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Farmington • Stephanie Sloop was supposed to be 4-year-old Ethan Stacy's protector. His comforter. His mother.
But for nine days in 2010, she was none of those things, she told a 2nd District judge on Monday before pleading guilty to first-degree felony aggravated murder and second-degree felony obstructing justice in Ethan's death.
"I am entirely responsible," Sloop said between sobs. "Because I was his mommy."
The 31-year-old Layton woman — along with her husband, Nathan Sloop — was accused of engaging in multiple acts of "severe abuse" between April 29 and May 8, 2010, that led to Ethan's death.
While prosecutors said Monday that the physical abuse — which included severe burns from being placed in scalding bath water — came from Nathan Sloop, Stephanie Sloop did nothing to help or protect her son.
"This child was abused in a certain way," Davis County Attorney Troy Rawlings told Judge Thomas Kay. "... This defendant knows that that abuse was being suffered at the hands of another individual. [But] she failed to act. She failed to protect." After Stephanie Sloop pleaded guilty Monday morning, Kay immediately sentenced her to spend 20 years to life in prison for the murder charge and one to 15 years on the obstruction count. The judge ordered the prison terms to run concurrently.
Charges of second-degree felony inflicting serious injury on a child and third-degree felony abuse or desecration of a dead human body were dismissed as part of a plea deal.
Rawlings said prosecutors will ask the state Board of Pardons and Parole to keep Stephanie Sloop in prison for natural life — meaning she never would be released.
"It is our hope and our intent," Rawlings said, "that this person is never again a free person in society."
Throughout Monday's hearing — which was originally scheduled as a three-day preliminary hearing — Stephanie Sloop fidgeted and at times sobbed while details of Ethan's death were discussed.
Her attorney, Mary Corporon, told the judge that her client suffered from "battered spouse syndrome" and was abusing prescription medications during the time that Ethan was being abused.
"I am pleading guilty today because I am just that," Stephanie Sloop said. "I chose to abuse my medications to the point I was unable to make sound choices and decisions, thus causing me to be reckless and indifferent with my Ethan's life. I was selfish when I brought Ethan into this world. I was selfish during his life. But I refuse to be selfish during his death, and I refuse to blame Nathan or Joe [Stacy] or anybody else."
Ethan's father, Joe Stacy, was in the Farmington courtroom Monday when Stephanie Sloop entered the guilty pleas. He declined to make a statement in court, and stared ahead, clutching his wife's hand, during the hearing.
Rawlings said after the hearing that Joe Stacy supported the plea deal for his ex-wife, but said he has been "devastated" and "broken up" by his child's death.
"That's what has had the biggest impact on me," Rawlings said. "To deal personally with a father who loved a 4½-year old child, that lost that 4½-year old child through no fault of his own and in a circumstance he had no control over. [There was] a court order to send his son out here, to where he was sending his son to his death, and to the toxic environment, and the perfect storm of Nathanial and Stephanie Sloop."
Corporon told the judge that her client was initially unaware of Nathan Sloop's mental health issues and his violent tendencies. When Ethan came to Utah as part of a child-custody order from a Virginia judge, Nathan Sloop became jealous of Stephanie Sloop's relationship with her son, Corporon said.
Nathan Sloop, 35, faced the same charges in the death of his stepson. He pleaded guilty but mentally ill in February to aggravated murder — a capital offense — while the remaining charges related to the boy's death were dismissed. He also pleaded guilty but mentally ill to second-degree felony aggravated assault by a prisoner for attacking a Davis County jail officer.
A judge sentenced Nathan Sloop to 25 years to life in prison for the murder, and one to 15 years for the aggravated assault. The sentences were ordered to run concurrently.
"That boy died on my watch and I'm horribly sorry," Nathan Sloop told 2nd District Judge Glen Dawson before he was sentenced.
Nathan Sloop's plea spared him from facing the possibility of the death penalty.
Davis County prosecutors had filed their intent to seek the death penalty, citing "Shelby's Law," a 2007 amendment to Utah's homicide statute that allows prosecutors to seek capital punishment without having to prove a killing was intentional when a child dies during an act of abuse, sexual assault or kidnapping.
Before Nathan Sloop resolved his case, his attorneys planned to challenge the constitutionality of that law, claiming the death penalty cannot be applied in a case where the victim's death is not proven to be intentional.
Prosecutors had not filed official notice that they intended to seek the death penalty for Stephanie Sloop, but Rawlings said a similar constitutional challenge would have been brought if her case had gone to trial.
The Layton couple were accused of "beatings, burning, drugging, isolating, malnourishing, leaving the child alone and unattended while suffering, and refusing to seek vital life-sustaining medical attention," according to charging documents.
The Sloops — who said they left the injured boy in a locked bedroom while they got married May 6 — reported Ethan missing to police on Mother's Day, May 10, 2010, after discovering the boy was dead. But after a 12-hour search, police say the couple confessed to burying the boy near Powder Mountain Ski Resort in Weber County.
Nathan Sloop, who led officers to the body on May 11, 2010, told police he used a hammer to disfigure the boy's face and teeth in an effort to hinder identification.
Twitter: @jm_miller