Ernst’s Only Crime Was Needing Some Sleep, Jury Told

Beverly Jean Ernst’s attorney called the death of her twin infants last July “a terribly sad accident” but insisted to jurors on Monday that the Anaheim woman “did the best she could with the means she had at her disposal.”

Ernst, 26, is on trial in West Orange County Superior Court in Westminster on two counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of felony child endangerment. Her 3-month-old twins, Adam and Ashley, died July 20, 1986, after being left alone in a hot car.

According to testimony at the trial, Ernst and a boyfriend, Scott Morrow, left the twins in her car about 7 a.m., when they went inside a Garden Grove supply shop, where he lived, and slept until after noon. Autopsy reports showed that the two babies died from the heat no later than 10:30 a.m., nearly two hours before they were discovered.

Ernst says she went inside the supply shop at Morrow’s invitation after being awake all night and fell asleep by accident. She testified that she thought the children would be all right because Morrow had promised that he would “listen” for them while she rested for a few minutes.

In closing arguments Monday, her attorney, Deputy Public Defender Dennis P. O’Connell, asked jurors to consider her situation. She was caring for the children alone, he said, while trying to find a job and a place for them all to live. And, he said, she had been forced out of an apartment where she was living with friends.

“She was with those babies 24 hours a day. Is that the conduct of a woman who would walk into that shop totally oblivious to the welfare of her children?” O’Connell asked the jurors.

In O’Connell’s view, Morrow had made an agreement to watch the twins while Ernst rested and, he said, she had not meant too rest long. She was certainly aware, he said, that the children would be in danger if she left them in the car for several hours.

O’Connell said Ernst did not take the babies inside the supply shop because it was dirty, she did not expect to be there long, and both of them were asleep.

“It’s a relief when both babies are asleep; how often do you think that happened for Beverly?” O’Connell said. ‘She leaves the door to the shop open. She parks the car as close as she possibly can. Is that reckless and aggravated conduct?”

O’Connell also blasted police and news media reports that the babies were left unattended.

“I’ve heard that word 500 times since I took this case, and that’s just not true,” O’Connell told jurors. “She was less than 10 feet away. She was closer to those babies than most of us are to our children sleeping at night in our own homes.”

O’Connell said Ernst’s only crimes were “being the mother of premature twins and being in need of sleep. And when someone makes an offer of a few minutes’ rest, she takes it.”

O’Connell told jurors that it was not unreasonable conduct for her to leave the twins outside, under the circumstances she expected.

“If she had said, ‘I’m going to sleep for five hours; the kids can stay outside in the heat--I don’t care,’ then, yes, that would be gross negligence.”

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Wallace J. Wade, told jurors that if that had happened, “she would be charged with murder, not involuntary manslaughter. We’ve never said Beverly Ernst didn’t love her children. But she didn’t do enough, or care enough, on that occasion, to remove them to a position of safety.”

Wade argued that it wasn’t fair to blame Morrow, the boyfriend. He may have contributed to what happened, but her asking him to “listen” for the twins in the car while she slept “is not enough.”

Ernst, who was in tears throughout much of the two-week trial, wept through most of the closing arguments by the two lawyers Monday. She has been free without bail.

Jurors began deliberating Monday afternoon and will continue deliberations today.