Jared M. Beekman, a decorated Navy sailor, confessed in 2004 that he had intentionally suffocated his five-month-old son Mathew eight years earlier while sleeping with him on a couch at a friend's apartment in New London.

On Tuesday, as Beekman was sentenced to 10 years in prison for first-degree manslaughter, he made no such admission.

The tall former hospital corpsman, who has let his brown hair grow past his shoulders and sprouted a goatee since he has been incarcerated, said he made a “series of increasingly selfish decisions” on Jan. 13, 1996.

He said he chose to go to a friend's house that night while Mathew was in his care. He chose to drink alcohol and he chose to sleep on the couch with his son.

“But that's it,” Beekman said. He, his wife and his attorneys maintain that Mathew died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service and New London Police reopened the case several years after the baby's death. They said it had seemed suspicious at the time, but that the medical examiner ruled it an accidental death by traumatic asphyxiation.

Beekman had left the Navy and moved to Jacksonville, NC, by the time the authorities caught up with him. When confronted, he admitted he became angry and frustrated when the child awakened him in the middle of the night.

He said he pushed the baby behind him on the couch and leaned over on top of him with his body until the boy was silent. He said he went back to sleep, and Mathew was unresponsive the next morning.

His attorneys said that Beekman, who was honorably discharged from the Navy after serving in Iraq and receiving achievement medals, national commendations and good conduct awards, was conditioned to obey the orders of authorities. They said he gave the confessions under pressure.

“They said, 'Sign this, and we'll let you go,' '' said Attorney Kevin Barrs.

Barrs also said a top expert on pediatric homicides reviewed the medical records and said the death appeared accidental. Barrs said he and attorney Fred DeCaprio agreed to the manslaughter plea because Beekman would have faced life in prison without parole if a jury didn't believe Beekman's story.

Prosecutor John P. Gravalec-Pannone said he has a different view of what happened to Mathew Beekman, but had offered him the plea deal as a compromise. The state also was uncertain how a jury would treat the evidence.

“We try to read the tea leaves to see how the jury would decide,” Pannone said. “The age of the event and the original call of the medical examiner were factors we looked at when deciding whether a jury would have decided on a verdict beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Beekman's wife Agnes Marshal, another former sailor whom he met while they were both stationed at the submarine base in Groton, believes him. She flew to Connecticut from Arizona to speak at her husband's sentencing and submitted letters from their two children, an 11-year-old girl and 10-year-old boy, who both said they miss their father.

Beekman's father Don, who lives near his daughter-in-law and grandchildren in Arizona, also attended the sentencing.

The wife was confined to the base the day her son died, because authorities said she had concocted a story to keep her husband from being sent overseas.

She said she was pregnant with twins who had both been diagnosed with Down Syndrome. She gave birth to a girl six months later. She said her little boy Mathew, who had just had a “wellness checkup” at the doctor's that day, was one of the happiest kids in the world the last time she saw him alive.

“Survivor's guilt is a very hard thing to overcome, I know, because like Jared I suffer from it every day,” she said.

She said she and her kids lost everything after Beekman was arrested, but received help from Beekman's father.

She is looking forward to Beekman coming home and resuming family life. He has already served four years in prison and she estimated he could be released in 2012.

Judge Susan B. Handy said she doesn't know what happened on the night Mathew died — that only the people who were there really know.

“I do know that a five-month-old child died who was in your care and custody,” she said before imposing the agreed-upon sentence.

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