Acquittal in Death of 2-Year-Old Frees Man

When James Hwe left jail Wednesday, his mother told him he couldn’t come into her house.

She placed charcoal and red envelopes in a bowl on the front steps of her Irvine home and set them afire. She burned incense. The only way her son could enter the house was by leaping over the flames, a Chinese tradition, a symbolic cleansing to get rid of evil spirits and make way for a fresh beginning. Hwe made the leap into the arms of his crying relatives.

Hwe, 28, of Westminster, was acquitted after spending 29 months in Orange County Jail on charges of murdering his girlfriend’s 2-year-old daughter, Alethea Ta, in July 1998, and of child abuse. He couldn’t pay the $250,000 bail.

Westminster police arrested Hwe after a two-year investigation. Hwe’s attorney, Denise Crawford, said jurors told her they thought the death was accidental.

“I got in jail for nothing,” Hwe said, “and now I’ve lost everything,” he said, referring to his car, his job as a machinist, his girlfriend and his 3-year-old son, who lives with the boy’s mother.

The district attorney’s office declined to comment.

Hwe said he is angry and frustrated. Inmates and jailers called him a baby killer, he said. He spent 17 months in solitary.

Hwe said he was baby-sitting the toddler while her mother was at work when the girl fell in the driveway. She was taken to Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center with severe head injuries. Hospital officials called police, saying the injuries were consistent with a beating. Alethea died a week later from a brain hemorrhage.

“I loved her like my daughter,” he said. “What happened was a bad accident. I should have held her tight.”

After jumping into his mother’s home, Hwe bathed in a solution she made from boiled grapefruit rinds to “cleanse out the bad luck.” Then he called his attorney to ask about the fight for custody of his son.

“My homecoming was great,” he said, flanked by his family and pictures of his son. “It would’ve been better to see my son. The joy is not complete.”