California IN BRIEF : MARYSVILLE : Woman Gets 3 Years for Killing Newborn

A Yuba County woman has been sentenced to state prison for three years for the strangulation death of the son she secretly gave birth to in a bathroom of her parents’ home. The sentence was imposed on Tina Leanne Woodell by Yuba County Superior Court Judge Robert Lenhard, who denied a defense request for probation, but imposed the minimum term for voluntary manslaughter. The judge cited what he described as “the totality of the circumstances, the lack of any prior record and the unusual circumstances from which the situation arose” in imposing a three-year term instead of the six years sought by prosecutors. Wooddell, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, pleaded guilty last spring to a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter. She had admitted the January, 1989, strangulation of her newborn baby after her mother found the child wrapped in paper inside a garbage container.