For months, the case had been defined publicly by the name of the defendant.

Inside the courtroom, Kade’s family wanted something different.

They wanted the baby’s name spoken.

They wanted his life recognized.

They wanted the court to understand that the newborn who lived only briefly was not simply evidence in a criminal case, not simply a body hidden after birth, and not simply part of someone else’s headline.

He was Kade.

A son.

A grandson.

A nephew.

A child whose family said they would have loved him, raised him, celebrated him, and watched him grow if they had ever been given the chance.

That became the emotional center of Laken Snelling’s sentencing hearing.

Snelling, 22, had already pleaded guilty in connection with the death of her newborn son. The hearing was not about whether she bore criminal responsibility. It was about punishment, accountability, and the damage left behind.

According to the courtroom transcript, Snelling’s defense told the judge she was deeply saddened by what had happened and asked the court to consider the negotiated disposition reached with prosecutors. The hearing then shifted almost entirely toward the paternal family and the loss they had carried since August 27, 2025.

Kade’s father, Isaiah, was the first member of the paternal family invited to speak.

His statement was brief.

He did not ask the court for cruelty.

He did not say he wanted Snelling to suffer.

Instead, he acknowledged something more painful.

Nothing could change what had happened.

His family could not reverse it.

The loss was already permanent.

That restrained tone gave way to a much longer statement from Kade’s grandmother.

She described him as a perfectly healthy and beautiful baby boy whose life had barely begun before every future milestone disappeared.

Birthdays.

Holidays.

First steps.

First words.

Laughter.

Hugs.

Kisses.

The ordinary memories grandparents expect to collect over years.

She told the court that those possibilities had been taken before her family ever had the chance to experience them.

Instead of watching Kade grow, the family had been left imagining the person he might have become.

Instead of building memories, they were holding on to the few moments surrounding his death and funeral.

That distinction is important.

Grief after the death of a newborn is not only grief for the life that existed.

It is grief for the entire life that did not.

The grandmother described the pain as something that continues beyond the funeral.

It follows relatives into ordinary days.

Family gatherings.

Holidays.

Moments when another child reaches a milestone Kade never will.

Time does not erase that absence.

It simply teaches people to carry it.

One of the hardest parts, she told the court, was that Kade could not speak for himself.

He could not describe what happened.

Could not ask for justice.

Could not explain the life he should have had.

That was why she stood before the judge.

She wanted his life and the circumstances of his death treated with seriousness.

She asked that accountability remain at the center of sentencing.

No sentence, she acknowledged, could undo what happened.

Nothing could return Kade.

But the impossibility of restoring him did not make accountability less meaningful.

She said his age did not reduce the value of his life.

The fact that he was a newborn did not make the family’s grief smaller.

The shortness of his life did not make his loss less devastating.

That was one of the strongest themes of the hearing.

Kade’s relatives were resisting the idea that a very short life is somehow a smaller life.

Their grief was built not only around who he had been for those brief moments but around everything he had been denied.

Another grandparent then spoke.

Kade would have been her first grandchild.

She described how the loss had affected not only her but her son, Kade’s father.

She worried about what that grief would mean for him years later.

What would happen if he eventually formed a family of his own?

Would the memory of Kade return every time another child was born?

Would birthdays always carry an echo?

Would joy always be accompanied by the knowledge of the first son he never got to raise?

She told the court that while other grandparents spoke about memories with their grandchildren, her family’s memories were instead tied to burial.

They selected Kade’s funeral clothes.

They kissed him before he was buried.

On what would have been his first birthday, they did not celebrate.

They went to his grave.

That reversal captures the cruelty of the loss.

A first birthday should mark the beginning of a life unfolding.

For Kade’s family, it marked a year since the life ended.

The grandparent said she hoped the sentencing could begin some form of healing.

But she also spoke about something she said had made the pain worse.

The absence of an apology.

That mattered to the family because accountability was not only about the length of a prison sentence.

It was about recognition.

Recognition that Kade had family.

Recognition that his death mattered.

Recognition that there were people who would have accepted him and raised him.

The family repeated that point more than once.

They wanted him.

They loved him.

They would have taken him.

They never got the chance.

Isaiah’s sister, identified in the transcript as Allison, then addressed the court.

Her statement was among the most direct.

She said there had been no diapers.

No wipes.

No clothes.

No bottles.

No pacifiers.

No prenatal care.

No plan to keep the baby.

Those assertions were made in her victim-impact statement and were presented as the family understood the circumstances.

She told the court that if the family had known about the pregnancy and birth, they would have taken Kade without hesitation.

Snelling, she said, could have gone on with her life.

Kade could have lived.

That possibility now exists only as a question.

Could the outcome have been different if someone had known?

Would Kade have been raised by his father’s relatives?

Could the entire case have ended not in death and prison but in another family arrangement?

The hearing could not answer those questions.

The family could only live with them.

Allison emphasized that Kade’s life existed and mattered.

She said relatives had remained silent for a long time while public attention focused elsewhere.

Now, she said, they wanted to become his voice.

They wanted to speak about the lifetime of memories that should have been possible.

His first birthday.

First word.

First smile.

First laugh.

Instead, they visit a grave.

They continue asking questions they may never be able to answer.

Her statement then turned to the way the case had been discussed publicly.

The family had spent more than a year seeing articles and commentary centered on Snelling.

They wanted the baby’s name centered instead.

Kade.

She said he should still be alive.

The family did not even know he existed until after he was gone.

That fact deepened the loss.

They had never been given the chance to protect him.

Never been asked whether they would take him.

Never had the opportunity to choose his future.

They learned about him only after that future had ended.

