Julie Robat, center, convicted of second-degree murder in the death of her newborn, reads her statement of remorse in Providence Superior Court Tuesday morning. With her are her lawyers, Paul DiMaio and Stefanie DiMaio-Larivee.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

PROVIDENCE — A 33-year-old North Providence woman was sentenced to serve 25 years in prison Tuesday for murdering her newborn daughter in the bathroom of her parents’ home.

Julie Robat’s sentencing hearing before Judge Robert Krause in Providence County Superior Court drew impassioned arguments from lawyers on both sides and prompted a Catholic priest to ask Krause for mercy.

Krause, who had access to a stack of letters that family members and others wrote on Robat’s behalf, sentenced the woman to a 45-year prison term, with 25 to serve, instead of 50 years, with 30 to serve that prosecutors had sought.

“You criminally caused the life of a child to be snuffed out,” Krause told Robat. “And for that egregious transgression, meaningful punishment has to be imposed.”

In October 2006, the defendant’s baby, Angelica A. Robat Ellis, was found inside a plastic garbage bag underneath a laundry appliance in the Lori Drive home where Julie Robat lived with her parents, Charles and Francine Robat, and two sisters.

At trial in April, Robat testified that she never realized she was pregnant and that she could not even remember giving birth, saying she felt a sharp pain in her stomach, saw blood in the toilet, fell down, hit her head and passed out.

Her two sisters testified that she made a trip to the family’s laundry room around the same time.

The prosecution accused her of either neglecting her newborn to the point that the baby died from asphyxiation due to exposure, asphyxiating the baby inside a plastic bag or asphyxiating the infant by holding her too tightly. The jury convicted Robat of second-degree murder.

On Tuesday, Special Assistant Attorney General Molly K. Cote called her “a cold-hearted and callous killer of a newborn baby,” and urged the judge to disregard the letters that Robat’s family members had submitted to the court on her behalf.

Cote said Robat’s family, who wrote the court prior to sentencing, are so supportive of her that they enable her to deny her crime.

“The state can simply not ignore the role they seem to play in an ongoing theme of denial and lack of accountability by the defendant,” Cote said.

In one letter to the court, family members “really did nothing else but blame Tommy Ellis [the baby’s father] for this crime and point the finger at him,” Cote said, adding that the family’s letters “are ripe with reasons and explanations and justifications of why the defendant should not be held accountable for her crimes.”

“For example, the state’s evidence wasn’t good, it wasn’t consistent, or many doctors have told us that this couldn’t have been the defendant’s fault,” Cote said.

The court received numerous letters from community members on Robat’s behalf, including North Providence Mayor Charles A. Lombardi, Cote said.

Court spokesman Craig Berke said the court cannot provide public access to the letters because they are part of a presentencing report, which is confidential under the court’s rules.

Robat’s lawyer, Paul DiMaio, asked for a lighter sentence, noting that the jury’s verdict never clarified whether Robat’s newborn died from her failure to provide care to the baby or from her own deliberate actions to suffocate the infant.

The defendant, crying, stood and apologized for the pain and anguish she had caused everyone around her.

“My tears are not for myself,” she said, reading from a statement. “They are for my baby, who never knew that I am truly sorry for all of this.”

The Rev. Michael Skrocki, pastor of a Danbury, Conn., parish told Krause that he has known Robat for 15 years; he had earlier been assigned to her family’s parish in Lincoln.

He described her as a caring person who was active in charity work . He also said that Robat anguishes daily over her baby’s death.

“This is not an uncaring person,” Skrocki told Krause. “This is not the dark, malicious, uncaring person that the prosecutor has painted here … if as the prosecutor says, there has been no mercy in this case, yet, I would ask that on this day some mercy be shown and that a lighter sentence be given.”

Krause told Robat that she had a good family who would have helped her care for her baby, but she wrongly chose to keep her pregnancy a secret and lied to hospital physicians and others in an attempt to conceal that she had given birth.

“Not to impose a substantial jail sentence … would simply devalue the life of a child,” Krause said. “No civilized society is prepared to do that and neither am I.”

Assistant Attorney General J. Patrick Youngs said that Robat could be eligible for parole in about eight years.

Outside on the court’s steps, Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch praised Krause’s handling of the case and challenged those family members who have questioned the verdict.

“Those who would deny it are trying to diminish even further the few breaths of air that this little baby took in before its life was snuffed out by this defendant,” Lynch said. “Again, that’s unforgivable and criminal, but to suggest that it’s not a crime is just quite simply ignoring the process, ignoring the jury and ignoring the judge.”

mreynold@projo.com