Dubie draws 20 years for baby’s death

PALMER — A Wasilla mother has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for allowing her baby to suffocate in February 2007.

Kimberly Dubie, 33, spoke through tears at her sentencing Tuesday, saying she would accept any punishment Superior Court Judge Beverly Cutler deemed appropriate.

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be to bring closure to the criminal case involving the death of my own daughter,” Dubie said. “It’s been 16 months since my daughter’s death and I’m just learning to live with myself.”

Dubie was arrested Feb. 27, 2007. A coroner’s report says her 8-week-old baby died of positional asphyxiation due to the position in which she slept. When Alaska State Troopers arrived on scene, they found Dubie, the only parent home, was intoxicated. Her blood alcohol content was .24, three times the legal limit for driving. In January of this year she pleaded no contest to one count of manslaughter.

At Tuesday’s hearing, prosecutor Rachel Gernat argued for the maximum sentence of 20 years, pointing to a history of alcohol-related offenses on Dubie’s record that repeatedly brought harm to Dubie’s children. There was a car accident in 2000 in which an intoxicated Dubie ran into a parked car and her son received a head wound. Dubie was convicted of assault in that case. Then there was an incident in early 2006 in which troopers were sent to Dubie’s house and charged her with child endangerment for being drunk as she cared for her kids.

In those cases, as with the death of her daughter, “She made the decision to put alcohol above the safety of her children,” Gernat said.

Dubie’s attorney, Bill Carey, argued that Dubie will have to live with having caused her daughter’s death for the rest of her life and should receive a sentence of 15 years with five suspended. He said while Dubie had run afoul of the law before for drinking around her children, she had never been forced into a strong treatment program and given the proper coping mechanisms.

Dubie’s husband and mother also testified at the hearing. Both spoke of a pattern of post-partum depression after Dubie’s children were born, which would send Dubie drinking.

Michael Dubie said that since his wife was arrested the couple hasn’t been able to properly grieve, adding that Kimberly Dubie was devastated when her baby died.

“I don’t know if I could even describe it,” he said. “It’s just one of the worst things that could ever happen to a parent.”

Since the girl’s death, Michael Dubie said his wife has entered treatment programs and sworn off drinking.

“I can tell there’s a big improvement,” he said.

In sentencing Dubie to the 20 years Gernat recommended, Cutler pointed to the treatment elements of Duibe’s prior convictions and said she didn’t believe Carey’s claims that Dubie hadn’t been given a chance to obtain the proper coping mechanisms for depression.

“Society has tried to help you over and over again with the dysfunctional side [of your personality],” she told Kimberly Dubie. “And not only has it not gotten better, it has gotten worse. I don’t want to heartlessly say that she seems to have learned nothing, but she seems to have learned nothing.”