Dead Twins’ Mother Freed; Judge Criticizes Prosecutors

Beverly Jean Ernst, arrested last weekend because her infant twins died when left inside a sweltering car, was freed from custody and walked barefoot out of a Fullerton court Friday after a judge assailed prosecutors for holding her without charges in the case.

“I will never get over this,” Ernst said in an interview later, her voice breaking.

“I just wish everybody could understand how I feel. I’m not perfect, but I’m not the horrible person they say I am. . . . I didn’t commit manslaughter. I loved those kids,” she added softly.

Ernst, 25, was arrested in Garden Grove on Sunday on suspicion of manslaughter and child endangerment for leaving her 3-month-old babies unattended in her closed and unshaded car, where firefighters said the temperature could have risen to 120 degrees.

But she has not been criminally charged in connection with the deaths. Ernst spent six days in the Orange County Jail--two of them on a probation violation charge in a separate case. Officials with the Orange County district attorney’s office said they asked the Anaheim city attorney’s office to file the charge in order to keep Ernst in custody.

North Orange County Municipal Judge Margaret R. Anderson on Friday criticized that tactic and ordered Ernst released.

“But for the district attorney not being able to hold her on his own charge, she wouldn’t be in jail at all,” Anderson said. “I just didn’t like the way this whole thing was done, and I won’t be a party to holding this woman like this.”

Received Informal Probation

In March, Ernst was convicted of resisting arrest, a misdemeanor, and sentenced to three years’ informal probation, stemming from an argument with her mother that neighbors reported to police. Prosecutors maintain that she violated her probation, which states that she should not break the law, by virtue of her arrest Sunday.

Asking that Ernst be held on a high bail, prosecutors said Friday that they were trying to buy more time to investigate the deaths. They also said they feared that Ernst would flee the area. By law, authorities would have been forced to release Ernst Wednesday because they had not charged her with any crime. Deputy Dist. Atty. Wallace J. Wade said he asked the Anaheim city attorney’s office to charge Ernst with the probation matter because he had not decided whether to file a criminal complaint against her in connection with her babies’ deaths.

A judge on Wednesday had set Ernst’s bail on the probation matter at $5,000, which her family was not able to raise. But Anderson granted a bail reduction request by Ernst’s public defender, Dennis P. O’Connell, allowing the woman to be released on her own recognizance Friday morning. The judge suggested only that Ernst change out of her jail-issued clothes for her own safety, which she did in the public defender’s office before her brother drove her home.

“I felt she had been in custody long enough,” Anderson said after the hearing. “I was not going to have her go down and sit in (a holding cell) until the jail bus came down at 5 o’clock to take her back. She wouldn’t have got out until 10 o’clock tonight. I wanted her out now.”

During the brief hearing, David Byron, deputy city attorney of Anaheim, argued unsuccessfully that Ernst’s bail remain at $5,000 because the district attorney’s office was still investigating the case and might file charges against her.

But Anderson refused the request, stating that she would not order that Ernst be held merely “for the purposes of investigation.”

“The only condition here should have been what was the bail going to be on this probation matter,” Anderson said, “not whether the district attorney’s office was going to charge her with something else. . . . If the only reason the city attorney filed this charge was to keep (Ernst) in custody for the district attorney’s office, than I feel that is incorrect; it’s an incorrect application of the law.”

Since Anderson saw no evidence that Ernst would fail to appear in court on the probation violation charge, she ordered the woman freed, adding: “If that poor woman is a danger to anyone, it’s to herself. She’s not going to go out and hurt kids in her neighborhood.”

However, prosecutor Wade said: “I’m concerned about her being released. I’m not sure she’s going to show up (in court). . . . I hope I’m wrong.” Wade said he did not want to comment on what Anderson may have said in court before reviewing transcripts of the hearing, but he said Ernst’s rights “were never violated.”

A hearing on the probation charge was set for Sept. 3.

Under the conditions of Ernst’s release, she must live with her brother, Steven Ernst, 27, at his Anaheim home and notify the court before any change of residence.

Wearing a dress hastily borrowed from her mother’s closet, Ernst was home by mid-morning, where she spent the rest of the day making arrangements for the burial of the twins. The clothing she was arrested in, including sneakers, was still at the Orange County Jail, but she decided to go barefoot than return there.

“I don’t even have a pair of shoes to wear, but right now I don’t really care, you know? It just doesn’t matter anymore,” she said.

Details of the joint funeral had not been worked out by late Friday.