The child police say was beaten to death after eating birthday cake without permission had suffered repeated abuse, according to court documents released Wednesday.
Jack Garcia was a challenging kid -- smart, but stubborn and uncommunicative, especially in his early years, according to those who knew him.
But by third grade, before his mother moved him across the country to live with a man she'd met online, "he was ready to soar," said Margaret Saleh, assistant superintendent of pupil services in the Goleta, Calif. school system.
Once in Maryland, though, the 9-year-old's life changed dramatically -- and ended brutally. His mother, Oriana Garcia, didn't enroll him in public schools and considered home-schooling instead.
Rather than seeking professional help for Jack's behavioral problems as she'd done in California, police say his mother, Oriana Garcia, allowed her boyfriend, Robert "Roy'' Wilson, and her brother Jacob Barajas to physically discipline the red-haired boy.
During the four months they all lived together in Wilson's three-bedroom Hagerstown apartment, the 30-year-old warehouse worker's methods escalated from slapping and sparring to smacking his legs with a bamboo sword, Barajas told police. Then came the handcuffs, with Oriana Garcia's knowledge, "to teach Jack not to steal," she told investigators.
The abuse culminated June 30 while Garcia worked as a retail store supervisor, according to court records. Barajas handcuffed the boy, and Wilson knocked him down with blows so severe that Jack begged him to stop.
Barajas told police it got so bad that he removed the handcuffs, but Wilson continued, repeatedly hitting the boy in the stomach until he passed out. Jack was suspected of taking some birthday cake belonging to Wilson's 2-year-old daughter.
My guess is that he took the slice of cake, knowing punishment would follow, because he had been starved.
Police say Garcia planned and participated in some of the discipline, such as making Jack eat until he felt sick and forcing him to exercise. That evening, as Jack lay critically injured, handcuffed and bound to a chair, police say his mother delayed his care for hours by sending away an ambulance Barajas had called.
Yes, the kid's mother sent away the ambulance.
Only when the boy's breathing turned to alarming gurgles did Wilson make a second 911 call, but it was too late. Jack died five days later.
Death penalty supporters are sometimes accused of being barbaric. The truth is exactly opposite. The welcome mat to barbarism is laid down by those who would argue that anything other than the death penalty is a fitting answer to this atrocity.
As I was urging the audience of capital prosecutors, never be on the defensive about supporting the death penalty. Let your opponents be on the defensive. They own this case. Since they like being holier-than-thou, let them cuddle up to it.
Are you advocating a death penalty prosecution for all three of the participants in this awful case, Bill?
I am genuinely interested to know if you think it is morally fitting -- perhaps even morally obligatory -- to seek to punish with an execution Oriana Garcia AND Robert "Roy" Wilson AND Jacob Barajas? (I also would like to know if you think the feds need to try to get involved in order to pursue capital charges given that Maryland has abolished the death penalty.)
I am intrigued you have brought up this case as a "poster child" for capital punishment: it would seem that all three individuals had a significant role in the victim's death, and yet all three also seemingly could (and surely would) assert they did not intend for the boy to die. If you think such a case (morally) demands a capital prosecution, I am thinking you might also think some extreme drunk driving cases causing gruesome deaths might likewise (morally) demand capital treatment.
"Are you advocating a death penalty prosecution for all three of the participants in this awful case, Bill?"
You bet. This does not necessarily mean that I would impose death sentences for all three. I am content to let a jury of neutral citizens decide. Aren't you?
All three are up to their ears in this stomach-turning atrocity, yes. I see no basis for federal jurisdiction, but I would look hard for one.
"I am intrigued you have brought up this case as a "poster child" for capital punishment: it would seem that all three individuals had a significant role in the victim's death, and yet all three also seemingly could (and surely would) assert they did not intend for the boy to die."
I am plenty used to hearing such assertions, and other forms of indignant lying, from defendants. Lying is the main deal these days. But the lot of them are in it up to their ears. If they want to tell the jury they merely wanted to torture the boy, fine, let them. You gotta love defendants who are both savage and stupid.
I would not a priori exclude the death penalty for a sufficiently grotesque drunk driving murder case. But this case is not about drunk driving or anything close. It is about the most horrible form of child cruelty. An adult cannot avoid knowing that this kind of extended sadism can result in death, as it did. When you assume the risk of death for a helpless boy, then, in my courtroom, you're going to assume the same risk for yourself. The difference is that in court, you will have everyone watching to assure fairness and all the protections the law creates.
Douglas, I am curious, is there any case where you would concede that the death penalty is clearly the appropriate punishment.
In 1996 habitual sex offender Robert Boyd Rhoades kidnapped 8-year-old Michael Lyons as he was walking home from school in the small California town of Yuba City.
Rhodes took the child down by a river and tortured him for 10 hours, inflicting 70 to 80 non-lethal stab wounds while continuously raping him. Rhodes finally killed the little boy the next morning.
At the time of the murder Rhoades was on parole for the 1993, sexual assault of a 4-year-old girl in Amador County. In April 1985, Rhoades kidnapped, robbed, sexually assaulted and tortured a woman at knife point in Yuba County. Rhoades told the victim that he was taking her to the river bottoms in Marysville to kill her. This victim jumped from a moving car to save her own life.
In April, 1984, Rhoades kidnapped, raped and murdered 18- year-old Julie Connell in Alameda County while she studied at a Pleasanton Park. Four days later, he robbed another woman in San Lorenzo, CA. A DNA match for Rhoades was found on the little boy's body.
