Toddler Murder Case Goes to Jury

While admitting that Rogelio and Gabriela Hernandez may have abused and neglected their daughter, defense attorneys for the Oxnard couple argued Wednesday they never meant to harm the child and are not guilty of murder.

Before giving the case to the jury for deliberations, one of the lawyers urged the panelists not to allow passion or prejudice to cloud their judgment.

“Don’t let the anger that surrounds this case affect your decision of what happened,” said Deputy Public Defender Doug Daily, concluding an emotional six-week trial.

“In a case where there is so much to inflame a jury and arouse prejudices, there is a risk that justice will not be done,” said Daily, who represents Rogelio Hernandez.

The 20-year-old father is accused of torturing his daughter, Joselin, when she was an infant and later beating her to death in the weeks after her second birthday.

The mother, 19, faces charges of murder and abuse for allegedly failing to protect the child from the father. She is represented by a second attorney, who joined Daily in arguing many of the child’s injuries could have resulted from natural causes.

The toddler died June 22, 1996, as a result of blunt force blows to her abdomen. At the time of the autopsy, the medical examiner reported a series of other burns, bites, broken bones and bruises in various stages of healing.

The child was hospitalized in 1994 when she was 6 weeks old with nine fractured ribs, broken legs and burns to her hands and feet. Although taken away from her parents at that time, Joselin was later returned to their care in March 1996 after the death of her maternal grandmother.

In his closing argument, Daily told jurors that county social workers charged with protecting the child and monitoring her care “dropped the ball again and again.”

“It may be downright criminal,” he said.

Rogelio and Gabriela Hernandez were immature teenagers who, at age 16, had no clue how to care for a child, Daily told the jury.

The lawyer suggested some of the toddler’s injuries were caused by her father, who, he said, easily lost his temper amid the frustrations of being a young parent.

But Rogelio Hernandez is not a “cold-hearted monster,” Daily said. He did not intend to inflict pain on his daughter or kill her, as prosecutors have suggested, the lawyer argued.

“This is not a first-degree murder case,” he said. “As bad as this may be, all the evidence suggests this was more a product of episodic rages of a young man driven by frustration.”

To bolster his argument, Daily referred to incidents of alleged abuse that he said demonstrate poor judgment--not malice. In one instance, a neighbor testified to watching the father toss Joselin in the air and swing her by her legs when she was an infant.

“Are you convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that that was an act of torture?” he said. “Isn’t it just as likely that this is someone who has no idea just how fragile a young child is?”

While Deputy Dist. Atty. Dee Corona often described Rogelio Hernandez as sadistic and cruel in her closing argument earlier this week, Daily reminded jurors that the father sought medical help for his child on more than one occasion and suggested little evidence exists to support the torture charge.

After Daily concluded his summation, Ventura defense attorney William C. Maxwell launched into a lengthy closing argument that spanned most of the afternoon and pushed the case into the evening.

Prosecutors have charged Maxwell’s client, Gabriela Hernandez, with murder and child abuse on the grounds she failed to protect Joselin from a vicious father.

But Maxwell argued evidence in the case does not support that claim, and therefore his client should be found not guilty.

He told jurors that to convict Gabriela Hernandez they must conclude she expected that violent abuse was going to occur and decided not to intervene. He urged the jury to read back testimony from the trial, looking specifically at when Gabriela was in the home when Joselin sustained her injuries.

“A lot of times, my client wasn’t there,” he said.

Maxwell also raised questions about the child’s medical history, suggesting she may have suffered from a stomach ailment that contributed to her death.

Given one last shot to sway the jury, prosecutor Corona set out to dismantle defense arguments that the Hernandezes were simply an ignorant couple who lacked parenting skills.

Corona told jurors the case was not about a father who would fly into rages, but about a man who systematically brutalized his daughter and ultimately beat her to death. And she said the case was not about a mother too scared to protect her little girl, but about a woman who knew her daughter was being abused and turned a blind eye.

And she said the case certainly was not about whether social workers somehow failed to protect the toddler or monitor her care.

“I think everybody wishes they had seen what was going on before this baby died,” Corona said. But social workers “didn’t beat this child to death. They didn’t burn her, they didn’t bite her. That’s the responsibility of these two people sitting in the courtroom.”

In the end, Corona joined defense attorneys in asking jurors to make a dispassionate review of the evidence in deciding innocence or guilt. She told jurors there is only one conclusion they will be able to reach.

“Don’t use passion or prejudice; use logic, use common sense,” Corona said. “What happened here is tremendously offensive, tremendously brutal. This is not a case of ignorance, this is a case of horrendous abuse toward a little baby.”