ANAHEIM : Man Gets 15-to-Life in Son’s Fatal Beating

An Anaheim man was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison Friday for the death of his 10-week-old son, but the focus of his sentencing hearing was on the credibility of his expert witness.

Dr. Irving Root, a San Bernardino forensic pathologist, had told jurors that the baby, Anthony Aranda, died of sudden infant death syndrome--SIDS--rather than abuse by his father, Nicholas Aranda Jr., 31.

Root was hired by the defense. But jurors, who convicted Aranda of second-degree murder, said later that Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeffrey L. Robinson so thoroughly discredited Root’s testimony that they believed the defense made a mistake to call him as a witness.

Root also testified as a defense expert last week in the Gail Young Davies trial. The Newport Beach woman is accused of killing her stepdaughter’s husband by running over him with her Mercedes-Benz. Root came under fire from the district attorney’s office in that case, too.

Friday, Aranda’s attorney, Stuart A. Holmes, argued before Superior Court Judge Richard L. Weatherspoon that Robinson’s cross-examination of Root in the Aranda case had been “insidious” and “went far beyond reasonable advocacy.

“It’s a tragedy what has been allowed to happen to Dr. Root in this county,” Holmes said.

But Weatherspoon disagreed.

While the give and take between the prosecutor and the defense pathologist had been “particularly adverse,” the judge said, “Dr. Root did not hide his candle under a bushel either.”

Robinson, at Friday’s sentencing hearing in Santa Ana, accused Aranda of using his baby son as “a human punching bag.”

The prosecution argued that the baby suffered numerous broken ribs and an eye injury on Oct. 13, 1987, while under Aranda’s care. Aranda’s wife, Paulette, was at work at the time.

Anthony was the second of the Arandas’ four children to die. A baby daughter died less than a year earlier. That death was attributed to sudden infant death syndrome.

While doctors found bruises on Anthony’s body, they could not pinpoint when they occurred.

It wasn’t until the district attorney’s new review panel on children’s deaths managed to get a court-ordered exhumation of the body that other injuries were discovered. The jury found that those could be pinpointed to the time the baby was in Aranda’s care.

The Arandas’ other two children, a boy and a girl, have since been taken out of Paulette Aranda’s home. Nicholas Aranda has been in custody since his arrest three years ago.

Defense attorney Holmes pointed out that his client continues to maintain that he never hurt the baby.

“If that is true, then we’re about to engage in a great miscarriage of justice,” Holmes told the court.

The judge, however, found that Aranda delivered the “ultimate injury” that caused the child’s death, and that he would be a danger to his other children if freed on probation.