Child Torture Case Verdict Reached; Judge Delays Reading : Courts: Panel deliberates only 90 minutes in trial of woman charged with brutalizing her 10-year-old nephew. Attorney illness prompts postponement.

After deliberating for only 90 minutes, an Orange County Superior Court jury reached a verdict Monday in the trial of a woman charged with torturing her 10-year-old nephew, but a judge postponed announcement of the decision until this morning.

Judge John J. Ryan delayed the ruling after learning that a defense attorney in the case had gone home ill and could not return to court to hear the verdict.

“We’re just going to have to wait and find out tomorrow,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles Middleton said.

The verdict came soon after the prosecution and the defense finished their closing arguments in the three-day trial of Cynthia Medina, 32, of Orange.

Medina, who is charged with torture, is accused of beating her nephew repeatedly, burning his tongue with a heated butter knife and using a wooden souvenir bat to anally penetrate him twice Sept. 7.

A guilty verdict would make her the first Orange County woman convicted of torturing a child.

The former playground supervisor also is charged with two counts of felony child abuse for allegedly breaking her nephew’s teeth by dashing his face against a sink and breaking her 9-year-old son’s finger.

She has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity.

In his closing statement, defense attorney Richard Gilbert argued that Medina didn’t know what she was doing when she allegedly abused her nephew. The brutality of the alleged abuse, he argued, proves that she could not have been conscious of her acts or formed “specific intent” to commit them, two legal requirements for a guilty finding.

“This case is the picture of insanity,” Gilbert told jurors. “Mentally ill people do mentally ill things. Because of her mental illness, she could not appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct.”

Gilbert urged the jury to convict her of felony assault, which carries a maximum four-year prison term, instead of torture, which carries a maximum life sentence. Because assault requires only a general intent to commit a crime, it more accurately describes her acts, he said.

“She was charged with more than her mind can be responsible for,” he said.

But Middleton urged jurors to hold her responsible for her acts, arguing that the abuse must have taken conscious effort and planning.

“In our society, people continually look for ways out, for excuses and never own up to their actions,” he said. “I submit that she is guilty, and I ask you to place the blame where it belongs, squarely on the shoulders of Cynthia Medina.”

Medina, dressed in black, trembled violently through the entire five-hour proceeding.

Authorities say her nephew, who testified during the trial, had to be hospitalized for a month because of his injuries and was temporarily fitted with a colostomy bag.

The boy testified that his aunt beat, burned and sodomized him after she accused him of playing with an ashtray that contained marijuana, and after he continued to deny it.

Middleton held up several gruesome photos of the boy’s badly bruised hands and legs and burned tongue to jurors who appeared grim and focused. He said the injuries showed an escalation of behavior that took time, at least half an hour and maybe an hour. They belie the argument that the acts were committed in a sudden, mindless rage, he said.

“She is not this lunatic that is flailing around,” Middleton said. “She had a mission to accomplish. She was going to make sure that she was going to get the truth out of [her nephew]--the truth according to Cynthia Medina.”

During Middleton’s description, Medina suddenly sobbed and cried out incoherently. Some of her six family members who were in court also began to weep, and one of her sisters left the courtroom hurriedly.

If Medina is found guilty, a second phase of the trial will be held to determine if she was sane at the time of the attack. She would face a maximum life prison sentence only if she is found to have been sane.