BATON ROUGE — A Baton Rouge woman due to be sentenced Monday for second-degree murder after her 2-year-old son died from his third fentanyl poisoning could see proceedings delayed again as her lawyer seeks a new trial.

A jury last month convicted Whitney Ard, 31, in the June 2022 death of Mitchell Robinson III. Sentencing had been set for Thursday but was pushed back to Monday after Ard's lawyer asked for a new trial.

Judge Louise Hines rejected the request, and her lawyer Sandra James Page said Friday she would ask the 1st Circuit Court of Appeal to intervene. Page says Ard did not intentionally kill the child, but that his death was due to negligence. 

Ahead of the trial, prosecutors offered to let Ard plead to manslaughter and receive a 30-year prison term, while Page wanted the charges changed to negligent homicide, with a 5-year prison term. The jury convicted Ard of second-degree murder, which carries a mandatory life term.

Page said she learned after the jury received that case that a key state witness, Mitchell Robinson Jr., "was threatened with additional charges as it pertains to his pending drug charges if he testified on behalf (of) Ms. Whitney Ard." Having Ard sentenced to a life term would be an injustice, Page said.

Robinson had been taken to the house twice previously for fentanyl overdoses and responded to Narcan, court records show. He could not be revived after a third overdose.

Prosecutors said the three overdoses, taken together, warranted a murder conviction and that Ard should spend the rest of her life behind bars. 

The boy had "more than enough fentanyl in his system to kill a veteran drug user," Assistant District Attorney Rokeya Morris said during closing arguments. She called the Ard home "basically a trap house with kids."

Page had sought to introduce other cases in which parents were not charged with murder after a child's death; the state successfully argued to limit evidence to Robinson's death.