Should we try to keep this misguided soul in prison for life, so he had read literature if he chooses, exchange correspondence with Susan Sarandon, enjoy food, watch television, and receive health care as he ages, with tax dollars from his victims families paying part of the cost. Maybe he can be rehabilitated? Should we try?
Mike,
As I said in my debate with Alan Dershowitz on the Piers Morgan Show, speaking then of the Boston Marathon bomber's shredding of and eight year-old, a society that lacks the moral confidence to execute a killer like that lacks the moral confidence to do anything.
I don't believe for one little minute that Doug, if forced to choose, would not choose the death penalty for these creatures. But of course I do not speak for Doug. I will be interested to see if he responds to your post.
Mike, I have long thought there ought to be a strong presumption for the punishment of death for multiple intentional murders (and a weak presumption against death for all first offenders with a single victim). I think such a system would be morally sound and also much easier to administer without concerns about racial and other biases than existing system. And such a system would surely lead to a death sentence for Rhoades.
I wonder what you and Bill and Kent think of such a proposal. In particular, I wonder if such a proposal in the form of an initiative (perhaps to be applied retroactively by judges, along with a new limit on state appeals) might be the most efficient and effective way to clear up the mess that is California's capital system.
Thank you for your answer.
I oppose presumptions in the punishment phase, nor do I think they would work as a practical matter to reduce delay and forever-and-a-day appeals.
As ever, I prefer facts to either presumptions or characterizations. One sentencing facts are found by a preponderance (the governing standard as announced by Booker), that settles the question as far as I'm concerned.
(N.B. Since I favor a return to binding guidelines, I realize that, in some instances, sentencing facts would have to be found BRD. So be it. It's worth the candle to get judges off their present trajectory of back-to-the-luck-of-the-draw).
Douglas: So holding to your preference for "a strong presumption for the punishment of death for multiple intentional murders (and a weak presumption against death for all first offenders with a single victim)," are you saying that you would oppose a death sentence for Rhoades' murder of Michael Lyons if were his only crime?
If yes, what if Rhoades had not killed Julie Connell in 1984, with the rest of his criminal record leading up to his first-time murder of Michael Lyons intact, would you still oppose a death sentence for him?
In my ideal capital system, a prosecutor still could argue forcefully that a horrific single murder by a first offender justified a death sentence, but a jury would be instructed to return a sentence other than death if they were not convinced by the evidence that this single murder was as bad or worse than most multiple murders. As you describe the facts, Mike, I might as a juror be able to reach such a conclusion, but I would really want to see all the evidence before making a firm judgment on such a life-and-death matter.
Meanwhile, with sufficient evidence that Rhoades had committed a prior murder, the instruction for the jury becomes that they should return a death sentence unless convinced that there is something in the character of the defendant or circumstances of his crimes that justifies giving him a benefit he did not give to multiple victims.
Put simply, I believe death is different and I am also a numbers guy. In my view, if you intentionally end two or more lives, you are a monster whose termination is presumptively justifiable. Single murderers can also be monsters, but I think humans ought to think hard before being eager to dispose of these folks because their monster-status is more debatable based on the numbers.
Doug,
I think prosecutors and juries do, in fact, give special weight to the multiple murder and prior murder circumstances.
I recently counted the eligibility ("special") circumstances in a sample of California capital cases (cases where the prosecutor sought the death penalty and the jury imposed it), and multiple or prior murder was present in over half. Add in the cases of attempted murder of a second victim (which isn't an eligibility circumstance but should be), and we are well over half.
But others carry heavy weight also. We have a circumstance for torture in California. Kidnap, rape, and murder of a child is also an exceptionally heinous variant of murder.
Simply put, I don't think your presumptions are needed or will accomplish anything. The prosecutors and juries are assigning the correct weight already. In the whole sample, there was only one case that left me thinking "why this one?" All the others were, on their facts, clearly and substantially above the mean of heinousness.
Kent, I am not at all surprised that my suggested "multiple killings presumption" is often being applied de facto by prosecutors and jurors. But I still strongly believe making such a presumption de jure could and would achieve a lot formally and functionally. It might have, among other benefits, led to the quicker trial and actual death sentence in the Holmes case. It also would make me MUCH more willing to support non-unanimous death verdicts from juries.
In the end, Kent et al., as the abolitionist movement continues to gain steam, I would urge you and other vocal supporters of the death penalty to astutely retrench in order to have the best chance to preserve the punishment for the truly worst of the worst.
Bill's right. Certainly, whether the three miscreants intended for the boy to die is almost besides the point. These depraved beasts let him suffer for days when they had a duty to help, and he died. They have the same culpability as a drive-by shooter who kills two innocent victims.
This was a horrible horrible crime, and Doug's attempt to minimize the enormity of the crime with an odd focus on what generally makes murders more heinous is tendentious at best and weak sophistry at worst.
As for the "retrenching" advice--that sounds awfully close to "concern trolling."
Doug,
Over the last 50 years, support for the DP has grown considerably. Gallup reports that public support is up slightly in the most recent annual poll from what it was the year before (http://www.gallup.com/poll/178790/americans-support-death-penalty-stable.aspx), and is at 60% or more for the 40th consecutive year. The Boston Marathon bomber got a unanimous jury for the death penalty with the best capital defense lawyer in the country at his table, and in one of the most liberal jurisdictions in the country. And the Supreme Court just issued the most pro-death penalty decision since the last millennium.
I would urge abolitionists to retrench before their bovine opposition in the face of horrible cases like the one this entry is about exposes them for the ideological extremists they are.