Alexandra Eckersley was distracted Thursday morning as she prepared to speak to the same judge who sentenced her a year earlier in a child-endangerment case in Hillsborough County Superior Court.
“Mommy, Mommy,” her toddler, Teddy, yelled inside the courtroom.
Judge Amy Messer assured Eckersley and her family it was OK to have the child in the courtroom — at least in this case.
“I wasn’t supposed to cry today,” Eckersley said during her graduation from the court’s mental health community connection program, a ceremony that highlighted the more compassionate side of the judicial system.
A year ago, Eckersley, 28, sat in the same courtroom as Messer sentenced her to participate in the yearlong program. The sentence was issued after she was convicted on multiple charges in connection to leaving her newborn in a tent in the freezing cold and misleading first responders to his whereabouts on Christmas night 2022.
The baby was suffering from hypothermia and in respiratory distress and need to be flown to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center for advanced care.
That same child, Teddy, will turn 3 next month.
Eckersley, who goes by Allie, shed tears of joy after several people spoke of her resilience, perseverance and efforts to be the best possible mother to Teddy. Eckersley was homeless and living in a tent off the Piscataquog Rail Trail in Goffstown at the time of her arrest.
“It’s amazing,” Eckersley said after the celebration. “I’ve had so much support since I’ve moved home.”
Messer spared Eckersley from the jail time recommended by prosecutors on the convictions of endangering the welfare of a child, reckless conduct and falsifying physical evidence. Eckersley was acquitted of two counts of second-degree assault.
Eckersley testified during her trial about regaining custody of Teddy and their life together living with her mother, Nancy, in Massachusetts.
Messer acknowledged some of the lifelong struggles Eckersley had to overcome to turn her life around.
“Your success is a success for our program. A success for this community,” Messer said. “I really appreciate all the work you put in and you should be so proud.”
The case gained international attention with Eckersley being the adopted daughter of former Red Sox pitcher and Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley.
Eckersley’s defense team argued she didn’t know she was pregnant and was afraid of George Theberge, her boyfriend at the time, who told her the baby had no pulse and told her not to reveal the location of their makeshift campsite.
Prosecutors, however, said Eckersley purposely misled first responders searching for the baby around a baseball field near the West Side Arena for more than an hour while temperatures hovered between 15 and 18 degrees the day after Christmas
Eckersley has transformed her life and built a “strong foundation” for herself and Teddy. She didn’t miss any appointments and never relapsed on drugs, public defender Jordan Strand told Messer.
“This is what achieving real justice looks like,” Strand said.
Kim Kossick, who also represented Eckersley, echoed sentiments of restorative justice after the graduation ceremony.
“Things could have gone a very different way for her had she not been involved in mental health court,” Kossick said.
She said it was best for Eckersley to go through the program at home with family instead of time spent in jail.
Kossick called representing Eckersley the pinnacle of her career and said “miracles can be accomplished” with the right resources.
“I have as many pictures of Teddy as I do with my own grandchildren,” Kossick said. “He is so beautiful. He is like Allie’s twin. It is really miraculous and it just makes me so happy when I see him.”
After the hearing, Teddy pushed his carriage around the upstairs hallway and curiously started to venture into a restricted area for jurors before being scooped up by an adult.
Teddy enjoys trucks, planes and police cars, “but not going in them,” Eckersley joked.
“He is my whole world,” Eckersley said. “And I am his.”