A Florida father has accepted a plea deal that will send him to prison for 45 years for suffocating his 7-week-old son.
The Herald-Tribune reports 38-year-old Joseph Walsh shrugged off emotional statements from family members before being led from the courtroom in Sarasota on Tuesday.
State Attorney Ed Brodsky says Walsh abused Chance Walsh in a drug-induced rage on Sept. 16, 2015, before putting a baby wipe in the infant's throat.
Grandmother Sally Susino told the newspaper the family would have preferred a life sentence or the death penalty. But that was off the table after the apparent suicide of the infant's mother Kristin Bury-Walsh last September. She was required under her plea deal to testify against Walsh.
The child's body was found in a shallow grave near Sarasota.
