Jurors Ask Leniency For Cortez 5-Year Sentence Outrages Two Who Don’t Believe He Hurt Child

Four months ago a jury found Federico Cortez guilty of felony injury to a child - a child who died of massive head injuries.

On Tuesday, two of those same jurors stood before a judge and asked that Cortez be granted leniency.

“I do not believe he did it,” Catherine Rubow told 1st District Judge James Judd during Cortez’s sentencing hearing. “I believe the mother injured her child.”

Tuesday’s sentencing hearing was just the latest twist in a case that has been consumed with finger-pointing, courtroom outbursts and accusations of brutality.

By the end of court Tuesday, Cortez had been sentenced to 5 years in prison - although he will be eligible for parole in one year. He left the courtroom after professing his innocence and bitterly criticizing the judge and prosecutor.

Meanwhile, the woman he accuses of fatally injuring her own daughter sat in the courtroom a free woman.

The case began in September 1994 when 2-year-old Christina Campanelli died. Massive brain injuries killed her, but she also had bruises on her back, arms, face and feet. One of her legs was broken.

Doctors knew almost immediately the child’s death was caused by abuse. But deputies and prosecutors could not pinpoint who inflicted the injury.

Christina had been living with her mother at Federico Cortez’s home. Cortez, 35, and Eileen Campanelli, 32, were dating at the time. Both at first claimed not to know how the girl was injured.

The couple’s friends and baby sitters told police of previously seeing both adults mistreat the children.

So the prosecutor’s office charged both with felony injury to a child, accusing them of “causing or permitting” the child to be severely injured. Eventually, the couple turned against each other. A volatile Campanelli testified during Cortez’s trial that her boyfriend admitted hurting the toddler. Meanwhile, Cortez’s attorney blamed Campanelli for the girl’s death.

During closing arguments at the trial, deputy prosecutor Lansing Haynes told the jury not to worry about whether Campanelli was guilty. He assured them she would get her own trial. They convicted Cortez of felony injury to a child.

A month later, Campanelli was given a plea agreement. Her charge was dropped to misdemeanor injury to a child in exchange for her guilty plea. Judge James Judd sentenced her to 25 days in jail.

During Cortez’s sentencing hearing Tuesday, two jurors told the judge they were outraged at the plea agreement. They said they only convicted Cortez because they thought he should have prevented the injuries - not because they thought he did it.

They said they had counted on Campanelli going to trial.

“I would love somebody to explain to me why a plea bargain would enter into the death of a child,” Rubow told the judge.

Juror Judith Berndt said she didn’t think it was fair that Cortez was getting a harder sentence than Campanelli. Rubow asked for the lightest sentence possible.

Haynes defended his decision, saying he had not planned to give Campanelli a plea agreement when he talked to the jurors during the trial. But afterward, he decided he could not prove Campanelli was guilty of felony injury to a child. He said it would have been deceptive to tell one jury that Cortez did it and tell another jury that Campanelli did it.

By giving her the plea agreement, he was assured she would be convicted of something.

But, “The rightness or wrongness of that is not really a factor here,” Judge Judd said Tuesday. “I have to decide what I’m going to do with Rico Cortez, who is convicted of felony injury to a child.”

Judd talked about how the adults had not protected Christina - how, whether Cortez inflicted the injury or not, he had failed to stop the abuse. Giving a light sentence would depreciate the seriousness of the crime, he said.

Cortez vowed to appeal the case.

“All I can say is I wish we could bring Christina Campanelli back,” Judd said.

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