Monday was an emotionally charged day for relatives of Gabriel Fernandez, the 8-year-old boy who was brutally tortured to death by his mother, Pearl Fernandez, and her boyfriend in the worst case of child abuse the presiding judge said he had ever seen.
Gabriel’s two cousins demanded at a Los Angeles Superior Court hearing that the mother’s resentencing petition be denied.
Judge George G. Lomeli actually denied Fernandez’s request, and by 9 a.m., they were able to breathe a sigh of relief knowing that the woman who starved her son, forced him to sleep handcuffed to a wooden drawer, and broke his teeth with a baseball bat, would remain behind bars.
Fernandez’s boyfriend, Isauro Aguirre, was sentenced to death in 2018, and his automatic appeal petition is currently pending in the California Supreme Court.
“He should spend the rest of his life in prison for what he did to little Gabriel,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Jonathan Hatami, who prosecuted the case against him. “He didn’t do anything wrong. He just wanted them to love him, and they tortured and murdered him.”
Gabriel Fernandez was murdered by his mother and her boyfriend in 2013. The relatives, while presenting their views in the court, have demanded that Pearl Fernandez should not be angered.
(family photo)
For the second time Monday, Pearl Fernandez used a recent California law to challenge her sentence of life in prison without parole for a 2018 murder conviction. Although Lomeli had both his 2021 and 2026 petitions denied, he is allowed to continue filing similar requests in the future, a notion that is deeply troubling to Gabriel’s relatives.
“My disappointment is due to the family,” Hatami told The Times on Monday. “It opens up wounds, they have to come to court, they’re afraid the judge might release this person. That anxiety and stress can break you.”
Gabriel’s cousins Olivia Rubio and Emily Carranza spoke to reporters outside the courtroom about their frustration and fear.
“We just want this to end. We need to stop this,” Rubio said. “It has been a difficult time, but she is not going to stop, and that is why our voices need to be louder.”
Hatami said it was highly unlikely that Fernandez’s review petition would be successful if she opted to have it brought before the same judge again, but he said it was possible that a different judge could be assigned to the case who might interpret the law differently.
Fernandez and Aguirre were convicted of torturing Gabriel in their Palmdale apartment in October 2012, when he was 7 years old, and until he died in May 2013.
In court, her siblings testified that Gabriel was beaten with wooden clubs and brooms, and tortured with pepper spray, Icy Hot, a metal hanger, a belt, lighters, and BB guns, among other objects. According to court documents, she was forced to eat cat litter, cat feces, urine, vomit and rotten spinach.
When he arrived at the emergency room in May 2013 after being unconscious after being beaten, he had injuries on almost every part of his body, including BB wounds to his face, chest and waist; cuts and scars on his penis; skull fracture; several broken ribs; And there were open wounds on his calves and feet.
Fernandez signed a guilty plea to life in prison without the possibility of parole, but later filed a remorseful plea, arguing that he was coerced into the plea and that his state-appointed defense attorney provided ineffective counsel. She claimed that she mistakenly believed that her case would be sent to appeal and noted that she had the verbal comprehension of a second grader.
Fernandez was able to try to overturn her conviction using Senate Bill 1437, a law that took effect in 2019 and allows people to seek resentencing if convicted of felony murder or under the natural and probable consequence doctrine.
Under these two legal theories, which have been significantly limited under California law, people can be convicted of murder even without intent to kill – either because the death occurred in the course of a crime or because murder was considered a probable consequence of a crime in which they assisted.
Hatami explained that these rules were often used to convict multiple gang members of murder when a person died during a crime committed by the group. As a result, groups of teenagers and young adults can receive life sentences even if only one of them pulled the trigger of the murder weapon.
SB 1437 allows some of these gang convictions to be overturned – but it also paves the way for some child abuse murder convictions to be challenged.
“Many times we blame the mother under the natural and probable consequences, saying that it is your legal duty to protect this child and you allowed someone else to torture and murder your child, so you are also guilty of murder,” Hatami said.
In arguing against the reconsideration petition, Hatami said that SB 1437 does not apply to Fernandez because she not only allowed her boyfriend to abuse Gabriel, but she herself was a direct participant in the torture.
“The torture and murder of Gabriel was never a case of grave murder or of natural and probable consequences,” he wrote in his protest. “It was not promised that way, it was not presented that way, and it was not tried to be that way.”
Although Hatami understands the reasoning behind SB 1437, he believes the law should be amended to exempt child abuse cases. He also thinks there should be strict limits on how many times SB 1437 can be used to challenge a conviction, noting that every time a reconsideration petition is filed, it has an impact on the victim’s relatives.
“I feel angry and frustrated that they have to relive this,” he said. “It’s unfair to them.”
City News Service contributed to this report.
