Posted on 08/21/2004 2:34:38 PM PDT by NewRomeTacitus
PROVO - Dismissing claims that his actions were a mistake made in anger, a 4th District judge ruled Friday an Orem man will spend 10 years to life in prison in the rape and near-fatal beating of his girlfriend's 2-year-old daughter.
"I feel really bad for everything that has happened," Juan Pablo Garcia-Miranda, 22, told Judge Claudia Laycock through an interpreter. "I know I have caused damage to some people. . . . I want to ask forgiveness."
But Laycock noted the child suffered permanent brain damage and had to relearn to walk. The extent of the damage will not be known until she begins school, the judge said.
For days after the Feb. 16 incident, the girl was in a drug-induced coma and on life support; doctors did not know whether she would live.
"What happened to my daughter was something terrible," the girl's 20-year-old mother told Laycock, also through an interpreter. "My little girl is not a normal girl - she has to have surgeries.
"What am I going to say to her when she's older and she asks?" the woman said. "If it depended on me, he could stay in jail and rot in jail. If once I loved him, now I hate him with all my heart."
Initially charged with attempted murder, Garcia-Miranda pleaded guilty last month to aggravated sexual assault, a first-degree felony, and child abuse, a second-degree felony.
Orem police Sgt. Gordon Smith, who was assigned to the case, told Laycock it was the worst case of child sexual and physical abuse he has seen in his 15 years in law enforcement.
"I've seen a lot, and this was shocking to me," he said. "This shouldn't have happened to this little girl. She doesn't deserve this."
Asked why he mistreated the child, Smith said Garcia-Miranda told him that unlike an infant he shares with the woman, the 2-year-old was "not my daughter."
Defense attorney Gunda Jarvis said the girl's injuries occurred in a "moment of anger that changed many lives.
"This man is not a horrible person," Jarvis said. "He made a large mistake. . . . This will never happen again."
Laycock, however, said she has worked on cases involving head injuries and is aware of the amount of force it would take to cause such an injury, adding a doctor has said the girl's injuries were the equivalent of falling three floors onto concrete.
"I think it's more than just a mistake on his part," she said.
Garcia-Miranda was arrested after he brought the unconscious girl to an Orem hospital emergency room. Although she was breathing, police said, she had a fractured skull and the bleeding was putting pressure on her brain.
"Mr. Garcia is an extremely dangerous individual," said prosecutor Donna Kelly. "He doesn't believe he needs treatment of any kind . . . he continues to lie about what happened, what he did to this child."
(End of article)
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This report from June, "Suspect pleads not guilty to assault on 2-year-old" contains details somehow left out of this latest story :
The state said the assault was so violent that it charged Garcia-Miranda with attempted murder, a first-degree felony. He has also been charged with one count of aggravated sexual assault, a first-degree felony; and one count of child abuse/neglect, a second-degree felony...
The defendant, an illegal immigrant requiring an interpreter, has been held in the Utah County Jail since his arrest Feb. 16...
allegedly(?) assaulted the 2-year-old daughter of his common-law wife, who is 19 years old. Police learned of the assault when he took the girl to the emergency room with a fractured skull. He told police that she climbed on top of the kitchen table and fell while he was in the shower.
Prosecutors also allege that in a separate incident, Garcia-Miranda beat the girl with a shoe.
The Division of Child and Family Services has been working with the mother, who also has a 7-month-old daughter with Garcia-Miranda, to make sure she gets the services she needs.
Importing of poverty and hideous criminals. Oh great just what we need.
I am going to start keeping track of how many times I read this title, "Illegal Alien Problem Worsens".
I am sure it is going to become as common as divorces.
I admit that I do not know that much about Utah's parole system...but this much I can assure you....anytime there is a lower limit there will be continuous efforts by the sleaze bags attny to get him paroled....This guy should have been removed from the gene pool as far as I am concerned...A two year old baby raped and beaten within an inch of her life and what do they charge him with? well sexual battery ( which in Utah may be rape or it may not be...any lawyer types out there) and child abuse (misdemeanor) That is as nuts as anything I have EVER read of...What about attempted murder, assault and battery with intent to kill, feldony rape of a child, and on and on...This guy should have had a sentencing that would have been at least a 100 years WOPP...but hey we wouldn't want to upset the men out there after all obviouslhy this two year old asked for it
Forget it. Trust me.
The mod changed the title to the actual title of the work you cited. That's been SOP since I've been here.
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