Mother Gets Minimum Verdict in Boy’s Death

In a trial that played out emotional themes of motherhood, tragedy, grief and responsibility, a jury in Van Nuys found a woman guilty of misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter Friday in the death of her infant son but acquitted her of more serious charges.

Lesia Smith-Pappas wiped tears from her eyes as a jury found her negligent for speeding and failing to properly secure her infant son, Alexander, with a seat belt. She faces a maximum sentence of one year in jail, not the 12 years in prison that prosecutors had sought.

Alexander, who was 3 months old, was crushed and died in his car seat when Smith-Pappas rolled the family van while rushing two of her other children to school Aug. 29, 1995.

After the verdict, she thanked the jurors and shook their hands. Smith-Pappas said of the three-week trial: “I don’t think I should have been here at all in the first place. Kids will be kids.”

Jurors, who deliberated nearly three days, said that at first they were divided along gender lines.

“Part of it was a guy-thing, gal-thing at first,” said jury forewoman Carol Stevenson, as several of the female jurors clustered around Smith-Pappas and her lawyer on the courthouse steps. “There were certain aspects of this that, being a mother, it was easier to understand.”

Stevenson criticized prosecutors for bringing Smith-Pappas’ two oldest children--Christina, 10, and Nicholas, 8--to court to testify against their mother. Each was injured in the wreck that took the life of their brother.

“I found that hard to take, when your children were on the stand,” Stevenson told Smith-Pappas, adding, “I didn’t think it was appropriate.”

The six men and six women on the jury sat on opposite ends of the jury room as deliberations began, Stevenson said. But as they talked, they reached a consensus.

Although Smith-Pappas seemed a sympathetic figure in court, “We didn’t just go in there and feel sorry for her,” juror Ed Kitching said. “We went with the law.”

After reading over the complicated jury instructions “20 to 30 times,” jurors said they agreed they could not find that Smith-Pappas’ negligence was so extreme that she displayed a callous disregard for human life, Kitching said. That element was crucial for the conviction that prosecutors sought for the more serious charges of gross vehicular manslaughter.

Jurors also acquitted Smith-Pappas of child endangerment and reckless driving, but convicted her of driving without a license.

The 33-year-old mother of four will be sentenced by San Fernando Superior Court Judge Shari K. Silver on Sept. 12.

On Sept. 11, a judge in Juvenile Dependency Court is scheduled to decide whether the children will remain with their mother. They were placed in foster homes a week after the accident, and returned home July 2, a month before the trial began.

During the trial, Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Foltz Jr. contended that Smith-Pappas was criminally negligent for failing to secure her children with seat belts, despite two prior citations for failing to buckle them up. He also alleged that she was driving about 70 mph along Bouquet Canyon Road when her van crossed the center line, struck another car and sailed over a 15-foot oleander.

He said that although he disagreed with the verdict, he understood how jurors reached it. “The jury did what it could with the difficult instructions they had,” he said. “Certainly you hope parents recognize the seriousness of carting children around without seat belts.”

Wearing a pin with a photograph of her dead infant son over her heart, Smith-Pappas testified tearfully that she indeed had buckled up her children. She said she lost control of the van when she was distracted by her son and daughter, who unbuckled the belt they shared in the front passenger seat because it was too tight.

She also suggested that the baby’s lungs might have been crushed by a passerby who improperly performed CPR, or by mistakes made by paramedics and hospital emergency room doctors.

Foltz continues to view Smith-Pappas as a remorseless woman who blames others for her child’s death, but defense attorney Dale Galipo noted that she still visits her son’s grave site every week and wept on the witness stand during her testimony.

“Any mother is naturally going to feel guilty and always think about what more she could have done, how maybe things could have been different,” Galipo said.