http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7219161.htmlMom did just 7 months in starved baby's deathEarly release from a 20-year sentence not rare — but is it just?September 27, 2010
Eight-week-old Saul Castillo, wrapped in a blanket and wearing a green and white hat, died when his tiny 14-gram heart stopped beating, his emaciated body little more than skin wrapped around sunken eyes and protruding bones.
He had starved to death.
His father, charged in his part in the neglect that led to Saul's 2004 death, absconded and has not been found.
His siblings, their parents deemed unfit, are in the permanent custody of the state.
His mother, Jolene Valencia, the only person convicted in connection with Saul's death, was sentenced to 20 years in a Texas prison.
She stayed just seven months.
Valencia was released in February, the result in part of her own good behavior and state parole guidelines.
Her release after serving seven months in a Texas prison is neither rare nor unprecedented.
"She had a limited criminal history and a satisfactory institutional adjustment," said Troy Fox, administrator for the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, in explaining the board's decision.
She will have to check in with a parole officer for the next 15 years.
"It's unfortunately all too common," Marci Hamilton, a former Boerne city attorney and author of Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children, said of Valencia's punishment.
"Too often we get someone who is engaging in child abuse, and they're able to plead down to much lesser charges than if they had harmed an adult," Hamilton said.
Valencia was convicted of bodily injury to a child by failing to obtain adequate medical care for Saul, who weighed slightly more than 5 pounds when he died, records show.
Behind bars 30 months
The Texas parole board uses a release formula that includes an inmate's prison time, county jail time served, and credits earned for good behavior. Valencia served at least 30 actual months behind bars, most of it in the Harris County Jail until her conviction. The remaining 2½ years were earned in "good time" credits, totaling five years served — enough to release her on parole."It's just wrong," law professor Hamilton said of letting child abusers out as early as Valencia. "A starvation death is a horrible death … it's sending a terrible signal to parents and caretakers who are not adequately taking care of their children."
Andy Kahan, director of the city of Houston's crime victims' division, wonders if there are more such cases. "That's the million-dollar question," Kahan said.
Valencia could not be reached for comment. Relatives told the Houston Chronicle she never should have been prosecuted because the baby was sick since birth.
"That wasn't right what they did," Thomas Valencia said of his cousin's prosecution for child abuse.
But Saul's medical records show that his birth was normal. He weighed 5 pounds, 15 ounces at birth. His discharge, according to staff at Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital, was uneventful.
"Mom appears understand (sic) and comfortable with care. ID's matched, statement signed by mom … Carried in mom arms to private car - home."
But other than a normal checkup when he was a week old, Saul never returned to the doctor until his parents, Jolene Valencia and Adrian Castillo, turned up in the emergency room of the hospital where Saul was born eight weeks earlier.
By the time they arrived, Memorial Hermann medical staff determined the boy had been dead for some time. Valencia told hospital staff that he had trouble eating. He weighed less than when he was born.
"A nurse came by and noticed the child appeared deceased," a CPS caseworker wrote in her report to 315th State District Judge Michael Schneider, who presided over the foster care proceedings involving Valencia's children. "She (the nurse) took the child from the parents and started to attempt to revive the child. The parents asked if they could leave while the medical staff was working on the child."
Within hours of their interviews with police and caseworkers, Valencia and Castillo were charged with injury to a child. They posted bond and disappeared to Mexico, records show.
But not before abducting their other two children, whom Texas Child Protective Services had put into protective custody with relatives after Saul's death.
While in Mexico, the couple had a daughter.
Pleaded guilty to abuse
A traffic stop in Houston in 2009 resulted in Valencia's re-arrest. She admitted she had taken the children to Mexico, but they were back in the United States.
Valencia pleaded guilty in 2009 to the child abuse charge.
Prosecutors would not talk about the case.
A child abuse charge in an abuse death is relied upon when prosecutors can't prove someone intended to kill a child.
In Valencia's case, "a lack of a deadly weapon finding expedites her (parole) eligibility," explained Kahan.
Another recent case
In July, former registered nurse Abigail Young faced a charge of injury to a child by omission in the death of her 4-year-old daughter, Emma Thompson, who arrived at an ER in The Woodlands with a fractured skull, a vaginal tear and covered in bruises.
Jurors chose a lesser charge - "reckless" serious bodily injury to a child by omission - because they felt Young did not know her failure to help her daughter would cause Emma's death. Young's boyfriend, Lucas Coe, has been convicted of raping the child and sentenced to life in prison.
"I think as a whole society, we discount the seriousness of child abuse, and we also discount the likely recidivism of it," said Hamilton, who now holds the Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York.
Judge Schneider, whose court now oversees the foster care of Valencia's surviving children, would not comment on her parole, saying only that the decree he signed forever terminating her rights to her children speaks for itself.
But as a condition of her parole, Valencia, now 25, has been ordered to undergo parenting classes.
Valencia's two other boys are struggling to catch up to their grade level in school, court records show. Her youngest child, the daughter born in Mexico after Saul died, is doing well, according to CPS reports.
