MOM PLEADS GUILTY TO ABUSE

29-Year-Old Tested Positive For Cocaine During 3 Pregnancies

SPARTANBURG - A 29-year-old mother of three has pleaded guilty to
child abuse after she tested positive for cocaine during three
pregnancies in five years.

Circuit Judge Mark Hayes suspended a 10-year sentence to five years
followed by five years of probation for Angela Shannette Kennedy.
Hayes told Kennedy she could reduce her probation to three years if
she could pass all drug tests during that period.

Kennedy had been charged with homicide by child abuse but prosecutors
agreed to three counts of unlawful conduct toward a child by a parent.
Kennedy's third pregnancy ended after eight months with a stillborn
Dec. 11, 1998, but prosecutor Trey Gowdy said there was not enough
evidence to prove the stillborn was due entirely to her cocaine use.

"Medically, there are several potential causes for the placental
abruption that killed this child, such as high blood pressure or
cigarette use," Gowdy said. "Several of those causes were present with
Ms. Kennedy; we simply were not able to say cocaine use was the
exclusive cause."

Kennedy's attorney Andy Johnston said Kennedy had been hooked on crack
cocaine since age 17.

"Drugs have destroyed her life," Johnston told the judge. Kennedy's
drug habit resulted in a 1994 conviction on a charge of distribution
of cocaine and a 2002 conviction on a charge of distributing crack
cocaine.

Kennedy has two daughters, a 12-year-old and 10-year-old, and a
7-year-old boy. Johnston told the judge that Kennedy's oldest child is
in the custody of social services, the 10-year-old is in an adoption
home and the 7-year-old is in his father's custody.

The prosecutor told Hayes that Kennedy denied using cocaine while
talking to a doctor during the third pregnancy in 1998, but tested
positive for the drug two weeks later while still pregnant.

A month later, Gowdy said, Kennedy told a health-care provider that
she didn't want treatment for cocaine addiction. In September 1998,
three months before the stillborn delivery, Kennedy again tested
positive for cocaine, Gowdy said.

South Carolina is one of a few states in the nation that allows
prosecutors to pursue homicide charges against women they think killed
their viable fetuses by taking cocaine.