Parents Go On Trial in Death of Toddler

Standing beside an enlarged photo of Joselin Hernandez, a Ventura County prosecutor told a jury Monday that the toddler was systematically tortured and killed by her teenage father as her young mother stood by.

In a solemn opening statement, Deputy Dist. Atty. Dee Corona said Rogelio and Gabriela Hernandez abused their daughter to the point that the 2-year-old stifled her own cries, ultimately enduring a slow and painful death.

“Both the defendants are responsible for burning, biting and breaking--and finally destroying--a precious little girl,” Corona said, telling jurors the Oxnard parents should be found guilty of murder and child-abuse charges.

But defense attorneys told the jury the Hernandezes were ignorant young parents, not malicious killers.

“This is a case where you are going to hear of children having children,” said Deputy Public Defender Doug Daily, who is representing Rogelio Hernandez. “These two people were 15 years old when they got together and 16 when they had Joselin.”

During opening statements, Rogelio and Gabriela Hernandez, now ages 20 and 19, respectively, sat behind the defense table with their eyes downcast.

The father listened without expression as Corona accused him of breaking his daughter’s ankles and burning her feet, hands and mouth with battery acid when she was an infant. He faces a charge of torture for those alleged acts.

Seated nearby, Gabriela Hernandez looked away from the jury and listened to the introductory remarks with an interpreter’s help.

Wearing a brown suit with her long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, the mother showed no emotion as her lawyer told the jury she was a victim of sexual abuse as a child and physical abuse as a teen.

Ventura attorney William C. Maxwell said Gabriela Hernandez was molested and raped by two uncles as a child growing up in Mexico.

Maxwell said witnesses will testify during the trial that she was later beaten by her husband when she tried to stop him from hurting their daughter.

“She tries to protect their child and he beats her,” he said, adding there were times when the mother tried to get Joselin medical help but was stymied by her husband.

To prove the battered woman’s defense, however, Gabriela Hernandez may have to take the witness stand. Before the trial began, Superior Court Judge James Cloninger ruled that her attorney could not rely on experts to describe the alleged abuse.

There were other factors contributing to the actions of these two young people, Maxwell said, including the male-dominated culture in which they were raised.

“In this particular subculture--the one my client grew up in and Rogelio grew up in--the girls aren’t worth much,” Maxwell said.

Both defense attorneys warned that during the next six weeks the county’s Public Social Services Agency would also be put on trial for its role in the case.

The agency took Joselin away from her parents amid abuse allegations in 1994, only to return her to their custody two years later.

The child died as a result of severe blows to her stomach on June 22, 1996, barely three months after being returned to her parents’ care.

“The death of this child could have been prevented in 1994 by firm intervention on the part of various agencies,” Maxwell said. “But . . . that didn’t occur.”

The trial is expected to span six to eight weeks as prosecutors call to the witness stand relatives, neighbors, social workers, police officers and doctors who treated Joselin.

For more than an hour Monday, Corona gave the jury a preview of testimony to come during the trial, starting with evidence of the injuries Joselin suffered as an infant.

Joselin was born May 30, 1994, as a normal, healthy baby who gained weight and showed no signs of illness in the first three weeks of her life, Corona said.

But at 6 weeks, Joselin was hospitalized with nine fractured ribs, two fractured legs and second- and third-degree burns to her limbs, the prosecutor said. Joselin was also malnourished and dehydrated, she added.

Joselin spent one week in the hospital and upon her release was temporarily placed in a foster home, jurors were told.

Eventually, Joselin was put in the custody of her maternal grandparents, Amor and Miguel Nieto, where she thrived for more than a year, Corona said.

During that time, Gabriela and Rogelio Hernandez met with a social worker and took court-ordered parenting classes. They were allowed supervised visits and eventually granted unsupervised overnight visits, Corona said.

In March 1996, Joselin began a 60-day extended visit with her parents, who by that time had moved into a small residence behind the Nieto’s grocery store in Oxnard, Corona said. Two weeks later, Amor Nieto was killed in a car accident.

“From the time Joselin’s grandmother died, her appearance and demeanor changed dramatically,” Corona told the jury.

Joselin, then 2, went from a happy, healthy child to a somber, sickly and skinny toddler who rarely spoke and suffered from frequent bouts of vomiting, Corona said.

At one point, Corona told the jury, Joselin suffered a severe burn to her hand and her parents took her to a botanica, or a folk healer. The woman, who is expected to testify, told the parents the child should be taken to the hospital.

But Corona said Rogelio Hernandez told the woman he had no health insurance, so she treated the child.

“She [folk healer] described her as a dirty little girl pulled roughly inside the store by her mother,” the prosecutor said. When the healer rubbed ointment on the girl, she said she was stunned that the child did not cry out.

“Her eyes filled up with tears, which ran down her face,” Corona said.

As the prosecutor went on to describe other injuries Joselin sustained in the weeks before her death, the 12 regular and four alternate jurors sat silently and looked stunned. One woman shook her head in disbelief as Corona methodically listed the internal and external injuries found during the autopsy.

At the end of her opening statement, Corona told jurors the evidence will show both parents killed their child: the father by inflicting the deadly blows and the mother for failing to protect.

“While Rogelio burned, beat and hit his little girl,” Corona said, “her mother, Gabriela Hernandez, sat by and let it happen. . . . Gabriela is just as responsible for the injuries as if she inflicted them herself.”

Prosecutors called their first four witnesses Monday afternoon: an ambulance technician, an Oxnard police officer, a social worker and an emergency room nurse who treated Joselin as an abused infant and later at the time of her death.

The nurse testified the Hernandezes acted distant when their daughter came into the hospital in 1994. She said parents usually “hover” when their children come into the emergency room, but that the young couple did not behave that way.