Trial of Farm Worker in Baby’s Death Begins : Crime: A prosecutor says the woman let one child suffocate in a toilet and tried to kill another.

Testimony began Wednesday in the murder trial of a farm worker accused of leaving her infant son to die in a portable toilet last year and trying to kill another baby in 1990.

In her opening statement in Ventura County Superior Court, Deputy Dist. Atty. Carol J. Nelson said the evidence will show that Francisca Sanchez Jimenez, 23, gave birth to a baby boy in a portable toilet in Saticoy on July 28 and allowed the newborn to suffocate in the toilet’s chemicals and waste.

A year earlier, the prosecutor said, Jimenez gave birth in the bathroom of an Oxnard house where she was living and tried to flush that infant down a toilet.

Another resident heard crying, went into the bathroom and found Jimenez standing over the toilet, holding the baby down, Nelson said.

Jimenez’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Jean L. Farley, characterized the incident with the flush toilet as a “terrible accident.”

As for the other baby, Farley said, the uneducated farm worker thought that she was only a few months pregnant and did not realize that she had delivered a live baby.

Initial police reports gave Sanchez as the defendant’s last name. Farley said her client uses Jimenez as her last name.

The first witness, Oxnard firefighter Ronald Veillette, said he was summoned to the Oxnard house after the first infant was born on May 11, 1990.

He said he forced his way into a first-floor bathroom after Jimenez refused to let him in.

Jimenez had apparently just given birth, Veillette said, although the baby had been taken to an upstairs room by the time he arrived. Jimenez was “unemotional,” he said. “She appeared to be unconcerned about her baby.”

On cross-examination, Veillette acknowledged that the woman spoke no English and that he could not understand her Spanish. He said he based his opinion on her demeanor and body language.

The infant had a hematoma, or swelling, on the head, he said. Both the infant and the mother were taken to St. John’s Regional Medical Center for treatment.

The boy is now in a foster home.

The trial resumes today at 9 a.m. before Judge Lynn D. Compton, a retired judge assigned to the case.