Former U.S. aerospace executive Joe Rickey Hundley who was charged with striking a crying baby and calling the 19-month-old a racial slur was given a eight-month sentence in jail for the alcohol-induced incident.
The former executive, who apologized to the toddler's mother in court during the hearing, was accused of hitting the little boy in the face whille on board a Delta Air Lines flight heading to Atlanta February of last year.
61-year-old Hundley pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor assault charge around October.
Prosecutors involved in the case suggested a prison sentence of six months but the federal judge chose to give a stiffer punishment.
"I'm very sorry," the former aerospace exec told the boy's mother in the Atlanta court hearing. "I made the most terrible day in my life much worse for myself and others."
Joe Rickey Hundley's lawyer told the court that her client had flown from Minneapolis to Atlanta that day to remove his dying son from life support following insulin overdose and had been emotionally distraught during the flight. The attorney also blamed the former exec's alcoholism for his behavior on the plane.
The toddler's mother previously attested that Hundley was belligerent and intoxicated. The former executive insulted the child, named Jonah, with a racial slur when he began crying as the plane descended.
Jonah is black while Jessica Bennett, his adoptive mother, is white. Joe Hundley, who had been fired from his position as executive officer at AGC Aerospace & Defense after the incident, is also white.
During the court hearing, the baby's mother shared that she, too, had had to remove her three-week-old baby from life support around four years and had experienced that death of a child. The Minneapolis native added that despite this, she and her husband did not react violently in their grief.
"He treated me and Jonah like we were less than human and he deserves to be punished," Bennett said in court, shortly after calling the former exec a bully and a "socially underdeveloped racist."
Federal judge Alan Baverman pointed out that Joe Hundley had been previously convicted with assault and was on probation for drunken driving during the slapping incident.
"You don't have the right to raise your hand against another human being," the magistrate judge said.
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