‘LIKE A MUMMY’

No Jail Time for Mom Arrested After 5-Year-Old Died Weighing Less Than 8 Pounds

Porsche Mickens was originally charged with felony murder alongside her husband, who died in a car crash last November.

Though her 5-year-old daughter died in June 2020 weighing just two pounds over her birth weight, a Georgia mother will spend no time behind bars after accepting a plea deal on Monday. Porscha Mickens, originally accused of starving her child to death, was sentenced to 20 years of probation after pleading guilty to lesser charges, according to The Gainesville Times. The sentence comes nearly two years after tiny Kylie Mickens was brought to a hospital weighing just over seven pounds and “looking like a mummy,” according to a prosecutor on Monday. Porscha and her husband, Jerrail Mickens, were arrested in Oct. 2020 and charged with felony murder and first-degree cruelty to children. Though Jerrail was killed last November when his motorcycle crashed along a stretch of Atlanta highway, the case against Porscha continued. Her attorney, Corinne Mull, has maintained that the child had a rare chromosomal deficiency known as 1p36 deletion syndrome that prevented her from gaining weight. “This is a medical issue, not a ‘starvation’ issue,” she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2020. Speaking on Monday, Superior Court Judge C. Andrew Fuller agreed that no jail time was necessary. But, he added, “it should go without saying that the court’s sentence does not lessen the value of Kylie’s life.”