A Wausau mother will spend seven years in prison for the death of her infant son, after she violated her probation. Jessica Kasten had been on probation for letting her 6-month-old son die last year while she slept off a meth high. Police arrested her for drunken driving in May. Assistant district attorney LaMont Jacobson said she blew her chance: "an innocent child had died needlessly," said Jacobson, adding that Kasten "put her needs above the needs of her children," and prison was the only option for a woman he called "a danger to the community."
Kasten fought back tears as she told a judge she tried to change. "It was the chance of a lifetime that a lot over others would never receive," she said of the probation sentence she received in her son's death. She asked a judge for leniency before he sentenced her Thursday. "I'm praying I'm not too late to turn my life around be the positive parent and role model to my children that I should have been since the day they were born." Kasten will spend seven years in prison and 10 years on extended supervision.
