By Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — A mother charged with killing her infant son almost six years ago while living in a Harlem homeless shelter was given the maximum sentence to 25 years to life in prison on Tuesday.
Jovannie Florestal, 26, will join her husband, Colesvintong Florestal, behind bars for the murder of their 3-month-old, also named Colesvintong, in 2004.
During his short life, the child had been beaten and starved by his parents, who lived in the shelter at 30 Hamilton Place near 138th Street, prosecutors said.
In May 2004, emergency workers reportedly found the baby badly hurt and malnourished when the father handed the child over to responders before fleeing the scene. The baby reportedly weighed just 9 pounds, less than its birth weight.
Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Laura Ward called the woman "the face of the crime of depraved indifference murder" — an area of law that extends blame for a death based on the inaction of a party with the ability to intervene.
Jovannie Florestal's attorneys had argued that the father was responsible for the murder, but prosecutors and two juries decided the mother played a compelling role.
"It's incredible how a mother could treat a child like that,” Ward said. “It's unimaginable how much your son must have suffered during his short life.”
The child’s father pleaded guilty to murdering his son in 2006 and is currently serving a 20-year sentence. Jovannie Florestal was also found guilty that year — a conviction that was overturned and then retried after the first judge failed to used the most updated version of the “indifference” law in instructing the jury, the New York Post reported.
A Manhattan jury convicted her of murder again on Jan. 27.
Assistant District Attorney Rachel Hochhauser called the case "the most heinous crime that our society envisions."
A teary and shaking Florestal expressed regrets to the judge when given the chance to speak, but was still slapped with the harshest possible sentence despite her apologies.
"Not a day goes by that I don't wish I could change places with my son," she said.
