BAY CITY, MI — A Mount Pleasant man is prison-bound after pleading no contest to two felonies stemming from his attack on Bay County Jail employees while being held on federal charges related to the slaying of his girlfriend's son.

Anthony M. Bennett, 21, appeared before Bay County Circuit Judge Joseph K. Sheeran on Wednesday, Nov. 20, and pleaded no contest to single counts of assaulting a jail or prison employee and assaulting, resisting or obstructing police. By pleading no contest, Bennett did not state his guilt and Sheeran had to rely on police reports to enter convictions on the record.

Bennett’s attorney, Doris M. Day-Winters, said her client pleaded no contest for reasons of possible civil liability and because he lacked memories of the incidents.

A shackled Bennett appeared in the courtroom wearing a beige jumpsuit and with his head shaved. He swayed back and forth in his chair and spoke softly, only to answer the judge’s yes-or-no questions. At one point, he turned to relatives seated in the gallery to state he loved them.

In exchange for his pleas, Bay County Assistant Prosecutor J. Dee Brooks dismissed one more count of each charge and a count of malicious destruction of a building between $200 and $1,000.

After pleading, Bennett agreed to be sentenced on Wednesday as well, waiving his right to have a pre-sentence report.

Sheeran treated Bennett as a habitual offender and sentenced him to concurrent terms of 32 months to four years and 36 months to 10 years in prison. The judge gave Bennett credit for 453 days already served and ordered him to pay $5,000 in fines and costs.

“Mr. Bennett has taken full responsibility,” Day-Winters told the judge just before he imposed the sentence. “Mr. Bennett … is remorseful, he’s sorry for what he did. He did it out of frustration. He has a lot on his plate. This young man has a lot ahead of him and he’s got some really big fish to fry, as they say.”

Bennett declined to speak when the judge gave him the chance.

“I know some people may have questioned why these charges were pursued in light of the very serious federal charges he’s facing,” Brooks said. “No. 1, we don’t know how those charges will turn out. The other thing is we felt it very important to pursue these charges that very directly relate to the jail operations.”

Sheeran agreed with Brooks.

“The people who work in our correctional facilities have a very difficult job to do under normal circumstances,” he said. “When someone assaults them or obstructs their work, there’s simply no justification for it.”

As Bennett was being held on federal charges at the time of his local offenses, he is subject to consecutive sentencing if convicted of any crime on the federal level.

Police arrested Bennett, a member of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe, on June 28, 2012, the same day they found the charred remains of 4-year-old Carnel Chamberlain under the porch of the Mount Pleasant home Bennett lived at with the boy’s mother, Jaimee Chamberlain. While housed at the Bay County Jail on Aug. 24, Bennett reportedly started arguing with another inmate.

When a corrections officer attempted to quell the dispute, Bennett swung around and punched him three times, prosecutors allege.

The other inmate came to the officer’s aid and pulled Bennett away. When the officer regained his footing, he locked Bennett in a cell, but the unruly inmate then proceeded to kick a glass window, prosecutors contend.

Officers wrote in their reports that they heard Bennett state, “I don’t care. I have a lot on my mind. I’m looking at life and I will take you both on. Let me out of this cell.”

An extraction team was called in to remove Bennett from the cell and place him in a different part of the jail. When they opened the cell door, Bennett had fresh superficial cuts on his arms, though no weapon was recovered, court records show.

The following day, Bennett refused to rise from a restraint chair he had been placed in and officers stunned him with a Taser, court records show.

In connection with Carnel’s death, Bennett is charged federally with first-degree murder, assault resulting in substantial bodily injury and assault within special maritime or territorial jurisdiction. He is also charged federally with assault with a dangerous weapon, animal cruelty and two counts of tampering with a witness, victim or informant in connection with conduct prosecutors say occurred against Jaimee Chamberlain and others.

Prosecutors say Bennett was babysitting Carnel on June 21, 2012, and that he reported him missing the same day. Investigators found the boy’s remains a week later and arrested Bennett.

Bennett’s attorney on the federal matters, John A. Shea, previously sought to have his trial moved to a different venue, but U.S. District Judge Thomas L. Ludington ruled he be tried in the federal courthouse in downtown Bay City. Shea has also filed motions seeking to have the three charges related to Carnel’s death and abuse separated from the other four, and to have the murder charge dismissed altogether.

Ludington is to rule on those motions at a hearing on Wednesday, Dec. 4.