Allison said the family would continue caring for his grave, making it beautiful, and showing through that care that he was loved.

Then came one of the starkest lines of the hearing.

“He was not garbage.”

The statement directly confronted how his body had been treated.

For the family, preserving Kade’s dignity required saying openly that what happened to his remains did not define who he was.

He was not the place where he was found.

Not an object.

Not evidence.

Not a discarded thing.

He was a full-term baby boy the family remembered as beautiful, perfect, and innocent.

After the family statements, the judge turned toward Snelling.

The court reviewed her age, background, mental-health information, education, and lack of significant prior criminal history.

Snelling was 22.

She had completed three years of college.

She was unemployed.

The judge described her upbringing as relatively stable.

The court discussed family history, noting that her parents divorced and that there had been some earlier substance-related issues involving her father, but the judge made clear that those circumstances did not excuse the decision before the court.

The choice, the judge said, belonged to Snelling.

And choices carry consequences.

Not only for the person who makes them.

For everybody else whose life is altered afterward.

The judge told Snelling that her decision had changed the future of Kade’s paternal family.

That family now carried an absence they would live with for the rest of their lives.

The court also addressed Snelling’s mental health.

The transcript indicates she was dealing with depression and anxiety, receiving therapy, and taking medication.

She had also reported suicidal thoughts after the incident.

At the same time, the judge noted that she did not have a significant history of substance abuse and was otherwise considered relatively low risk.

Those factors might ordinarily support leniency.

But the court said the nature of the offense placed the case in a different category.

“This is a crime of violence,” the judge said.

The victim was a newborn baby who had done nothing except enter the world and breathe.

That was the fact the court returned to repeatedly.

The baby had no ability to protect himself.

No ability to seek help.

No ability to leave.

No ability even to tell the court what happened.

The adult had choices.

The baby did not.

Because of the nature of the offense, the judge said Snelling was not eligible for probation.

The negotiated recommendation called for a 10-year sentence on the first count, one year for abuse of a corpse, one year for tampering with physical evidence, and 12 months for concealing the birth of an infant.

The judge ordered those terms to run concurrently.

The result was a total sentence of 10 years in custody.

Snelling was remanded immediately.

The judge told her she was young and would still have much of her life ahead of her.

That observation created one of the most painful contrasts in the hearing.

Snelling will eventually leave prison.

Kade’s family will also continue living.

But Kade will never grow older.

Snelling will reach her thirties.

Kade will remain forever the age he was on August 27, 2025.

The judge acknowledged that no sentence could eliminate the hole left in the family.

The grief would remain.

The loneliness would remain.

They would have to find a way to live around it.

That is what punishment can and cannot do.

A prison sentence can hold someone accountable.

It can remove liberty.

It can mark the seriousness of a crime.

It cannot restore a childhood.

Cannot create a first birthday.

Cannot produce the photographs that were never taken.

Cannot give Isaiah the experience of raising his son.

Cannot allow the grandparents to hear a first word.

Cannot give an aunt the memories she imagined.

Victim-impact statements exist partly because criminal proceedings naturally become dominated by the defendant.

The charges.

The plea.

The sentence.

The defendant’s background.

The defendant’s mental health.

The defendant’s future.

Kade’s family used the hearing to reverse that focus.

They wanted the court to look at what had been taken away.

A baby who could not speak.

A family that says it would have taken him.

A father who never got to know his son alive.

Grandparents whose first memory was burial instead of birth.

That is why the name mattered.

Kade.

His grandmother said she wanted to leave the courtroom knowing his name had been spoken and his life acknowledged.

That may be the most important result of the hearing beyond the sentence itself.

For much of the public discussion, Kade had existed as “the baby.”

The newborn.

The infant.

The victim.

Those descriptions are legally convenient.

Emotionally, they create distance.

A name removes that distance.

Kade.

A child who, according to his family, should have had birthdays, first steps, school days, laughter, mistakes, and an entire future no court can reconstruct.

The family’s grief also shows why newborn homicide cases are emotionally different from many other crimes.

There are almost no memories.

No years of photographs.

No stories from school.

No favorite food.

No voice recordings.

No personality fully developed.

The family is forced to grieve possibility.

Everything is future tense.

He would have.

He could have.

We would have.

That kind of grief can be especially cruel because imagination fills the empty spaces.

Every child Kade’s age becomes a reminder.

Every birthday becomes a calculation.

He would be one.

He would be five.

He would be starting school.

He would be graduating.

The absence grows alongside the person who is not there.

That was what Kade’s family tried to communicate.

They did not want his short life treated as a lesser loss.

They wanted the court to understand that the missing future was the loss.

Snelling’s 10-year prison sentence will inevitably be debated.

Some will call it too short.

Others may focus on her age, mental health, lack of criminal history, and guilty plea.

Those discussions are common after negotiated manslaughter cases.

But the transcript provides only the sentencing hearing, not every charging decision, evidentiary issue, or negotiation that produced the plea.

The safest conclusion is therefore the one reflected in the courtroom itself.

Snelling admitted criminal responsibility.

The judge accepted the negotiated recommendation.

The court imposed 10 years.

And Kade’s family used the hearing to make sure his life was not lost inside the process.

The final exchange was brief.

The judge ordered Snelling into custody.

Snelling thanked the court.

Then the hearing ended.

For the defendant, that marked the beginning of a prison sentence.

For Kade’s family, there was no comparable beginning or ending.

They left the courtroom still grieving.

Still visiting the grave.

Still imagining milestones that will never arrive.

Still carrying questions.

But now, at least, his name had been spoken in open court.

Kade.

And for the family who said they had waited more than a year for people to remember the most important name in the case, that mattered.