Case Sparks Debate Over Testimony by Children

A lawyer for four of Marco Barrera’s children urged Thursday that a protocol be established to ensure that attorneys are notified whenever their minor clients are called to testify in court.

Attorney Lisa E. Mandel said prosecutors would not contact adult witnesses without going through their lawyers. Nor should they call child witnesses without an attorney’s consent.

“In no other circumstances, if a person is represented, do you circumvent their attorney,” she said.

Mandel said she was upset to read in the newspaper last week that two of her clients--an 8-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl--had taken the witness stand during the penalty phase of their father’s murder trial without her prior knowledge.

Last month, Barrera, 38, of Pacoima was convicted in a San Fernando courtroom of beating to death 2-year-old Guadalupe “Lupita” Esquivel and 5-year-old Ernesto Esquivel, then burying them in Angeles National Forest. Their bodies were found in 1998.

A week later, the same jury, after hearing his children’s testimony, recommended Barrera be executed for his crimes. He will be formally sentenced later this month.

Four of Barrera’s children--including the 14-year-old girl--testified against their father during the evidentiary portion of the trial. Mandel was in court that day.

Unlike the eyewitness accounts used to convict Barrera of two counts of first-degree murder, the children’s testimony in the penalty phase was based on their feelings toward their father and whether they wanted to have contact with him again.

The children were not asked if they thought their father should be executed. But Deputy Dist. Atty. Carolyn McNary asked the 14-year-old and her 20-year-old half-brother if either of them had come to court in an attempt to save their father’s life. Each answered, “No.”

Three of the children testified that they never wanted to see Barrera again. “I just hate him,” the 14-year-old girl said.

The youngest, the 8-year-old boy, didn’t say much but told jurors about a letter he had written about his upcoming court appearance. He had scrawled more than a dozen times in pencil: “He can hurt me.”

In response to the children’s testimony, Los Angeles County Superior Court Commissioner Donna Groman held a closed hearing Thursday in Children’s Court in Monterey Park with the lawyers for the children, parents and social workers.

All parties submitted accounts of their involvement in the Children’s Court appearance in the death-penalty phase. No one from the Los Angeles district attorney’s office was present at the meeting.