UTICA - A Whitestown man was sentenced Friday for his role in his elderly mother's death. David Auchmoody pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide in the death last year of Edith Auchmoody.

But he walked off to prison insisting that he just didn't know that his mother was in such bad shape.

His lawyer says people in jail refer to David Auchmoody as "Father Time." Attorney Christopher Pelli received letters in support of Auchmoody, one from a nearly 90 year old man who quoted former U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

"The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms," Pelli said.

"I want to let everybody understand that I loved my mother very much," Auchmoody told the court.

And David Auchmoody says he was just carrying out his mother's wishes to die at home and without the care of strangers. But when funeral home employees came to the Auchmoody's home in Whitestown to remove Edith Auchmoody's body, they called authorities.

She had wasted away to nearly nothing - exposed flesh from severe bedsores covered much of her barely 50 pound frame.

At his sentencing for criminally negligent homicide, David Auchmoody said he loved his mother but was unqualified to care of her.

"I never knew she had bedsores, let alone infected ones," Auchmoody said. "I have no experience with medicine, medical care, caring for the elderly, nothing; I just thought she was failing naturally."

The judge said that David Auchmoody's crime was one of omission, not commission. but a crime nonetheless.

"But I also can't get past the fact that any human being with their eyes wide open couldn't have seen that your mother was suffering," said Judge Barry Donalty.

For his plea to criminally negligent homicide, David Auchmoody will spend the next 1 1/3 - 4 years in prison.