Jeanie Kassandra Ditty, a North Carolina mother, has been sentenced to life in prison without parole after being found guilty of murdering her two-year-old daughter, Macy Grace Ditty, in 2015. Prosecutors said the toddler suffered at least 40 separate blows over 24 hours before dying, and Ditty later compounded the horror by arranging a ghoulish "after life" photoshoot with her deceased daughter while falsely claiming the child had choked on a banana. The case highlights a prolonged and difficult path to justice, spanning more than a decade, a hung jury and a subsequent retrial.

Macy was rushed to hospital in Fayetteville on 2 December 2015 with extensive bruising and died two days later; Ditty was arrested in 2016 alongside her then-boyfriend, whose charges were later dismissed. A photographer who was contacted for the memorial photoshoot became suspicious of Ditty's explanation and alerted police, leading to her surrender in March 2016. Her first trial in 2020 ended in a hung jury, but a retrial this year resulted in a guilty verdict after less than three hours of deliberation, and she was sentenced to life without parole plus 157 to 201 months for felony child abuse.