For parts of three days, friends and neighbors came to court to describe Samuel and Donna Merryman as giving and loving parents. Most said they could hardly believe that the Harford County couple could be responsible for the death of an 8-year-old son.
But yesterday, prosecutors said that two of the couple's other children provided a look inside the family home in Whiteford -- where, they said, their brother was bound, strapped to a crib and deprived of solid food.
And then a judge sentenced the parents to 22 years in prison each. They had, the judge said, starved young Dennis Gene Merryman to death.
"All you need to do is look at the autopsy photos of Dennis," Harford County Circuit Judge Emory A. Plitt said. "It has a striking resemblance to the bodies from the German concentration camps."
Dennis died in January 2005. Photos taken the day he died showed an emaciated 37-pound body.
Two older siblings described how Dennis spent nights in an unheated room, strapped to a crib without a mattress to cushion him. His hands were tied behind his back with an elastic band, and bells were attached to his body so his parents could hear him when he moved, the siblings testified.
They said Dennis was fed a puree of yogurt and asparagus as punishment for misbehaving.
In a stumbling voice, Donna Merryman, 45, gave a statement before she was sentenced, accepting responsibility for the death of the boy that the couple had adopted from Russia in 2000. She said she and her husband discovered that the boy had what they called frightening behavioral issues.
"It's not the children's fault," she said. "We bit off more than we could handle, which is our fault -- not Dennis'."
The Merrymans adopted four siblings from Russia and brought them to their Harford County farm. The children, along with the Merrymans' three biological children, are now in foster care.
"In hindsight, we were the problem, not Dennis," Donna Merryman said. "We accept responsibility and ask forgiveness from our God and our children."
When the judge handed down the sentence for the couple, Donna and Samuel Merryman, 40, were not emotional, although others in the courtroom started weeping. Instead, the Merrymans conferred with their defense attorneys and then were led away in handcuffs.
