FILICIDE: Erika Mendieta, Ontario: Beaten tot looked like bar fight victim, Crown says

 Feb 12 2011 Peter Small

Erika Mendieta singled out her 2-year-old daughter for prolonged beatings — leaving little of her body unmarked — and must be denounced with a 10-year sentence, a prosecutor says.

In post-mortem photos, tiny Emmily Lucas “looks like she has been in a bar fight,” Allison MacPherson told a judge Friday.
“This is a case of extreme moral culpability,” MacPherson said. “It took time and energy to do this to Emmily.”
Mendieta, 34, looked on calmly in her prison-issue green sweats, her dishevelled hair contrasting to her previously neat appearance at trial.
On Jan. 17, Ontario Superior Court Justice Nola Garton found her not guilty of second-degree murder but guilty of manslaughter in Emmily’s death seven years ago.
It was another step in a case marked by controversy. Her first trial ended with a hung jury in 2009 after her ex-boyfriend, Johnny Bermudez, stunned the court by testifying he was the real killer.
Her second trial ended in another mistrial last November after the jury and Mendieta complained a former prosecutor in the case was distracting them by making faces as he sat among the spectators.
On Friday, MacPherson pointed out that on Nov. 13, 2003, Mendieta beat Emmily unconscious, severely injuring her head and spine, but didn’t call 911 until she’d gone to school to pick up her other kids.
And she never told paramedics and doctors the truth about how Emmily was hurt — claiming the girl had fallen down some stairs —thus hampering their efforts to save her, MacPherson said.
“She beat her, she abandoned her and then she lied to the very people struggling to save her life,” MacPherson said.
Defence lawyer Bob Richardson called it a tragic case, but said Mendieta is herself the product of abusive homes, first in Honduras, then in Canada.
Her first spouse and Emmily’s father, Derrick Parra, physically abused Mendieta, he said.
But she felt her life was turning for the better in the months before Emmily died. She had a new boyfriend, Bermudez, and her five other children were with her.
She brought Emmily, who had been raised since birth by her aunt and uncle, home to complete the circle. “It was the desire to include Emmily in the family that led to tragic consequences,” he said.
Noting that Mendieta is a first offender, Richardson asked the judge to impose a four- to six-year sentence.
In her victim impact statement, Blanca Parra, 18, Mendieta’s oldest daughter, said she has been doubly hurt by the death of her sister, “the best kid ever,” and her mother’s imprisonment. “I don’t know how much more I can take.”
Selena Parra, the aunt who raised Emmily and now, along with her parents, is taking care of four of Mendieta’s remaining children, told reporters no prison sentence will ever bring back the girl she regarded as a daughter.
Parra recalled the tiny tot who loved chicken soup and dressing in pink. “No one can understand the pain that I feel in my heart to see that someone could hurt such a little person.”
Derrick Parra, 35, Emmily’s biological father, admitted he had been a violent person in the past and accepted responsibility for some of the abuse Mendieta sustained.
“But I was there for my kids . . . I would never hurt my kids.”
The judge will sentence Mendieta March 2.
http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/article/937704--beaten-tot-looked-like-bar-fight-victim-crown-says

FILICIDE: Ontario: Mendieta

Dan Robson :  Dec 14 2010

Emmily Lucas was killed by either Erika Mendieta or Johnny Bermudez. On that much they agree.
But Crown and defence lawyers painted two starkly different portraits of the tragedy as they made their final arguments to Justice Nola Garton at Mendieta’s second-degree murder trial on Tuesday.
Emmily was beaten to the point of convulsions on Nov. 13, 2003. The 2-year-old’s body was covered in bruises. Her head and spinal column were severely injured. She died of brain trauma at Sick Kids 10 days later.
“Erika Mendieta did not kill her daughter,” defence lawyer Robin Parker told the court. “We say Johnny Bermudez killed Emmily Lucas.”
Bermudez, Mendieta’s former live-in boyfriend, has told the court he killed Emmily. As a witness he is protected by the Canada Evidence Act, so his testimony can’t be used to prosecute him.
The defence contends Mendieta left Emmily and the couple’s 18-month-old boy with Bermudez when she went to pick up her four other kids from school. Emmily cried. Bermudez beat her.
The Crown contends Bermudez is lying.
“His testimony is just another attempt to exonerate Mrs. Mendieta,” said Crown prosecutor Allison MacPherson, noting the pair met several times for coffee between Mendieta’s first and second trial.
“You don’t drink coffee with the man that murdered your baby,” MacPherson said.
“But you might if you had killed your baby and he was going to help get you out of it.”
Bermudez has refused to waive his protection under the Canada Evidence Act, and has never offered a sworn confession to police.
The Crown says Mendieta beat Emmily in fit of frustration and rage when she was late picking up the other children from school.
As evidence against her, prosecutors cite inconsistencies between Mendieta’s original police statements and her later testimony, as well as wiretapped conversations in which, they say, she appears to confess.
The defence has argued that too much of the wiretaps are inaudible and in dispute for that evidence to be credible.
If Garton is not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Bermudez did not kill Emmily, she must acquit Mendieta, Parker argued.
Mendieta’s first trial ended with a hung jury in 2009.
Her second trial spiraled into a judicial debacle last month, when the jury asked that a man be removed from the courtroom for making distracting faces during Mendieta’s testimony.
They didn’t know that the man was Paul Alexander, an assistant Crown attorney who prosecuted Mendieta at her first trial but was no longer on the case.
Garton declared a mistrial. Alexander’s actions are being investigated by the chief prosecutor, and he is no longer on in-court duty.
Garton then agreed to rule on the case alone, using evidence from the second trial. She will return with her verdict on Jan. 17.
“It’s going to be a tough month,” said Selena Lucas, Emmily’s one-time guardian and the sister of her biological father, Derrick Parra.
“We just have to wait,” she said, breaking into tears. “And that will be it.”
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/907120--crown-defence-make-final-arguments-in-mendieta-case