Woman Guilty of Murdering Her Newborn

An Orange County Superior Court commissioner found a young woman guilty of second-degree murder Thursday in the death of her newborn boy, found last year in a wastebasket stuffed in her bedroom closet.

Bertha Delgado Hernandez, 19, sat motionless in a pink T-shirt as Commissioner Richard M. Aronson announced the verdict following a four-day court trial.

“I think everyone agrees it’s a very tragic case, a very sad situation,” Aronson said. But the commissioner said medical evidence in the case led him to believe that the boy was born healthy and had taken his first breaths before dying from “mechanical asphyxiation.”

“This baby breathed,” Aronson said. “The air sacs were filled.”

Earlier in the day, Aronson expressed sympathy for Hernandez, who was described in court as isolated from her family in rural Mexico, frightened, poor and confused about how to handle her pregnancy. The young woman hid her condition from the Santa Ana family she lived with before giving birth silently in her bedroom last Feb. 15.

She called for help only when she continued bleeding, and hospital personnel notified police that Hernandez had recently given birth and might have disposed of the child, Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Molko said.

Hernandez is scheduled to be sentenced March 1.

Molko said Aronson could order psychological testing at that time for Hernandez, described in testimony as depressed and “childlike.” Her sentence could range from probation to a maximum of 15 years to life in state prison, he said.

“It’s a tragic situation, but we cannot just ignore someone killing a baby,” Molko said. “Either she suffocated the baby before putting it in the trash can, or she placed the baby head-down in the trash-can so he asphyxiated from his own weight. She had a duty as a mother not to do that. She didn’t call for help.”

A medical expert called by the defense testified that the child could have died from hypoglycemia because Hernandez is a diabetic. But Aronson called that an “extremely remote possibility.”

Deputy Public Defender Linda Van Winkle argued that there was no proof that Hernandez wanted the child to die, and that it was reasonable to suppose her client thought the baby was dead at birth.

Hernandez, then 18, had recently arrived in this country and was isolated, frightened and unable to cope with what was happening to her, Van Winkle said. She was staying with a family who knew her parents in Mexico and was working for her room and board, but Van Winkle said the home did not provide a loving environment.

“Bertha had a bunk bed,” Van Winkle said during the trial. “She had a roof. She had food. She cleaned that house. She had a cardboard box in her closet. No one knew her in the house. She was quiet and she stayed in her room.

“We can’t and we must not judge Bertha by what we would have done.”