ADRIAN - A southeast Michigan teenager who killed her grandmother with morphine was sentenced yesterday to life in prison, despite a plea deal last month in which open murder and poisoning charges were dropped in exchange for her guilty pleas to lesser charges.
Kristin Adkins, 16, is first eligible for parole in 20 years.
The girl cried as she apologized yesterday in Lenawee County Probate Court for poisoning Virginia Bentley, 53, her grandmother and custodial parent.
The girl was 13 at the time of her grandmother's death.
Probate Judge Margaret M.S. Noe chose an adult sentence for Adkins. The judge could have placed Adkins in a juvenile facility until age 21 and then evaluated whether prison would be appropriate.
Adkins pleaded guilty Oct. 10 to one count of possession of morphine and one count of second-degree murder.Her voice shaking, Adkins told the judge then: "I stole my grandfather's morphine and put it in some of my grandmother's pills."
"And your intent was to kill her?" the judge asked.
"Yes," Adkins responded.
In May, Adkins pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempted murder, one count of open murder, and one count of poisoning.
A trial date was set in September, but last month her attorney said those charges would be dropped in exchange for guilty pleas on reduced charges.
Prosecutors have said that Adkins took morphine prescribed to Mrs. Bentley's husband, Ireland "Buzz" Bentley, a cancer patient, and mixed it with her grandmother's medicine on three consecutive days in July, 2006.
Mrs. Bentley died the next month.
The girl emerged as a suspect because a medical examiner found that the death was caused by morphine poisoning.
Adkins' defense attorney, Michael McFarland, said last month that he looked into a battered-child defense based on testimony from the girl and some of her family.
That defense did not apply to premeditated murders, he said.
Mr. McFarland said then that he hoped the judge would invoke both juvenile and adult sentencing guidelines so that less-than-the-maximum punishment would be imposed.
Court Administrator David Stanifer said yesterday that the allegations of mistreatment did not persuade the judge to change the sentence.
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