Mother Pleads Innocent in Baby’s Shooting

Shantae Molina, dressed in a baggy blue jailhouse jumpsuit, pleaded not guilty Monday to the charge of first-degree murder in the shooting of her infant son, which her lawyers have described as an accident.

Molina, 20, fidgeted silently as her attorney, Eric Lampel, entered her plea at her arraignment in the Justice Center in Santa Ana. Judge Gregory H. Lewis set bail at $250,000.

Molina, who sat behind an iron mesh grille in a courtroom inmate holding area, has maintained that a handgun she grabbed when she thought she heard a prowler went off accidentally on the afternoon of Oct. 16. A bullet hit the infant in the head.

Nearly four dozen relatives of the Laguna Niguel woman crowded into six rows of the courtroom, and several said afterward that they did not believe that she could kill her 8-month-old son, Armani Shyloh Contreras.

“I have only one thing to say,” said her stepfather, Kenneth Welch. “She is innocent.”

Her father, Carlos Molina, agreed. “It’s ridiculous,” he said. “There is no way she would harm that baby. She loved him too much.”

Later, relatives scrambled to raise collateral for bail and for legal fees.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lewis Rosenblum refused to say why Molina has been charged with murder. All police reports, search and arrest warrants remained sealed.

Some details are expected to be revealed at a preliminary hearing, scheduled for Nov. 20.

Rosenblum said it was “inappropriate” to divulge any of the evidence against Molina. He added: “After a thorough investigation . . . I believe she committed a crime of murder. I believe she killed this child intentionally.”

But Lampel said that based on what his client was doing at the time, she could not have committed a premeditated crime. “You don’t do laundry, talk on the phone and watch TV if you are planning a murder,” he said.

Armani was pronounced dead seven hours after the shooting. Doctors at Children’s Hospital in Mission Viejo, where the infant was born in late January, twice operated on him.

Lampel complained in court that he and a fellow attorney on the case were denied access to his client by Orange County Jail personnel this weekend, and he asked Lewis to assure that Molina would be able to see her lawyers.

“Consider it a done deal,” the judge said sternly, issuing the order.

But two hours later, Lampel said Molina was still being held incommunicado. Relatives said they had not been allowed to see her.

“This is not Nazi Germany,” the lawyer said in a later telephone interview. “There is such a thing as the 6th Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees right to counsel.”

Sheriff’s Lt. Tom Garner said records show that Lampel’s co-counsel, Wendy Forward, had visited Molina once over the weekend and that a paralegal had visited twice. “If they have problems, they should feel free to contact the captain of the jail or myself, but I don’t think there was a problem,” he said.

Lampel also complained that he was not given documents containing ballistics, police reports and other evidence.

Rosenblum said that he had no idea why Lampel was not given access and that he had never heard of such a problem with the jail before.

The prosecutor said he had told Forward that the defense would be given all documents today, far sooner, he said, than required by law and much sooner than in most murder cases.

“It’s very unfortunate that [Lampel] would cause the public to think something sinister is happening here when he doesn’t have all the facts,” Rosenblum said.

Rosenblum, voted the best prosecutor in the state this year by the California District Attorneys Assn., has won convictions in all 57 murder cases he has prosecuted. In May, he won a murder conviction against Julian Albert Villa of Whittier, who claimed he had killed his girlfriend by accident during an argument.

Lampel has done both civil and criminal cases in 18 years of practice, he said. Forward, his co-counsel, is a former homicide prosecutor with the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, he said.

Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty, but Rosenblum said Molina faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted.