Jury Urges Execution of Man Who Killed 2 of His Children

Citing his lack of remorse, a San Fernando jury decided Wednesday that a Pacoima man should be executed for the beating deaths of his 2-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son.

The jury of eight men and four women took 4 1/2 hours to decide that Marco Barrera, 38, should die for killing Guadalupe “Lupita” Esquivel and Ernesto Esquivel.

Outside the courthouse, jurors said they read dozens of love letters that Barrera wrote from jail to Maria Ricardo, the mother of six of his surviving 12 children, searching for a reason his life should be spared.

“We tried to find a reason not to [support the death penalty] but we couldn’t,” juror Eileen Johnson said. “We saw nothing redeeming about the man himself.”

Foreman Bob Moore said the jury also weighed what would be best for Barrera’s children. The panelists looked at the letter that Barrera’s 8-year-old son scribbled in pencil about his father before the child’s court appearance. The boy wrote more than 40 times: “He can hurt me.” In the center of the page, he wrote and circled the words “I hate him.”

“There was a sense that imposing this [death] sentence on their father would relieve them of any future fear of being hurt by him,” Moore said.

Jurors never felt there was any “real connection” between the children and their father, and the youngsters rarely made eye contact with Barrera as they testified, Moore said.

Juror Ron Coupland said that although he is a devout Christian who opposes the death penalty, he voted for Barrera to be executed.

“If there ever is a case where the death penalty is warranted, it is this case,” Coupland said.

He said he struggled Tuesday night with how he would vote. “There was a lot of prayer, a lot of study of the Bible, a lot of soul-searching. I came to the decision that the death penalty was something I could support in this case,” he said.

The same jury deliberated six hours last week before convicting Barrera of first-degree murder for torturing and killing his two children and burying them in the Angeles National Forest.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Ronald S. Coen will impose his sentence next month.

He has the option of imposing the jury’s death sentence or giving Barrera a life term without parole.

On Friday, Coen will sentence the defendant’s wife, Petra Ricardo, 39, who pleaded no contest to one count of child endangerment. She agreed to testify against her husband and her sister in exchange for a four-year sentence.

Maria Ricardo, 31, the victims’ maternal aunt, was convicted last week of two counts of child abuse and will be sentenced next month. Her lawyer, Larry Baker, said he will appeal.

Barrera, a one-time street vendor, fathered eight children, including Lupita and Ernesto, with his wife and six with her sister.

Since 1997, when his wife and their children moved to the United States from Tijuana, all but two of the children, including Lupita and Ernesto, had lived with Barrera and Maria Ricardo in a converted garage in Pacoima. Petra Ricardo and two sons lived nearby.

During the trial, four of Barrera’s children gave eyewitness accounts of the daily beatings that eventually led to their siblings’ deaths.

A 12-year-old girl testified that Barrera beat Lupita after she wet her bed, then threw Lupita against the wall with such force that she heard a crack and saw her sister’s head drop. Lupita died of a fractured skull and had other injuries, the autopsy found.

After Lupita died, the children testified, Barrera focused his rage on Ernesto.

Ernesto’s 14-year-old half sister told the court that Barrera did not like Ernesto because he did not believe the boy was his biological son.

In his short life, Ernesto had had 13 broken bones and so many bruises, scars, abrasions and ulcers that it took 2 1/2 pages for the medical examiner to list them.

In seeking the death penalty, Deputy Dist. Atty. Carolyn McNary told jurors Monday that as long as Barrera is alive, his 12 surviving children will live in fear.

She asked jurors to “feel the fear in this child” by holding in their hands the letter that Barrera’s 8-year-old son wrote. Then, she asked, “Do you think he is ever going to have any peace in his life until [Barrera] is dead?”

She praised the Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies who stopped to investigate what they thought was an abandoned vehicle in the forest and found Ernesto’s body. Their discovery led authorities to unearth Lupita’s body three weeks later in a shallow grave nearby.

Without them, she said, “Who knows how many victims would be stacked up there?”

In contrast, public defender Arthur Braudrick urged jurors to spare Barrera’s life, saying his children--even those who testified that they want him to die--might grow up to regret helping prosecutors secure their father’s execution.

Even if they have no regrets, they will have to live with the memory of testifying against him, Braudrick said, criticizing McNary for putting the children on the stand.

If Barrera is sentenced to death, Braudrick told jurors, “You will kill my client and you are going to damage those children.”

Barrera offered no defense throughout the trial. But in the penalty phase, his mother, father, aunt and uncle were brought from rural Mexico to try to show jurors that “he really is a human being,” Braudrick said.

The Mexican government arranged for the family’s trip to the United States to testify for Barrera in an attempt to save his life, Braudrick said. Barrera is a Mexican citizen, and his native country opposes the death penalty.