Woman Convicted of Torturing Nephew, Faces Life Sentence

An Orange County Superior Court jury Tuesday convicted a woman of torturing her 10-year-old nephew by sodomizing him with a small baseball bat, and found that she was sane when she committed the crime, making her the first person in Orange County found guilty of torturing a child.

Cynthia Medina, 32, of Orange kept her face turned and trembled violently while the guilty verdict was read. Besides torture, which carries a mandatory life sentence, she was convicted of felony child abuse and misdemeanor assault.

Medina, a former playground supervisor, was charged with torture last year when authorities discovered that on Sept. 7 she had beaten her nephew with an electrical cord, repeatedly burned his tongue with a heated butter knife and used a wooden souvenir bat to sodomize him twice.

She had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Medina’s attorney, Richard Gilbert, said he was disappointed in the verdict, but not surprised given the nature of the charges. Gilbert had admitted to jurors that Medina severely abused her nephew, but argued that she was innocent because she was not conscious of what she was doing and could not distinguish right from wrong.

“The level of anger within people is so great about this case that I think it would be difficult for any jury to evaluate the issues dispassionately,” Gilbert said.

“It’s like trying to seat a dispassionate jury to try Adolf Hitler,” he said. “It just can’t be done.”

The boy, who had been living with his aunt and uncle, had to be hospitalized for a month because of his injuries and was temporarily fitted with a colostomy bag. He testified during the trial that the torture started after Medina accused him of playing with an ashtray that contained marijuana, although he denied it.

The felony child abuse conviction stemmed from separate incidents in which Medina broke her nephew’s teeth by dashing his face against a sink and kicked him in the groin. The jury also convicted her of misdemeanor assault for breaking her 9-year-old son’s finger during another beating.

About half a dozen of Medina’s relatives were in court during the proceeding. As the verdict was read, her husband, Edward, lowered his head and her sister, Ernestine Garcia, took his hand.

Edward Medina pleaded guilty last month to charges of child endangerment for failing to prevent the torture and abuse. He is set to be sentenced the same day as his wife, June 9.

One juror, who asked not to be identified, said almost everyone on the panel “came to tears” at one point or another during the deliberations, which came after three days of testimony.

“It was a sad, emotional case,” the juror said, adding that the jury had to “discuss a lot of things,” especially testimony from medical experts about Cynthia Medina’s mental state.

Two court-appointed psychiatrists testified Tuesday and two others submitted statements, all saying that Medina was sane when she committed the crimes.