GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.—An Alaska woman has been sentenced to 20 years in prison in the death of her newborn, whose decomposing body was discovered last year in a closet in her parents’ Grand Junction home.
Twenty-three-year-old Morgan Hite of Wasilla, Alaska, was sentenced Thursday. Mesa County District Judge Thomas Deister also gave her five years of mandatory parole.
Hite pleaded guilty in January to a charge of child abuse resulting in death. Prosecutors dropped several other charges including first-degree murder in exchange for that plea.
Hite was accused of giving birth to a boy, later named Gabriel, at a friend’s Grand Junction home in February 2008. Prosecutors say she then put the boy in a bag, walked to her parents’ home and left the bag in a closet.
Hite’s parents found the boy’s decomposing body in April.
