Friday, February 1st, 2013
Evers sentenced again
Former baby sitter to serve 13 years for all charges
By Margie Wuebker
Tamara "Tammy" Evers, a St. Henry woman implicated in the 2008 death of an infant in her care, received a one-year reduction in her prison sentence Thursday in Mercer County Common Pleas Court.
The 48-year-old Evers was transported from the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville to Celina for re-sentencing in accordance with a ruling from the Third District Court of Appeals.
Evers was ordered to spend 10 years in prison on a charge of involuntary manslaughter and not the 11 imposed by Judge Jeffrey Ingraham in December 2011. The appeals court ruled Ingraham erred in applying new sentencing guidelines instead of those in place at the time of the crime.
The 10 years will be served consecutively to a three-year sentence from a related perjury case for a total of 13 years.
Ingraham noted Evers will receive credit for the 403 days served since the original sentence. He also pointed out, through no action of the local court, she could earn further reduction in prison time through Department of Correction and Rehabilitation programming.
Upon release, the defendant faces up to five years post-release control under direction of the Ohio Parole Authority.
Prior to the re-sentencing, defense attorney Greg Wilson asked Ingraham to impose the low end of a 1- to 10-year range for the charge and to permit the sentences in both cases to run concurrently.
Prosecutor Matt Fox and special prosecutor Scott Longo from the Ohio Attorney General's Office maintained the maximum sentence was still appropriate.
Evers declined the opportunity to speak on her own behalf.
The involuntary manslaughter charge stems from the death of 6-month-old Trevor Stammen on July 8, 2008. The investigation into his fatal head injuries went on for months before Evers confessed in November 2009 that the baby had fallen from a diaper-changing table onto the floor. Experts later disagreed on how the injuries occurred - one saying a fall could not have caused two skull fractures and a subdural hematoma and the other maintaining the fall had aggravated a previous injury.
The remaining counts in the grand jury indictment were dismissed in plea negotiations.
