Jury Rejects Death for Rape-Killing of Baby Girl

A Superior Court jury has recommended life in prison for a Lancaster man convicted of sexually assaulting and then murdering a 13-month-old girl. It could have chosen the death penalty.

According to the foreman, jury members were swayed by the fact that the murderer, Robert Brian Patalsky, had no prior convictions. The jury, he said, also believed the killing of Brianna Lee Schmidt in November, 1991, was not premeditated.

“You reserve the death penalty for the worst,” defense attorney Ezekial Perlo had told the jury before it began deliberating. “Here we have a young 23-year-old, who for 23 years of his life acted in conformity with the law, then in 22 minutes did something which forfeited his right to be in society.”

Patalsky, now 26, showed no emotion as the recommendation was read. Perlo leaned over to Patalsky’s father and whispered, with relief, “I thought I was going to break into tears.”

Superior Court Judge Ronald Coen thanked the jury, which heard testimony so gruesome that two members of the panel had asked to be replaced during the trial.

“You’ve gone beyond the $5 a day you’re paid,” Coen told them. “I can’t thank you enough.”

The foreman of the jury, a 53-year-old Encino engineer who asked that his name not be used, said afterward that jury members were especially upset by photographs of the dead baby.

“But that’s what we’re here for, to be jurors,” he said. “Somebody has to do it, and if nobody is going to do it you won’t have juries.”

The crime occurred on Nov. 30, 1991, when Patalsky was left to care for his girlfriend’s daughter.

Later in the day, Patalsky rushed the baby to a neighbor’s house, saying he found her in a playpen, covered in vomit and breathing erratically. But medical examiners later determined that the girl had been raped and sodomized, and had died from violent shaking.

During the trial, jurors heard a statement Patalsky had made to investigators: “If it happened, I did it. I was the only one there, but I didn’t do it.”

Perlo said Friday that Patalsky, who testified during the trial that he did not kill the infant, still maintains his innocence and hopes to be released on appeal. Members of Patalsky’s family who testified during the emotional penalty phase of the trial also said they believed he was wrongly convicted.

“He didn’t do this crime,” Patalsky’s older brother, Billy, testified, sobbing. “He needs to come home with his family where he belongs. He didn’t do it. He needs to be around his kids. His kids love him.”

Family members said Patalsky had a normal childhood, with nothing in his past to indicate he was capable of the crime for which he was convicted. He was portrayed as a spoiled younger son, who freeloaded off family members up until the day he was arrested.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert B. Foltz Jr. said he had expected the jury’s decision.

“I’m not surprised at all that the jury was merciful,” he said. “It’s a tough thing for a jury to do, to hand down a death penalty.”

Perlo said he still does not know why the killing happened. “He’s an ordinary-seeming kid. The crime seems so incomprehensible,” the lawyer said. “You ask, ‘How could he have done this?’

“God knows why. It doesn’t make any sense.”