Judge Defends Year in Jail and Fine for Man who Kicked, Killed Boy, 2

William Randall Hurtt was cooking breakfast in his Baldwin Park apartment one February morning last year when his girlfriend’s 2-year-old son soiled himself and began to cry.

Shelving his meal for a moment, Hurtt bathed the boy and changed his pants. But young Caesar Reyes would not stop crying.

By then, according to police and court records, the 29-year-old Hurtt had had enough. In an angry outburst, the records show, he delivered a single barefoot kick to Caesar’s midsection that tore the boy’s liver nearly in half and killed him.

Originally charged with murder, Hurtt pleaded no contest in Pomona Superior Court in January to a reduced charge of voluntary manslaughter.

Although the district attorney’s office recommended a state prison term ranging from three to 11 years, Superior Court Judge Sam Cianchetti last month placed Hurtt on five years’ probation, ordered him to spend one year in County Jail and pay $6,700 to the boy’s mother.

Since then, Cianchetti’s decision has caused an outcry from some San Gabriel Valley residents, county prosecutors and the investigating police officer over what they say was an unusually lenient punishment for a tragic crime.

Irate letters to Cianchetti have called the judge “a black-robed pervert.” Other residents accused him of mocking justice. A local newspaper urged him to resign.

“I think the judge made a mistake,” said Robert Johnson, head deputy district attorney in Pomona. “I think he was unquestionably wrong.”

But Cianchetti, an 18-year veteran of the bench, has stood by his decision.

He wrote a letter to Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner accepting full responsibility for the sentence. He sent another letter to the publisher of the San Gabriel Valley Tribune denouncing as “questionable journalism” the call for his resignation on the basis of one case. And he drafted a form letter defending his position in response to the mail he has received.

“These decisions are never made lightly or casually,” Cianchetti said in an interview. “I gave that case a lot of thought. Future events may indicate that I was wrong. But it’s my sincere belief that’s not going to be the situation. . . . I don’t ever think I’ll see this kid in court again.”

Hurtt’s attorney, Gary W. Meastas, who advised his client to refuse an interview, said he believed the judge handed down an appropriate sentence.

“Anytime you have a child killed, that raises some emotions and gets people’s attention,” Meastas said. “I’m just disappointed because it seems to me that people are making judgments without knowing all the information the court took into consideration at the time of sentencing.”

Hurtt’s family, who also declined to be interviewed, responded with a brief written statement:

“Throughout these proceedings and during the jail term Randy will ultimately serve, this family will stand behind him,” it reads, in part.

“Nothing has been more devastating to the family, and we can only hope to put it behind us. Randy, however, never will.”

Hurtt, a certified welder and handyman with no criminal record, was arrested on suspicion of murder at the Baldwin Park Police Station on Feb. 4, 1986, the day after Caesar was declared dead at Queen of the Valley Hospital in West Covina.

Summoned to Station

Sgt. Mike Bumcrot of the Los Angeles County sheriff’s homicide division said Hurtt was summoned to the station after the county coroner had determined that the child died from “multiple injuries due to blunt force trauma.”

Besides the ripped liver, the coroner’s office reported, the child had 20 to 30 bruises on his body, most of which were determined to be less than 24 hours old. The coroner said the bruises could have resulted from being hit, squeezed or grasped, but no conclusion was reached on their cause.

“He made a complete confession,” Bumcrot said. “I think he was real scared, probably somewhat remorseful, and wanted to talk.”

At the station, Hurtt described how the child, who had been left in his care that morning by his live-in girlfriend, Veronica Azalia Martinez, had defecated and begun to cry, Bumcrot said.

Called Paramedics

Angered, Hurtt kicked the boy and then returned to the kitchen where he had been preparing breakfast. A few minutes later, he found the child lying on the floor semiconscious, Bumcrot said. Before police arrived, Hurtt had already called paramedics and tried to telephone the child’s mother.

“That demonstrated to me that there was no intent to kill,” said Hurtt’s attorney, Meastas. “He had a deep concern for the child. He felt absolutely terrible about what had happened.”

Martinez could not be reached for comment.

On Meastas’ advice, Hurtt pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder at a preliminary hearing on June 5, 1986, at Citrus Municipal Court in West Covina.

