Twenty-five year old Adam M. Browne said he wished he could trade places with the son that he shook to death, as he was sentenced Thursday in New London Superior Court to 14 years in prison. 

Little Jovanni Browne’s mother, Margaret Ann Chapman, said in a statement provided to the court that she has no choice but to go on without the child. 

Browne was watching 2½-month-old Jovanni and Chapman’s 4-year-old twins on Oct. 25, 2013, at their Crystal Avenue apartment when he held the crying infant under the arms and shook him roughly. Browne called police at 2:06 a.m. Jovanni, who was limp and unresponsive, was taken to Lawrence + Memorial Hospital, then airlifted to Yale-New Haven Hospital, where he died the next day. 

Browne, who has been incarcerated since his son’s death, pleaded guilty in March to first-degree manslaughter, accepting a plea deal worked out between prosecutor Theresa Anne Ferryman, attorney Kevin C. Barrs from the public defender’s office and Judge Hillary B. Strackbein. The deal involved a sentence of 20 years in prison, suspended after 14 years served, followed by five years of probation. Browne had no previous criminal record. 

In her written statement to the court, Chapman said she lost her job after the incident and that she and her children had to move from the family home because the twins, who witnessed the incident, were afraid to return. She said the children were proud to be older siblings and continue to suffer from his loss. 

“I am Jovanni’s mother, and I have no choice but to go on without him,” she wrote. “Having to wonder how amazing he would be. What he would look like. The chance to hold him was taken from me.”

k.florin@theday.com

Twitter: @KFLORIN