NYC stepfather convicted of manslaughter
NEW YORK (AP) - March 18, 2008 Brooklyn jurors deliberated four days before finding Cesar
Rodriguez guilty of lesser charges in the death of the tiny,
malnourished girl who was severely punished after she was caught
stealing yogurt. Prosecutors, who alleged the girl was the victim
of years of abuse and neglect comparable to torture, had sought to
convict Rodriguez of murder.
First-degree manslaughter carries a maximum penalty of 25 years
in prison. Rodriguez also was convicted of endangering the welfare
of a child.
"I am grateful that at least they're holding him accountable
with a manslaughter conviction," Assistant District Attorney Alma
Dwimoh said.
Evidence in the nearly three-month-long trial in state Supreme
Court included grim crime scene photos from the room where Nixzmary
Brown was bound to a chair, starved and forced to urinate in a
litter box. More than once, court officers passed out tissues so
weeping jurors could dry their eyes.
In closing arguments, prosecutor Ama Dwimoh displayed a large
photo of the victim's body - bruised, topless and splayed on a
wooden floor in the family's ramshackle apartment - as she stood in
front of the defense table and berated Rodriguez.
"You battered a little girl who weighed 36 pounds," she said
last week. "When she was on the floor in that room you imprisoned
her in, you turned your back."
Gazing up at the photo, she argued: "There is nothing that
7-year-old Nixzmary Brown could ever do to deserve that."
Despite the emotion surrounding the case, defense attorney
Jeffrey Schwartz stuck to a bold strategy of casting Nixzmary's
mother as the real killer, labeling her "Mommy Dearest."
He also portrayed the victim as a violent and uncontrollable
"little Houdini" - a reference to her supposed knack at slipping
out of the makeshift restraints devised by her parents to keep her
from attacking her younger siblings.
Schwartz asked the jury of two men and 10 women to focus on the
testimony of a jailhouse snitch, who claimed that behind bars the
mother, Nixzaliz Santiago, described a fatal beating.
It was "the confession of the sick, of the demented, of the
disturbed mother," he said.
Rodriguez, 29, pleaded not guilty to murder, manslaughter and
other charges in connection with the girl's death on Jan. 11, 2006.
In a videotaped statement played for the jury, Rodriguez said
that on Nixzmary's last night, he punished her by sticking her head
under running bath water "to make her think." Investigators
suspect the girl's head was smashed against the faucet - something
her stepfather denied doing.
The stepfather admitted he had abused her but denied killing
her, saying on tape, "Sometimes she'd get me real angry, and I
used to just throw her on the floor. ... She was always lying to me
about everything."
Schwartz contended that Rodriguez was a hard-working security
guard and overwhelmed parent who was "guilty of child abuse." But
he said the case was plagued by sloppy police work and a rush to
judgment, and told jurors, "You have not seen evidence in this
courtroom that has proven murder or manslaughter charges."
Schwartz also sought to blame the city's overburdened
Administration for Children's Services for doing too little to stop
it.
There had been warning signs for years before the little girl
died. School employees had reported that she had been absent for
weeks the previous year.
Neighbors noticed unexplained injuries and noted she appeared
underfed and small for her age. Child welfare workers had been
alerted twice but said they found no conclusive evidence of abuse.
The case, coupled with a series of other high-profile deaths of
children known to child welfare workers, sparked public demands for
reform.
City officials and lawmakers responded by bolstering the corps
of caseworkers and drafting legislation to give life in prison
without parole to parents who cause the death of a child under 14
through abuse.