SAN ANTONIO – A jury on Wednesday found a man not guilty in the starvation death of his 4-year-old son.
Jurors deliberated for over six hours before reaching their decision on Brandon Cervera, who was charged with injury to a child in connection with the death of his son, Benjamin Cervera.
Benjamin was found unresponsive on Aug. 17, 2021, as his stepmother was trying to get him to a hospital.
The Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the boy’s death was due to starvation.
State’s closing arguments:
The state disputed a lot of what the defense witnesses had to say about Benjamin Cervera’s death.
Bexar County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kimberly Molina ruled his death as starvation. The two doctors who were brought in by the defense, however, claimed starvation could not be proven based on pictures and growth/weight charts.
Michael Villarreal, an attorney for the state, said the doctor’s who testified for the defense were not qualified to make opinions on Benjamin’s autopsy. He acknowledges that Dr. Daniel Gebhard is a well-trained medical professional but not a medical examiner, like Molina.
Another witness, Dr. Erik Christensen, a retired Utah medical examiner, gave other examples that could have led to the boy’s death, including suffocation, seizure, heart-related issues or untreated diabetes.
Villarreal specifically focused on Christensen’s reliability for this case. He pointed out that the Utah Medical Board was not accredited when Christensen worked as a medical examiner. Villarreal also brought up how much Christensen was getting paid to work on this case. Christensen said he charges about $600 an hour to work on this case and the same amount for testimony. On Tuesday, Christensen testified he had worked about 30 hours on the case and had been paid $18,000. The payment did not include testimony he offered this week.
Another point of focus for the state were the cameras in the home and the locks on the cabinets.
The state said cameras were pointed at the children’s rooms and in the kitchens. The state claimed this was so the defendant and his ex-wife, Miranda Casarez, could see if Benjamin was sneaking out in the middle of the night to get food. In order to prevent the boy from getting food, high-tech locks were put on the cabinets, according to the state.
Villarreal also brought up how the defendant would threaten his son with squats every time he asked for bread.
The state ultimately asked the jury to find Brandon Cervera guilty on the charge of injury to a child.
“What he did, his actions, he is responsible for his child wasting away. He is the parent, he should’ve protected this child,” Villarreal said.
Defense’s closing arguments:
The defense worked hard to dispute the state’s case. Defense Attorney Jodi Soyars brought up pictures and text messages between Brandon and Casarez.
Her focus was on Casarez’s treatment of Benji and how Brandon Cervera should not be to blame.
Casarez was found guilty in the boy’s death earlier this year and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
In the text messages, jurors could see that Casarez was losing patience with Benji and the defendant was not happy with how she was handling the situation. Soyars said the text from the defendant saying not to give Benjamin dinner was taken out of context and that the boy had already had too much bread.
Soyars said the understanding of bread being offered to Benjaming was misunderstood as well. She said Benjamin had already had a whole loaf of bread and the family didn’t want to just keep feeding him bread.
Soyars showed pictures of the boy’s body changes throughout the last few months of his life. She brought up how Christensen and Gebhard both testified that they did not think that Benjamin was starved or severely malnourished based on the pictures.
“This child was always small and that does not make someone starved,” Soyars said.
As for the concerns about the squats Brandon would threaten his son with, Soyars told the jury that was used as a positive reinforcement. She claimed the squats would help the boy not ask for more bread and it would help make him stronger.
Soyars brought up Dr. Molina’s autopsy, saying that it was not complete enough to rule out other causes of death like the one’s Christensen had mentioned. She continued saying those causes of death could not be determined when Benji had already died and it should have been up to medical professionals to realize other issues may have been going on before Benji’s death.
The defense did not mention anything about Christensen’s pay for the trial but that he was a medical professional with years of experience who could give his opinion on the case.
Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales released the following statement on Thursday regarding the verdict:
We respect the very difficult decision made by the jury in this case. I want to take a moment to acknowledge the tragic loss of Benjamin. Our hearts go out to the family as well as those members of law enforcement, the Bexar County District Attorney’s victim advocates, prosecutors, investigators and all who worked to see that Benjamin’s death was not in vain and that this community will not forget his tragically untimely loss.
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