A Hammond man got a 9-year split prison term Friday after his 5-month-old daughter was hurt so badly in 2019 that she developed cerebral palsy and requires lifetime medical care.

Eric Smith, 28, pleaded guilty in September for neglect of a dependent resulting in serious bodily injury, a level 3 felony. Under the plea deal, he faced up to 16 years.

Smith was originally charged with one count of neglect of a dependent resulting in death or catastrophic injury, a level 1 felony, and faced 20 to 40 years in prison.

After a lengthy hearing, Judge Samuel Cappas said ultimately he didn’t know who caused the girl’s injuries — Smith or the girl’s mother. They were both legally to blame if one didn’t stop the other, he said.

He sentenced Smith to six years in prison, two years in Lake County Community Corrections program and one year probation.

Defense lawyer Robert Varga indicated Smith might appeal.

During the hearing, Deputy Prosecutor Kasey Dafoe detailed the child’s devastating injuries, while Lee’s family stood by him.

Doctors consulted were “shocked” the girl survived at all, Dafoe later said.

Lee said in court that he was to blame for not taking his kids out of that home.

By pleading to neglect, Varga argued Lee didn’t say he hurt the girl, rather he had “responsibilities” as a parent “he did not meet.”

Noting a different case — Trisha Woodworth, a Calumet City babysitter whose case was eventually tossed for taking nine minutes to call 911, Varga told Cappas that they should tread carefully before presuming Lee did something to the child. Cappas later said the circumstances were completely different.

In 25 years as a lawyer, Lee had one of the best presentencing screening report he’d seen, Varga said. If he didn’t deserve a mitigated sentence, “I don’t know what that would look like.”

He asked for him to avoid prison.

Earlier, Lee’s mother Katrina Maddox said the child’s mother’s behavior was suspect — saying the woman threatened a relative with never seeing the kids if she testified during a Department of Child Aervices hearing.

Dr. Shannon Thompson, a pediatrician and chief of the child abuse protection program at Riley Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis, testified via Zoom that the girl’s injuries were extensive.

It included brain bleeding that was so extensive it looked like it was pooling in CT scans and an MRI, blood pooling in her spinal column, neck injuries, and eye hemorrhaging. The child also showed signs of suspected sexual abuse, but tests couldn’t conclusively prove it, she said.

The girl was “so critically ill” by the time she was airlifted from Methodist Hospitals, that they had to wait a couple of days to check her eyes. The child would never have a normal life, she said.

On cross-examination, the doctor said the injuries would have had to happen within a few hours of her showing critical symptoms.

In response to Cappas’ questions, Thompson said some type of abuse, i.e, “force” caused her injuries. A likely scenario was an adult shaking the baby.

In her testimony, Maddox recalled how the child’s mother left a DCS hearing.

“I’m in the clear,” she recalled the woman saying.

“No one is in the clear,” Maddox responded, noting the child’s older brother had been temporarily taken away.

The girl, now 5, initially had brain, spine and eye injuries from “abusive head trauma,” documents state. She is in a residential care home, unable to walk or talk, suffering from epilepsy and seizures, and is at least partially blind, among other ailments.

Documents state Smith was left alone with his two children around noon Oct. 7, 2019 at which time the infant was “smiling and giggling and seemed fine.” At 10 p.m., the baby was taken to an area hospital, suspected of having seizures, the affidavit states.

A CT scan at the hospital showed “a loss of grey-white matter differentiation commonly associated with oxygen deprivation consistent with choking or smothering,” according to the affidavit.

mcolias @post-trib.com