A wealthy businesswoman who poisoned her son in a Manhattan hotel room was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in state prison for manslaughter, ending a bizarre case that turned on her claim that she murdered her child to prevent him from being sexually tortured.

Just before being sentenced, the woman, Gigi Jordan, asked Justice Charles H. Solomon of state Supreme Court to show compassion. As she did at trial, she repeated her contention that she killed her 8-year-old son, Jude Mirra, and had tried unsuccessfully to kill herself because she feared the boy would end up in the custody of his father, a man she believed had sadistically abused him.

"I loved Jude more than anything in the world, that I believed that he would live and die in unbelievable agony," she said, breaking into tears. Then she added, "I'll live with the guilt for the rest of my life, every day."

But Solomon said he did not believe much of Jordan's story. There was no credible evidence presented at trial, he said, that Jude had ever been sexually abused. He also said he doubted she had tried to kill herself as she had testified.

"The defendant appears to have psychological problems," he said.

The judge went on to say he had yet to hear genuine remorse from Jordan, pointing out she gave an interview on national television during jury deliberations in which she said her only regret was that she had not done a better job ending her own life.

"Never said, 'I'm sorry,'" Solomon said.

"There are tragedies here," the judge added. "All of her money. All her resources. She decided to kill him. There are so many things she could have done, different courses she could have taken."

Solomon had wide leeway under the law and could have sentenced Jordan to as much as 25 years in prison, as Matthew Bogdanos, the lead prosecutor, had urged him to do.

"Maybe I'm old-fashioned, Judge, but where I come from you don't kill children," Bogdanos said in arguing for the maximum sentence. "The list of reasons to kill children is pretty short. It's zero."

But the lead defense lawyer, Allan L. Brenner, urged the judge to be lenient, emphasizing that the jury had believed Jordan's claim that she killed her son out of love.

"They sent their message that she should have mercy," he said.

Jurors Nov. 5 rejected the prosecution's call for a murder conviction and found Jordan, 54, guilty of manslaughter instead. The panel accepted her argument that she had acted in the grip of an "extreme emotional disturbance." Under state law, that defense allows jurors to opt for manslaughter rather than homicide in some cases.

Jude was found dead in a bed at the Peninsula around noon on Feb. 5, 2010, after the police and a hotel security guard broke into the room. The door had been barricaded with a chair. Jordan was on the floor next to the bed, surrounded by pills. A pill crusher and a syringe used to force-feed patients were discovered, along with empty vodka bottles.

During four days of emotional testimony, Jordan admitted she gave her son - who had autism and did not speak - a fatal dose of sleeping pills and tranquilizers, asking him to wash the pills down with juice.

She characterized the killing as an act of mercy. She testified that her first husband, Raymond Mirra, had threatened to kill her, and she feared once she was dead, her son would end up in the custody of her second husband, Emil Tzekov, a yoga instructor she thought had sexually abused the boy for years. She testified that she had intended to kill herself with pills as well but failed.

Neither of her former husbands testified at the trial. Both have strongly denied the allegations. Mirra has sued Jordan for defamation.

Her lawyers said Jordan, who will not leave prison before summer 2025, had hoped for a less stiff sentence. They said they would appeal both the verdict and the sentence, asserting that Solomon made errors in his rulings.

One of the defense lawyers, Ronald Kuby, said the judge at sentencing seemed to ignore the jury's finding that Jordan had objective reasons to fear for her life and to believe her son had been abused. He accused Solomon of "paying lip service to the jury's decision" but still handing Jordan a long sentence.

"The judge didn't believe it was objectively reasonable," Kuby said. "Because the judge didn't believe it, he was going to sentence Ms. Jordan as if she had been convicted of murder."