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An appeals court last week ordered that the woman, now 22, be freed after already serving four years in prison because of what it considered errors by the sentencing judge in Jersey City.
Prosecutors, however, said they will argue that the appeals panel incorrectly negated their ability to negotiate plea deals and the judge’s discretion in sentencing. They’ve formally requested the woman be kept behind bars until the state’s highest court moves one way or another on their appeal.
The woman, whose identity is not being released by CLIFFVIEWPILOT.COM because she was a sexual abuse victim, admitted the crimes and was sentenced to five years in prison in 2007.
The appeals panel said Judge Kevin Callahan overlooked a “long history of horrific sexual and psychological abuse by her father, who twice impregnated her; her significant mental retardation; [and] the significant role her father played in the death of her first child and the assault of the second.”
She was re-sentenced to four years of time served, with an order of release to follow.
Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said the judge could have put the woman behind bars for seven years but opted for five under the plea bargain — rather than the 10-year maximum she would have faced if she’d been convicted at a trial.
At the time of the crimes, the girl lived with her father — who worked as a cook at a Hackensack restaurant — his wife, his brother, and a sibling. The others in the household said they didn’t know of the relationship or of either of the girl’s pregnancies.
Police in September 2005 found the newborn boy still alive at the bottom of the shaft in the three-story building after neighbors heard him crying. He landed on a pile of trash, suffering a fractured skull, authorities said at the time.
The girl’s mummified remains were found nearby, they said.
Investigators said the girl told them that the father, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, threatened to kill her if the teen didn’t throw the babies down the shaft.
He later pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter, aggravated assault and two counts of aggravated sexual assault.
And even though he apologized for his “heinous crimes,” he also said he saw the girl as “a person I’m in love with…. I would not have [had] sex with her if she had not seduced me,” beginning when she was 13.
It is “unlikely she would commit another offense” given the circumstances, the appeals panel wrote, citing cooperation with authorities that helped put her father behind bars for 35 years in 2007, just before she was sentenced to five years.
As a result, the judges concluded, “the mitigating factors substantially outweighed aggravating factors.” They determined that two concurrent four-year sentences were enough.
Adding in the time she remained behind bars after her September 2005 arrest, she is already eligible for parole.
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