An Alabama woman will spend the rest of her life in prison after pleading guilty to capital murder for placing her newborn son in a dumpster.

She threw him into the trash compactor because, as she told investigators, having a baby "cost too much money."

Houston County Circuit Judge Henry D. Binford on Monday sentenced Jakayla Ashanti Williams, 21, to life without the possibility of parole. Williams accepted a last-minute plea deal moments before jury selection, avoiding the death penalty prosecutors had sought.

Williams was 18 in August 2023 when she secretly gave birth to a baby boy at her home in Dothan. She told her family she had surrendered the child to a "redheaded" employee at Southeast Health Medical Center.

Days later she went to the hospital with a family member, saying she wanted the baby back.

Hospital staff called police. Surveillance footage showed no sign that Williams had been at the hospital after the birth and no employee matching her description. When police questioned her again, she admitted she had left the infant in a dumpster at an apartment complex near her home. The dumpster was equipped with a trash compactor.

Its contents had already been hauled to the Dothan landfill, where investigators found the baby's remains wrapped in a mattress protector inside a zipped duffel bag.

Williams told authorities she did not want to be a mother at 18 and believed it "cost too much money" to have a child. Authorities believe the child was alive when she placed him in the trash compactor.

Prosecutors charged her with capital murder and pursued the death penalty.

Defense attorneys said there was a possibility the child was not alive when he was put in the dumpster. They also argued that Williams was young, had no criminal record, and needed mental health treatment.

"I'm shocked this is the case they chose to seek the death penalty," defense attorney Aimee Cobb told WTVY.

The killing of the newborn prompted Dothan officials in October 2023 to vote to install a Safe Haven Baby Box. The device allows a mother to relinquish a newborn safely and anonymously under Alabama's Safe Haven law — an option that would have spared the child's life.