Gabriel Fernandez’s mother again denied resentencing in 8-year-old’s torture death

An error has occurred. Please contact support for more assistance.

A Los Angeles judge on Monday denied a bid for resentencing by a Palmdale woman who pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder of her 8-year-old son nearly 13 years ago.

LOS ANGELES (CNS) — A Los Angeles judge on Monday denied a bid for re-sentencing by a Palmdale woman who pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder of her 8-year-old son — who was routinely beaten, starved, forced to sleep in a closet and tortured until his death nearly 13 years ago.

Pearl Sinthia Fernandez, now 42, was sentenced in March 2018 to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the May 2013 killing of her son, Gabriel, but has since filed two re-sentencing petitions contending that she could not now be convicted of murder because of recent changes in state law that affect defendants in some murder cases.
Her boyfriend, Isauro Aguirre, now 45, was sentenced to death. His automatic appeal to the California Supreme Court is pending.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge George G. Lomeli denied Fernandez’s first petition in June 2021, saying then that he concluded that she is “not entitled to re-sentencing relief.”

“It has been established by her own admission during her guilty plea that the murder was intentional and involved the infliction of torture over a period of several months…,” the judge said at the June 2021 hearing, noting that the record supports the theory that Fernandez was a “major participant in the murder of a child victim.”

The judge noted then that Fernandez had agreed to waive any and all of her appellate rights at the time of her February 2018 guilty plea.

Lomeli denied her second re-sentencing petition Monday, saying he found that she could be convicted of murder beyond a reasonable doubt.

The judge also rejected Fernandez’s claim in the petition filed in February, which alleged that “the state-appointed defense attorney provided ineffective assistance of counsel” and “coerced me into signing a plea of guilt for a sentence of life without possibility of parole.”

Fernandez noted that she had received assistance with the new petition, which alleged that “the petitioner has comprehension issues and documented verbal comprehension of a second-grade student” and that she was “mistakenly under the impression that her case would then be going to appeal” when she signed the plea agreement.

Prosecutor Jonathan Hatami — who is now the assistant head deputy of the District Attorney’s Complex Child Abuse Unit — told reporters outside the downtown courthouse, “It’s unfair that we constantly have to come here every few years and deal with this issue, where the family gets really, really nervous… What about if Judge Lomeli is not here anymore? What about if people retire? They have to be worried that five years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now, this same thing is going to happen again.”

The Antelope Valley has seen several cases of horrific child abuse. The Department of Children and Family Services says it has been making changes to stop them from happening.

One of the boy’s cousins, Olivia Rubio, who spoke out in court against the re-sentencing bid, told reporters outside court, “All we want (is) this to be over. We do need closure. It’s been a hard time, but she’s not going to stop, and that’s why our voices need to get louder, and that’s why we need to stand together, and this is who we are. We stand together and protect all the other children.”

Another of the boy’s cousins, Emily Carranza, told reporters that it was “nerve-wracking” not to know what might be the outcome of the hearing, and said she believes Fernandez “might try again.”

“I wanted her to hear what she’s done and the trauma that she’s caused the family and her other children, so it’s not fair for us to keep coming back,” said Carranza, who also spoke in court. “It’s unimaginable what she does and what she thinks. She’s just a manipulator, and she is not a victim.”

Hatami said two of Gabriel’s siblings had also reached out to him.

The prosecutor noted that Fernandez — who was listening to the hearing via phone from Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla and said, “I’ve never, I’ve never” — interrupted him as he told the judge that she had admitted torturing and murdering Gabriel. He said she “doesn’t want to accept any responsibility and accountability for what she did.”

At the March 2018 sentencing for Fernandez and Aguirre, the judge called the case “without a doubt the most aggravated and egregious case of torture this court has ever witnessed.”

“You want to say that the conduct was animalistic, but that would be wrong because even animals know how to take care of their young… It’s beyond animalistic,” Lomeli said then, noting that he hoped the two defendants would wake up in the middle of the night thinking about what they had done to the boy.

In denying an automatic motion to reduce the jury’s recommendation of a death sentence for Aguirre to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the judge cited the “repeated beating, binding, burning and starving” of the youngster.

In a brief statement shortly before she was sentenced, the boy’s mother said, “I want to say I’m sorry to my family for what I did… I wish Gabriel was alive. Every day I wish that I made better choices.”

During Aguirre’s trial, prosecutors told jurors that the boy was routinely beaten, shot with a BB gun, forced to eat cat feces and sleep inside a small cabinet while gagged and bound.

Hatami called Aguirre an “evil” man who “liked torturing” the boy and did so systematically in the months leading up to the child’s death.

Aguirre hated Gabriel because he thought the boy was gay, according to the prosecutor. The boy was 7 when the abuse began and was killed three months after he turned 8.

Los Angeles County Fire Department personnel went to the family’s home in the 200 block of East Avenue Q-10 in Palmdale on May 22, 2013, in response to a call that Gabriel was not breathing. He was declared brain-dead that day and taken off life support two days later.

One of Aguirre’s trial attorneys, Michael Sklar, contended that Fernandez was the one who hit the boy with a belt, shot him with a BB gun and was responsible for much of the abuse prior to his death.

“I think they both pointed the fingers at each other, which sometimes happens in co-defendant cases,” Hatami responded after Fernandez’s plea. “The evidence showed, and our office believed that they were both equally culpable in the case, and I think the evidence showed that.”

The boy’s death and the arrests of Fernandez and Aguirre led to an outcry over the handling of the case by Los Angeles County social workers, who had multiple contacts with the family.

A subsequent investigation led to the filing of criminal charges against two former social workers and their two supervisors. But that case was subsequently dismissed after a state appeals court panel found that the four “never had the requisite duty to control the abusers and did not have care or custody of Gabriel” for purposes of the child abuse charge leveled against them, and were “not officers” within the meaning of the Government Code section involving falsification of public records.