Posted on 06/18/2005 7:29:42 AM PDT by tuffydoodle
Man convicted for causing miscarriage taunted girlfriend
PAM EASTON
Associated Press
LUFKIN, Texas - In explicit letters written from jail, often signed with "love," 19-year-old Gerardo Flores tells his girlfriend how unworthy of him she is.
"Well, you fat, ugly troll I guess I'll let you go cuz I got tired of writting you and thinking what to put down, so hopefully I'll be especting a letter from you," Flores wrote in one of his handwritten letters to Erica Basoria, whose last name he sometimes spells "Basura," which in Spanish means trash.
Flores was convicted earlier this month on two capital murder charges for stepping on his pregnant girlfriend's stomach and causing the deaths of their unborn twin sons. He was sentenced to life in prison.
After Basoria, now 17, miscarried in May 2004, she signed an affidavit on Flores' behalf claiming she beat herself in the stomach and twice asked Flores to stand on her belly - once two weeks before she miscarried and a second time a week before.
Prosecutors, however, believe Basoria was abused by Flores and never asked him to stand on her growing abdomen nor inflicted any injury on herself.
Angelina County Assistant District Attorney Art Bauereiss says Basoria was just as much the victim of an abusive man as the twins she carried. Basoria was not charged in the twins' deaths.
For some, Flores' conviction has called into question the fairness of Texas' fetal protection law, which gives a fetus legal standing but exempts mothers and health care providers who perform a legal medical procedure.
"It's unfair that a doctor can perform an abortion, a wife can perform an abortion on herself ... (but) the person who helps them can go to prison for the rest of their life," said Flores' attorney Ryan Deaton, who plans to appeal Flores' conviction.
Deaton claims the law, passed in 2003, violates the equal protection clauses of both the U.S. and Texas constitutions.
Others, like Joe Pojman, executive director of the Texas Alliance for Life, which helped craft the fetal protection legislation, say the law is constitutionally sound and working as intended.
"Even the laws that protected babies from abortion before Roe vs. Wade in Texas and elsewhere, in no cases were women prosecuted under the laws," he said. "It was always the third party."
Bauereiss says the evidence he presented at Flores' trial contradicts those who "want to say that this case is one which establishes the law is essentially unfair because Erica Basoria wanted to have these children dead."
Basoria was happy, even giddy about the pregnancy, and the bruising to her face, arm and across her abdomen when she arrived at the hospital following the miscarriage prove Flores abused her, Bauereiss said.
"You wouldn't say she volunteered for these injuries," Bauereiss said. "Is that part of it?"
When Basoria found out she was pregnant in February 2004, she told her doctor she was opposed to abortion.
Medical records indicate she repeatedly told doctors and a paramedic after she miscarried that she had been taking her prenatal vitamins. But in the affidavit, Basoria said she intentionally stopped taking the prescribed vitamins and began jogging, even though she knew it might harm the babies.
Basoria bragged about the twins and showed off a picture from her sonogram at school, Bauereiss said. She had also picked out names: Eric and Gerardo Basoria.
"Doesn't sound like a woman interested in getting rid of these babies," Bauereiss said.
Deaton, however, said Basoria decided when she was four months pregnant that she wanted an abortion. When she couldn't get one, Flores hesitantly agreed to press his 175-pound frame on her belly.
"He's out having fun with his friends. He's a senior," Deaton said. "She's getting bigger and bigger and fatter and fatter and she's very jealous."
When Basoria began spotting a week before she miscarried, she went to the doctor. The doctor determined the babies were fine and didn't note any bruising on Basoria's abdomen or elsewhere, Bauereiss said. There was a notation on the medical record, however, that Basoria had asked about an abortion and was told she was too far along.
Basoria miscarried on May 7, 2004. A pathologist, who did an autopsy on the twins, determined they had been dead for at least 24 hours when they slipped from Basoria's body into a toilet at Flores' home.
Deaton acknowledges Flores and Basoria argued in the hours before she miscarried about him arriving home late, and Flores hit her. But, he points to Basoria's affidavit in which she says Flores had not physically abused her, and the autopsy's conclusion that the fetuses were dead a day earlier.
"So it is really irrelevant," he said.
Three days after the miscarriage, Basoria's statement to police differed from what she told Deaton months after she began visiting Flores in jail, Bauereiss said.
"Jerry had asked me to stand on my stomach and I had no other choice," Basoria told police.
Flores wrote at least 19 letters, none of which are dated, to Basoria. When Basoria's mother found them in a backpack, she turned them over to police.
In the letters, reviewed by The Associated Press, Flores threatened to stop writing Basoria if she didn't do things for him, such as get a tattoo of his name on her body, where only he could see it, or send him money.
Flores told Basoria she had to be the first to get a tattoo because if he were to put her name anywhere on his body, that part of his body would begin to "rott."
He also told her that when he got out of jail, she shouldn't bother coming around because he would be too busy with other "hoes." Flores referred to Basoria as a trick, a punk, a pig and a slut.
Jurors heard only a few sentences from the letters during the trial. From those sentences, jurors learned Flores had questioned Basoria about what his lawyer had told her and a reason he didn't want the twins.
"The reason I didn't want the baby's cause of my school," Flores wrote. "But what now!! I am not in school! I am in jail!!!"
The letters, Flores' attorney said, are the writings of a young man who didn't know how to express his feelings.
"He says some really nasty things about her," Deaton said. "But what do you expect from an 18-year-old who is sitting in the county jail charged with capital murder because a woman talked him into doing something?"
Basoria answered the door at her mother's house last week, but told The Associated Press she didn't want to talk about the case. It isn't clear whether Basoria and Flores have had any contact since his conviction.
Sarah Wheat, a spokeswoman for the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League Pro-Choice Texas, said her group opposed the state's fetal protection law because it could work to erode women's reproductive health choices.
It is unclear if the Flores case will have an impact, she said.
"It is just one of these horrible, tragic cases," Wheat said. "Obviously, we don't know exactly what happened."
"You'd think that even fat, ugly trolls have their pride."
Good point and seriously funny.
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