A McKeesport man received all the mercy he's going to get when prosecutors allowed him to plead guilty to third-degree murder for fatally beating and stomping his girlfriend's 15-month-old son, an Allegheny County judge said Tuesday. "This was violent and vicious," Common Pleas Judge John A. Zottola told James Ferree, 44, before sentencing him to 20 to 40 years in prison, the maximum penalty allowed, for the June 19, 2002, death of James Walsh Jr. "I didn't mean to hurt him, and I'm very sorry," said Ferree, who could have faced life in prison without the possibility of parole had prosecutors sought to try him for first-degree murder. James Walsh Sr., 27, the father of the toddler, said he does not take Ferree's apology seriously. He also said he does not believe a defense attorney's suggestion that the killer is mentally ill or retarded. "The story he gave proves that and the way he changed it," Walsh said as he wiped tears from his eyes after the hearing. "As long as he spends the rest of his life in prison, I'll be satisfied." Ferree, who pleaded guilty in February, was the live-in boyfriend of the child's mother, Crystal Kunf, who was 20 at the time. Ferree was baby-sitting when the boy stopped breathing. Ferree initially told police he was feeding James bananas when the child fell ill. He later said he had thrown James into a bathtub and shaken him because the boy had soiled his diaper. "He got mad because a 15-month-old child had the audacity to urinate and defecate in his diaper," Deputy District Attorney Laura Ditka said. Defense attorney Lisa Middleman argued that Kunf -- as well as society's system for dealing with the mentally ill -- should share the blame in James' death for allowing a psychotic, depressed man with an IQ of 60 to care for a toddler. "He's absolutely incapable of managing his own mental health treatment, yet he's allowed to walk the streets and live his life with no regard for his own safety or that of other people," Middleman said. Ditka countered that while hundreds of thousands of people live with mental retardation and illness, they don't "brutally, brutally beat children to death."

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