Couple Found Guilty in Child’s Beating Death

A young Oxnard couple were found guilty Wednesday of killing their 2-year-old daughter, capping a six-week trial that has prompted the county’s social services agency to reexamine how it handles child abuse cases.

Rogelio Hernandez, 20, hung his head slightly and closed his eyes as he was pronounced guilty of first-degree murder and torture in the beating death of his daughter, Joselin.

Moments later, his wife, Gabriela, 19, began sobbing after the jury returned a second-degree murder verdict against her for her part in the toddler’s death.

“The evidence was overwhelming,” one juror said afterward. “It was very unanimous. I feel really satisfied, as my fellow jurors do.”

Joselin died on June 22, 1996, as a result of blunt force blows to her abdomen. An autopsy later showed 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 county social workers took her away from her parents at that time, Joselin was later returned to their care in March 1996 after the death of her maternal grandmother.

It was while in the care of her parents that Joselin died.

Her father could get 25 years to life for his role in Joselin’s death and an additional 15 years to life for the torture charge. Gabriela Hernandez faces 15 years to life for failing to protect her daughter. The couple are scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 13.

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The jury returned with its verdict Wednesday morning after deliberating for four days.

Throughout the hearing, Gabriela and Rogelio Hernandez looked straight ahead, never at each other.

The 12-member jury found Rogelio Hernandez guilty of 10 of 11 counts. Gabriela was convicted of eight of nine counts, including child abuse.

Attorneys for the couple said they will appeal.

“The first step is to argue that it was an error to conduct this trial jointly,” said Deputy Public Defender Douglas Daily, who represents Rogelio.

During the trial, Daily argued several times for the judge to separate the cases.

Daily said the joint trial damaged his client’s case. Gabriela Hernandez’s attorney, William Maxwell, refused to speculate whether a separate trial for his client would have made a difference.

Daily said he is concerned that prejudicial evidence against his client may have crept in because of the joint trial.

“This trial is so full of elements that would cause jurors to hate anyone who committed these crimes,” Daily said. “We are concerned with anything that fueled that.”

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For example, he said, some jurors may have read newspaper reports that Rogelio Hernandez beat Gabriela.

In an interview with The Times last spring, Gabriela Hernandez said she tried to protect her baby, but then her husband would become more violent and take it out on Joselin.

“I just want to say what really happened,” Hernandez told The Times. “I tried to help Joselin, but Roy would hit her harder. He would tell me he wanted to discipline her the way he was disciplined.”

But Gabriela Hernandez never testified against her husband.

Daily said evidence presented to the jury that Rogelio Hernandez pushed Gabriela several times in the past may have been damaging to his case.

“It made it difficult for the jury to ignore,” he said. “It hurt him.”

In his closing argument, Daily acknowledged that his client easily lost his temper amid the frustrations of being a young parent, but that Rogelio was not a “cold-hearted monster.” He said the defendant never intended to inflict pain or kill his daughter, as prosecutors suggested.

Daily told jurors that county social workers charged with protecting Joselin and monitoring her care “dropped the ball again and again.”

Testimony in the trial, along with reviews of other cases, has prompted a new probe into procedures used by county social workers handling cases of child abuse and neglect.

Barbara Fitzgerald, director of the county’s Public Social Services Agency, said she decided to investigate the agency’s procedures, even though an earlier review found that no agency policies or procedures were violated in the Hernandez case.

“Obviously, if you have a system where everything was followed and the outcome was still a child’s death, then something needs to be changed,” Fitzgerald said.

The Hernandez case already has prompted changes in the agency’s decision-making process.

In June, Fitzgerald ordered that every decision to allow an abused child to move back into a parent’s home must be made by a team of social services agency staffers, rather than individual social workers.

MacGregor is a staff writer and Warchol is a correspondent. Correspondent Nick Green also contributed to this story.