Mom: '22 years not enough' for ex-boyfriend who killed her son

PHOTOGRAPHER: Steven Cook

The mother of 20-month-old Asiah Maxam spoke this morning of the loss she and her young family felt and still feel after Asiah’s killing last year.

She spoke at the sentencing of John J. Batease, her one-time boyfriend and the man who admitted to killing young Asiah in a fit of rage in June 2011.

“I’m sorry that I trusted someone with my children,” Jamie Darrel told the court, soon referring to Batease as a “horrible creature.” “I pay the ultimate price every day living without my handsome little boy.”

“I feel that 22 years is not enough for what happened,” she added a short time later.

Batease was sentenced this morning to a total of 22 years in state prison after admitting this past June that he killed Asiah.

Batease’s admission came during an emotional plea hearing where he first only gave a partial truth of what happened, then gave the broader truth after being pressed by Judge Michael Coccoma.

Batease intentionally failed to catch the boy after throwing him in the air, then forcefully threw the boy against a plastic playpen, twice. As to why, Batease could only say then that he was mad and frustrated at his own life.

At the conclusion of that plea hearing, Batease was in tears.

This morning, though, any trace of remorse from Batease was gone.

He used his statement to the court to make accusations against others. After a prosecution objection, Coccoma stepped in, calling Batease’s statement inappropriate. The judge then asked again if Batease wished to make a statement on his own sentencing.

Batease responded he did not.

In his own statement before sentencing, Coccoma reiterated that no sentence the court could impose would bring Asiah back.

“At least,” Coccoma said, “I can remove you from this community and from society in general, so that your violent ways cannot be repeated against some other helpless individual.”