out her life.

It needed some straightening. At the time of Anndreah’s birth, Robertson was a 22-year-old prostitute with 1- and 2-year-old sons and a crack-smoking mother. Robertson admitted that she smoked cocaine every day of her pregnancy with Anndreah.

By the time she was arrested, nearly a year after Anndreah’s death, she was about to give birth again.

While in prison, she got her GED, treatment for her cocaine addiction and counseling for her mental-health issues. She got classes on self-esteem, anger management, parenting and domestic violence before her release. She was released in 2010. The first petition to revoke her probation came in 2014, after she failed five of seven drug tests. By then, she’d had two more children.

Child Protective Services took the kids “due to ongoing panhandling and substance-abuse issues.” The courts, meanwhile, were more forgiving.

Rather than being sent back to prison, Robertson was returned to probation in September 2014.

And again in June 2016, after a probation officer noted that her drug abuse issues “remain unresolved.”

And again in March 2017, after more missed drug tests and missed drug and mental-health treatment.

Which leads us to May 2017, when she violated her probation a fourth time, with more of the same. Last week, she asked Maricopa County Superior Court Commissioner John Doody to reinstate her probation. Again, that is.

“I’m trying,” Robertson, now 38, said through her tears as she and her attorney explained the various reasons she deserved another shot at probation. Doody wasn’t buying it. “I just don’t think probation is working for you,” he said. He sentenced her to the maximum prison term allowed under her plea deal: 31⁄2 years. She’ll be out in just more than two.

“I hope,” Doody added, “when you get out of prison, you will find your way.”