Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : AT THE SCENE : Mother of Dead Twins Released After Judge Criticizes Prosecutor’s Methods

Beverly Jean Ernst, arrested last weekend after her twin infants died in a sweltering car, walked out of a Fullerton courtroom a free woman Friday after a judge said prosecutors could no longer hold her without filing charges against her in the case.

“I just didn’t like the way this whole thing was done, and I won’t be a party to holding a woman like this,” said North Orange County Municipal Judge Margaret R. Anderson.

By Friday morning, prosecutors still hadn’t decided whether to file charges against the 25-year-old woman in the deaths of the infants, and Anderson said that they had held her long enough. Prosecutors simply can not hold Ernst merely “for the purposes of investigation,” Anderson said. She then freed Ernst on her own recognizance.

Ernst was arrested in Garden Grove on Sunday on suspicion of manslaughter and child endangerment for leaving her 3-month-old babies unattended in a closed, unshaded car.

Police said that temperatures in the car could have risen to 120 degrees, with only one window opened about an inch, while Ernst was visiting an owner of a Garden Grove janitorial supply store on Euclid Avenue. The infants’ deaths have been attributed to the heat inside the car.

Ernst was held in an isolation cell throughout the week in the Orange County Jail, as prosecutors tried to decide whether to charge her in connection with the incident.

She was held technically for violation of parole, growing out of an argument with her mother last December at her mother’s home in Anaheim. Ernst, who was convicted of resisting arrest in connection with the incident, received a sentence of informal probation. Prosecutors maintained that she violated the parole by virtue of her arrest Sunday.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Wallace J. Wade, who said his office had requested that Ernst remain in custody on the parole matter, explained the legal maneuvering: “We don’t want to make a snap decision. Hopefully, within a week, I’ll be able to think about it dispassionately.”

During a hearing on the parole violation, Mark Logan, an assistant city attorney in Anaheim, argued against setting bail, asserting that Ernst had been “kicked out” of both her mother’s home and that of a friend.

On Wednesday, Judge John W. McOwen set bail at $5,000. But Friday, Judge Anderson granted a bail reduction request by Ernst’s public defender, allowing her to be released on her own recognizance. She walked out of the Fullerton courthouse barefoot and wearing a dress borrowed from her mother to spend the rest of the day arranging for the burial of her babies.

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