Simi Boy, 14, Gets 4 Years in Slaying : Courts: Parents of stabbing victim Chad Hubbard call Phillip Hernandez ‘a monster.’ They strongly deny their son was a bully.

In a bitter, tear-filled hearing, a 14-year-old Simi Valley boy who fatally stabbed a classmate was called dangerous and impulsive by a judge who sentenced him to four years in a California Youth Authority facility.

“The minor does act out of impulse. The minor does have poor judgment. And I don’t think all 14-year-olds have poor judgment,” Superior Court Judge Allan Steele said of Phillip Hernandez.

“It’s my view that the minor . . . is dangerous,” the judge said. “In whatever fashion you wish to take it, he took a human life.”

The sentencing came nearly six months after Chad Hubbard, a Valley View Junior High School baseball player, was knifed in the chest on campus after classes.

In May, Steele found Hernandez guilty of involuntary manslaughter instead of murder, which prosecutors had sought. The sentence was the maximum allowed under state law for manslaughter.

Steele decided on the lesser conviction after hearing testimony that Hubbard had started the fatal altercation by punching the defendant and challenging him to a fistfight.

“We’re unhappy with the original verdict,” said the victim’s mother, Jackie Hubbard. “We’re happy with the sentence.”

At Friday’s hearing, Hubbard and her husband, Scott, vigorously denied that their son was a bully, and criticized Hernandez, his family, the judge and prosecutors.

In riveting statements to the judge, the Hubbards called Hernandez “a monster” and said his parents did a terrible job raising him. They also said that Steele should have convicted him of murder and that Deputy Dist. Atty. James Ellison did not defend their son strongly enough against claims he was a bully.

Breaking down in tears, Jackie Hubbard placed a large, framed picture of Chad on the counsel table and said the boy went out of his way to make people smile and feel comfortable. “He was a comedian of sorts,” Hubbard said.

She spoke of acts of kindness by her son, such as the time he insisted on being part of his family’s effort to help a poor family at Christmas. She spoke of the problems her three remaining children--ages 6, 7 and 10--have every day coping with Chad’s death.

And she spoke of her own difficulties understanding his senseless murder and sitting through the two-week trial, where it was revealed that Hubbard had a .06% blood-alcohol level after the stabbing.

“I see why it’s called the criminal justice system,” she said. “It’s justice for the criminals, and there’s no justice.”

The mother read a letter to the court that she received from Gov. Pete Wilson after writing him about her son’s death. The governor assured her he is trying to sponsor legislation to prosecute offenders as young as 14 as adults.

What seemed most on her mind, though, was countering the defense’s characterization of her son as a bully.

She maintained that Hubbard--at 5-foot-9 and 170 pounds--was not larger than Hernandez, whom she described as 5-foot-8 and 180 pounds at the time of the incident. Hernandez was described by his attorney as much smaller than Hubbard.

“Chad is not a bully,” his mother said. “He is the farthest thing from that. He is a protector.”

Looking at Hernandez, she called him incorrigible. “Phillip,” she said, sitting across a table from him, “you could have been my son’s brother. But instead you were his killer. For that, I and hundreds of others hate you.”

In his comments, Scott Hubbard defended his son against unkindly images that surfaced during the trial. “Understand,” he said, “Chad was not a bully.”

After directing comments to the defendant, the judge and both attorneys, the father refused to say anything directly to the Hernandez family “because they created this monster.”

Hearing that, Phillip Hernandez dropped his head and appeared to cry as his attorney draped an arm around his shoulder in assurance.

Hernandez’s uncle, Ray Martinez Hernandez, told the judge that the Hubbards were wrong in their portrayal of his nephew.

“I really don’t think to this day that he is a monster or there is no place for him in heaven,” he said. “I really miss Phillip.”

Deputy Public Defender Donna L. Forry pleaded with the judge to place her client in a local juvenile facility, where he could be rehabilitated and not just punished.

She said he has had a troubled life, including behavioral problems at school, but no other criminal activity. She said his problems stemmed from growing up in a dysfunctional family.

“Basically, your honor, my feeling about Phillip is that he has been deprived of a fair shake,” Forry said.