New trial ordered for Florida woman sentenced to death in killing of 3-year-son
(Reuters) - A Florida mother on death row for the killing of her 3-year-old boy known in the media as "Baby Lollipops," was granted a new trial by the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday.
The conviction and sentencing of Ana Maria Cardona, who was 29 at the time of the 1990 slaying of Lazaro Figueroa, were overturned because prosecutors made an "inflammatory, egregious, and legally improper closing argument" during her trial in 2010, according to the court opinion released on Thursday.
It was the second time prosecutorial improprieties led to her conviction being reversed. Cardona's first conviction and death sentence in 1992 were overturned after the court decided prosecutors had withheld key evidence from the defense.
Lazaro's dehydrated, malnourished, 18-pound body was found in November 1990 in the bushes of a home in Miami Beach. He was severely beaten and scarred, with bedsores from his head to his buttocks, and he was wearing a dirty diaper taped to his body with brown packing tape, the opinion said.
Since he was not immediately identified, police and the media began calling him "Baby Lollipops" because his T-shirt had a lollipop on it.
His cause of death was described as "child abuse syndrome" hastened by blunt force trauma to his head.
"While we are saddened by today's Florida Supreme Court decision in the Ana Cardona murder case, we are prepared to retry this homicide," Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in a statement. "The cruelty involved in young Lazaro Figueroa's murder deserves our fundamental commitment."
In its 6-to-1 opinion, the court said the evidence was strong enough to convict Cardona in the killing, but it overturned the case because it said the prosecutors repeatedly mocked Cardona and went too far in their pleas to the jury.
Cardona was described as being a "drama expert" who belonged in a telenovela, a Spanish-language soap opera, and prosecutors repeated the phrase "Justice for Lazaro" several times, over objections from the defense, the opinion said.
"As we have stated for decades, we expect and require prosecutors, as representatives of the state, to refrain from engaging in inflammatory and abusive arguments, to maintain their objectivity, and to behave in a professional manner," the opinion said.
Cardona's public defender told the Miami Herald her client "deserves a new trial."
"In my heart, I always knew this case was coming back,” Miami-Dade Assistant Public Defender Edith Georgi told the newspaper.
(Reporting by Karen Brooks in Fort Worth, Texas; Editing by Peter Cooney)
