Alexandra Eckersley was distracted Thursday morning as she prepared to speak to the same judge who sentenced her a year earlier in Hillsborough County Superior Court.

“Mommy, Mommy,” her toddler, Teddy, yelled inside the courtroom.

Judge Amy Messer assured Eckersley and her family it was OK to have the child in the courtroom — at least in this case.

“I wasn’t supposed to cry today,” Eckersley said during her graduation from the court’s mental health community connection program, a ceremony that highlighted the more compassionate side of the judicial system.

A year ago, Eckersley, 28, sat in the same courtroom as Messer sentenced her to participate in the yearlong program. The sentence was issued after she was convicted on multiple charges in connection to leaving her newborn in a tent

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