Judge Sentences Mother of Slain Baby to Prison : Courts: Francisca Maria Sanchez Jimenez will serve 15 years to life for dumping her newborn into a portable toilet in a Saticoy onion field.

An Oxnard farm worker convicted of second-degree murder for dumping her newborn son to his death in a portable toilet was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years to life in prison, despite her attorney’s quest for a sentence of probation and forced contraception.

The sentence brought Francisca Maria Sanchez Jimenez, 23, to the end of a long trip through the courts that began after her baby’s body was found floating in the toilet in a Saticoy onion field on July 28, 1991.

Her first trial, last February, ended in a mistrial after the jurors deadlocked.

In June, a second jury convicted Jimenez of second-degree murder. It also acquitted her of attempted murder on charges that she had tried to flush another newborn son down the toilet of her Oxnard home 14 months earlier. The boy now lives in a foster home.

But when that jury deadlocked on the question of whether Jimenez was legally sane when she killed her second baby, a third jury had to be impaneled.

The third jury ruled last month that Sanchez was legally sane when she murdered the child, ending her bid to be judged not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to a psychiatric hospital.

On Wednesday, Jimenez was silent and motionless while attorneys bickered over her role in the murder of “Baby Boy Sanchez,” who in death was showered with toys, flowers and letters at his Ventura grave site beneath a donated headstone.

She sat numbly too, as Superior Court Judge Lawrence Storch passed sentence.

“This case is a tragic case of course, for all concerned,” Storch said. “I’m convinced that, outside the danger to future unborn children, this lady’s not going to re-offend.”

But Storch said of her attorney’s request for probation, “It still avoids the issue, and the issue is a horrible death of a human being. . . . I don’t think you can do this kind of thing and expect a grant of probation.”

With that, Storch ordered that Jimenez be imprisoned in the California Institute for Women at Chowchilla for 15 years to life. With time off for good behavior, she could be eligible for parole in 10 years, attorneys said.

Earlier, Assistant Public Defender Jean Farley had argued that Jimenez would pose no threat to the community if she were unable to get pregnant.

Farley pleaded with Storch to order that Jimenez be put on probation and surgically implanted with Norplant, a contraceptive device that she said is more successful than sterilization in preventing pregnancy.

If released, Jimenez could contribute to society, Farley said.

“From sunup to sundown, she is willing to work,” Farley argued. “She has the willingness . . . to engage in daily, repetitious, monotonous labor, and to share the fruits of that labor with those who live with her.”

However, Deputy Dist. Atty. Carol Nelson argued that probation would be too lenient and the Norplant contraceptive inhumane.

“I don’t think when someone has killed another person they are logically or legally a candidate for probation,” Nelson said. “We can’t force her the rest of her life to be infertile. We can’t be sure if we put an implant in her that she’d take (the) bus to Tijuana and that thing would be out in a week.”

The attorneys also argued over the content of the probation report, which included information about the first baby’s ordeal in the bathroom, some of it distorted, according to Farley.

It would violate Jimenez’s right against double jeopardy to let the California Department of Corrections base its treatment of her on a crime she was acquitted of, Farley argued.

Nelson, however, said prison officials should be given the information about the child, even though Jimenez was found not guilty of charges that she tried to kill him.

After Nelson tried to negate several objections Farley raised over the probation report, Storch cut them off.

“Ladies, I think you’re splitting hairs,” the judge scolded. “I think this is a lot to do about nothing. We have tried this case three times through the absurdity of minutiae.”

However, Storch agreed that there were some mistakes of fact in the report. He ordered them stricken and offered Farley and Nelson the chance to send their own written versions of the facts to prison officials.

On Wednesday, no flowers, nor toys, nor letters remained on Baby Boy Sanchez’ headstone.

A few dead leaves covered the inscription, “You were created by God, you were taken by God and you are truly, truly loved by God.”