A 25-year-old father in Ohio will spend more than a decade behind bars for his role in killing his 4-month-old son who died after months of continuous abuse.
Clark County Common Pleas Judge Douglas M. Rastatter on Tuesday sentenced Landan Jennings to the maximum of up to 16 1/2 years in a state correctional center for the brutal 2023 murder of his infant son, court documents obtained by Law&Crime reveal. As per court records, Landan in February struck a deal with the Clark County Prosecutor’s Office where he pleaded guilty to one count of allowing child abuse. In return for his plea, the rest of the charges against him were dismissed, two counts of murder, one count of felonious assault, and one count of endangering children.
The victim’s mother, Angel Seiker, was also indicted in relation to her son’s death. She entered a guilty plea to the same offense as Jennings and is to be sentenced at a later point in time.
Before giving the sentence, Rastatter spoke directly to Jennings and laid out why he believed the maximum sentence was in order.
“Actually the only thing this child knew in this world was suffering and pain. I cannot in good conscience grant you any mercy or any leniency when your son received none of that,” he told the courtroom, as reported by Dayton, Ohio CBS affiliate WHIO. “This child was repeatedly abused during the months leading up to his death.”
A duplicate of the indictment claims that from Aug. 25 to Dec. 29, 2023, Jennings pursued a “continuing course of conduct” involving knowingly causing “serious physical harm” to his son that caused the infant’s death.
A report from the autopsy report of the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office received by the Springfield News-Sun stated that the victim had passed away after admission to Dayton Children’s Hospital. The death was ruled as a homicide and the cause was blunt force trauma to the head.
The Clark County Sheriff’s Office stated earlier this year that the victim also evidenced other signs that were symptomatic of abuse.
“The deceased infant had received severe blunt force trauma to the head and had also evidenced other injuries in different stages of healing, which suggested that the child had endured abuse for the majority of [his] life,” the office stated in a news release.
In a January letter to the judge, Jennings asked to be sentenced to a maximum of 25 years’ probation, insisting that he never harmed his son.
“My baby boy was a miracle baby and I just can’t ever bring myself to a point of ever hurting him,” he wrote. “He was my everything.”
He continued that he named his son after his own brother, who drowned a few years back.
Dad gets max sentence for ‘continuous’ abuse that killed son.