Over the next several months, as the case awaited trial, prosecutors in the Pomona district attorney’s office reviewed the evidence and concluded that a voluntary manslaughter charge, which indicates the crime was committed in the heat of passion, would be more appropriate.

Even with the bruises, prosecutors did not feel there was sufficient evidence of the malice and premeditation necessary to convict Hurtt of first- or second-degree murder, said Jack Garofalo, the deputy district attorney who prosecuted the case.

“It was done in anger,” Garofalo said. “You can’t say he had the necessary malice that was needed. . . . We said: ‘If he’s willing to plead to what it is, we will accept the plea.’ ”

The district attorney’s office approached Meastas and offered to reduce the charge in exchange for a no-contest plea, which is considered tantamount to a guilty plea but is not admissible in certain types of subsequent civil litigation.

Meastas agreed, and on Jan. 29, 1987, in Cianchetti’s courtroom, Hurtt pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter.

The 55-year-old Cianchetti, appointed to the court in 1969 by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, is not known for his leniency.

Head Deputy Dist. Atty. Johnson said that Cianchetti generally gives what are considered tough sentences, and, by the judge’s own count, he sentences a higher-than-average number of defendants to state prison.

Cianchetti said that, since Feb. 1, he has handed down prison terms in 21 of the 37 criminal cases assigned him. That translates to a 56.7% rate, higher than the state average of about 42%, he said.

In the Hurtt case, prosecutors requested that Cianchetti hand down a state prison sentence, which could have been imposed as a three-, six- or 11-year term. A probation report prepared last summer concluded that, because of the “great violence, viciousness and callousness” of the crime, “a disposition that does not include incarceration seems unsuitable.”

Diagnostic Study

But Cianchetti was not convinced. He ordered Hurtt to undergo a 90-day diagnostic study by the state Department of Corrections, where the defendant was studied by a social worker, psychologist and corrections officer.

Although their report noted that Hurtt appeared to be “a tense, anxious individual who may react to minor frustrations by irritability, by jumpiness and by ineffective excitability,” the three-member board unanimously recommended that he receive probation instead of a prison sentence.

“It is difficult to believe that Mr. Hurtt would ever, intentionally, reoffend in this or any other manner and that the relative risk to society appears slight were he to be returned to the community,” the study concluded.

Cianchetti also received supportive letters from Hurtt’s friends, his employer and family members, all of which led him to believe the crime was “a one-incident situation” and that Hurtt “had no intent to kill the child.”

“If you send someone to prison, you’re essentially saying this is an individual you’ve given up on,” Cianchetti said. “I didn’t feel in Mr. Hurtt’s situation that was the case.”

When Cianchetti sentenced Hurtt last month to a year in County Jail, he recommended that Hurtt serve that time on a work furlough program, which would allow him to work during the day, spending nights and weekends incarcerated.

The San Gabriel Valley Tribune, which has printed more than a dozen letters critical of Cianchetti, responded with a harshly worded editorial describing how, now, “the killer will spend a few evenings in jail and each day bask in the Southern California sunshine. The child will never know the joy of playing baseball, watching television, attending a senior prom or living a full life.”

The newspaper called on both Cianchetti and Dist. Atty. Reiner to resign for demonstrating “once again” that the Los Angeles County judicial system “is far more concerned with the criminal than with the victim.”

In response to the editorial, the district attorney’s office conducted a review of how the Pomona office handled the case, concluding last week that prosecutors had acted properly in accepting a voluntary manslaughter plea from Hurtt.

“Despite our personal feelings of anger and rage over this egregiously reprehensible offense,” wrote Denis K. Petty, director of branch and area operations, “we recognized that the law precluded a conviction for homicide at a level higher than voluntary manslaughter.”

He added: “Judges are not obligated to follow our office’s sentencing recommendations, and there is nothing we could have done to have prevented the judge from imposing the sentence he chose to impose.”

Bumcrot, an eight-year veteran of the sheriff’s homicide division, agreed with prosecutors that the punishment was too light.

“I just don’t think that’s the proper sentence for the murder of a baby,” he said.

But Cianchetti said the sentence was just. “I sit in the middle. I have to take into consideration views from a variety of different sources,” he said. “This is just one of those tragic cases where it’s very difficult to structure the proper sentence.”