US woman who killed her 5-year-old son gets 35-year prison term

WOODSTOCK, Illinois (AP) — A northern Illinois woman who subjected her young son to years of physical and emotional abuse culminating in his beating death last year was on Friday sentenced to 35 years in prison.

JoAnn Cunningham pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in December in the killing her son, Andrew “AJ” Freund.

Eight months earlier, police uncovered the boy’s battered body, wrapped in plastic and concealed in a shallow grave near the family’s home in Crystal Lake.

Cunningham, her face covered by a surgical mask, did not visibly react in the courtroom after McHenry County Judge Robert Wilbrandt’s ruling.

Cunningham faced between 20 to 60 years in prison. 

She pleaded for mercy from the judge on Thursday, portraying herself as a loving mother who misses her son.

Wilbrandt acknowledged that Cunningham had a “difficult life,” including addiction to drugs despite efforts to get treatment.

“She lapsed back into living in what can only be described as drug-addled filth — lying, cheating and manipulating her way through life while terrorising her small son,” he said.

“While her addictions do not justify her appalling behaviour towards her own son, they perhaps do help explain why she engaged in ... the inhumane, repulsive and frankly shocking course of conduct that ended her child’s young life.”

Prosecutors had asked the judge to impose the maximum 60-year sentence so the 37-year-old mother would die in state prison.

Wilbrandt said he considered that Cunningham did not plead guilty to a charge of wanton cruelty or a charge that specified she intended to kill her son.

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