MAN GETS 10-YEAR TERM IN KILLING OF BOY, 2

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

A judge sentenced Darwin Newby on Tuesday to 10 years in prison for second-degree murder in the June 1992 beating death of a 2-year-old boy who was in the foster care of Newby's family in Venice.

Newby, 18, told Chief Criminal Judge Charles V. Romani Jr. of Madison County that his killing of 2-year-old Demartez Bolling had been an accident."We were just playing, and I guess I got too rough with him," Newby said at his sentencing hearing. "I'm just sorry that it happened."

But Assistant State's Attorney Craig Jensen of Madison County, who prosecuted the case, noted that an autopsy showed that the heart and liver of Demartez had been lacerated in the beating.

"That doesn't happen from playing," Jensen told the judge. "The defendant is still in his denial mode."

Jensen asked Romani to impose the maximum 15-year sentence for second-degree murder. Newby's attorney, Thomas E. Hildebrand, asked for probation, noting that Newby had no previous criminal record and was sorry for the beating death.

The judge responded that Newby needed to spend time in prison.

"Mr. Newby wants this court to believe that he was playing with this child and it got too rough," Romani said. "The factual basis would indicate otherwise."

He said Newby needed to admit that the beating was more than an accident and that whatever had prompted the beating didn't justify the violence.

Newby pleaded guilty of second-degree murder in the case last July. Jensen said he and Demartez's family were satisfied with the sentence that was imposed Tuesday. "It was closer to the maximum than it was to the minimum," Jensen said in an interview.

Newby's mother, Adelle Newby, 38, of Venice, earlier pleaded guilty of aggravated battery in another incident involving Demartez, Jensen said. He said she had been charged with hitting the boy with a hairbrush two days before the boy was killed. Adelle Newby is serving probation for that crime, he said.

After Demartez died, authorities removed two other foster children and Adelle Newby's three younger children from her home.

A spokesman for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services said Adelle Newby had been a foster parent for several years before Demartez was beaten and that no other problems had been reported with that foster family.

Demartez's mother, Veronica Williams of Venice, testified at Tuesday's sentencing hearing that she had loved her son and was "very angry, hurt and upset" that he had been beaten while in foster care. Williams conceded that she had lost four of her six children to foster care for periods of time "because I had left them alone."

Even so, she said she had been a good mother to Demartez. "I kept him clean and well-fed," she said.