Local News in Brief : Man Sentenced in Pregnant Wife’s Death

An Arleta man who faced the death penalty for fatally shooting his pregnant wife in the stomach was sentenced to 17 years to life in prison Tuesday.

In a plea bargain with prosecutors, Augustin Jaime Miranda, 24, pleaded guilty June 21 to two counts of second-degree murder in the Oct. 17, 1987, killing of his wife, Rebecca Espinoza, 27, during her ninth month of pregnancy. She had been due to deliver the baby in two weeks.

Doctors had performed a Caesarean section on Espinoza, but the fetus was stillborn. Espinoza died following surgery.

Miranda was charged with a special-circumstances murder, which is punishable by death. However, Deputy Dist. Atty. Rosalie Morton said there was scant evidence of premeditation in the shooting, a legal standard that is necessary for a first-degree murder conviction.

Just before the shooting, Miranda and his wife had argued about a suspected infidelity, Morton said.

But Miranda told a probation officer the shooting was an accident that occurred while his wife was watching television.

“I never really wanted to do anything like this,” Miranda was quoted as saying in a probation report. “I had had something to drink and I was playing with the gun. I didn’t realize it was loaded and it went off.”

Miranda, a sometime factory laborer, told police that he had drunk a six-pack of beer an hour before shooting his wife with a .25-caliber pistol, the report said.