Pearl Fernandez, now 37, pleaded guilty to the murder of her son’s death, and she was sentenced to life in prison without parole. She claims that new laws have made her conviction a bit hazy.
A judge rejected on Tuesday for a re-sentence meant by the Palmdale woman who confessed to the first-degree murder of her son, aged eight, who was regularly beaten, starved, and placed in a closet and beaten until he died in 2008.
Pearl Fernandez, now 37, was sentenced in March of 2018 to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole in connection with the murder in May 2013 of her son Gabriel who was killed. However, she claimed in a petition filed on April 1 that she would not be able to be found guilty of first-degree murder or second-degree murder due to recent changes in the law of the state that affect defendants in a few murder cases.
They boyfriend of her, Isauro Aguirre, 40 was sentenced to be executed. The automatic appeal he made at the California Supreme Court is pending.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge George G. Lomeli said he had carefully read Fernandez’s petition for resentencement and the court record in determining that she was “not eligible for re-sentencing relief.”
“It was proven through her admissions during the guilty pleas that her murder was deliberate and involved the infliction of torture for several months.,” The judge stated and noted that the evidence confirms that Fernandez was a “major player in the killing of the child victim.”
He also stated that Fernandez was willing to give up all appeal rights as of the date of her guilty plea.
A crowd of people stood outside the courtroom with banners, including those that read “Justice for Gabriel” and “No Mercy for Child Killers” were cheering when the deputy district attorney Jonathan Hatami announced that Fernandez’s petition was denied. The prosecutor opposed the woman’s request and urged the judge to reject the petition.
In a post on Twitter shortly following, Hatami said, “The real measure of our community can be seen in how you treat your children. I will never cease to take on the fight for the weakest of us. Justice was provided today.”
At the sentencing in March of 2018 in the case of Fernandez and Aguirre, the judge described the case as “without doubt the most severe and egregious instance of torture this court has ever seen.”
“You would like to claim that the behaviour was animalistic; however, that’s wrong since even animals know how to care for their babies. This isn’t animals,” Lomeli said then and added that he was hoping that the defendants would wake up in the early morning thinking about what they did to the boy.
In refusing any automatic move to lower the jury’s recommendation for the death sentence of Aguirre to life imprisonment with no parole possibility, The judge noted the “repeated beating as well as the burning, binding and hunger” of the boy.
In a short statement before her sentencing, her mother said, “I want to say that I am regretful to the family members for the things I did. I would like Gabriel was still alive. Every day I wish I’d made better choices.”
During Aguirre’s trial, the defense attorneys told jurors that the child was regularly beaten, killed using a BB gun, and forced to eat cat waste and sleep in a small cabinet while gagged and bound.
Hatami claimed that Aguirre was an “evil” person who “liked to torture” the boy and was a regular victim during the time before the boy’s death. Gabriel hated Aguirre because he believed that Gabriel was homosexual, as per the prosecutor.
The boy was just 7 at the time of the incident and was killed 3 months after turning eight.
Los Angeles County Fire Department personnel visited the family’s home in the 200 block of East Avenue Q-10 in Palmdale on May 22, 2013, due to a phone call from a neighbor that Gabriel wasn’t breathing. He was declared brain-dead the same day and removed from life support two days later.
One of Aguirre’s lawyers Michael Sklar, contended that Fernandez was the one who struck the victim with a belt and then shot the boy with a gun and was the one responsible for a lot of the abuse that led to his demise.
“I think that they both slapped the wrong person at one another, which often happens in cases of co-defendants,” Hatami responded after Fernandez’s plea. “The evidence proved that our office believed they both were equally guilty in the matter, and I believe the evidence supported that.”
The judge agreed, stating in 2018 that evidence showed that Aguirre was a “major actor.”
The death of the boy and his arrests, Fernandez and Aguirre, caused fury regarding the handling of this investigation of Los Angeles County social workers who had multiple contacts in the case with family members.
A subsequent investigation resulted in the prosecution of 2 former social workers and their supervisors. However, that case was dismissed by an appeals court in the state determined they “never had the necessary duty to stop abusers from committing crimes and were not in custody or care of Gabriel” in the context of the abuse charges they were charged with and were “not officials” as defined by”section 103 of the Government Code section involving falsification of public documents.
