A quarter-century ago, Ann Pettway snatched 3-week-old Carlina White from a Manhattan hospital, took her to Bridgeport, Conn., and raised her as her own child. The girl grew to be a teenager, married and had a son. Her mother knew nothing about her past, except that she had suffered two stillbirths and several miscarriages.

When Carlina, now 25, discovered her biological parents, Carl Tyson and Joy White, in 2011, it was a bombshell reunion that grabbed international headlines. But the relationship between them has been strained. Tyson and White have since separated, but they're both fighting to maintain custody of their daughter, who is now living in Georgia.

In a sentencing memo, federal prosecutors said Pettway, 51, had a long criminal history of theft, larceny, forgery and marijuana possession, and was not functioning normally when she kidnapped the baby in 1987. They urged the judge to give her up to 20 years in prison.

Pettway's lawyers argued that she deserved a below-guideline sentence because of her difficult life: her shattered family, drug addiction and a string of stillbirths and miscarriages before pregnancy with Carlina. But Judge Kenneth Castel didn't buy that argument. He sentenced Pettway to 12 years in prison.