Resentencing petition for Gabriel Fernandez's mother denied after guilty plea in 8-year-old's 2013 murder
Pearl Fernandez, who killed her 8-year-old son Gabriel along with her boyfriend in 2013, was denied resentencing by a judge in Los Angeles County on Monday.
The Palmdale woman has been in custody since 2018 and has made attempts to have her sentence altered in recent years, citing a 2019 change to the state's felony murder law regarding malice. Her boyfriend, Isauro Aguirre, is on death row after being convicted on first-degree murder charges. Aguirre is not Gabriel's biological father.
Pearl, now 42, pleaded guilty to murder in February 2018 and admitted to a special circumstance allegation of murder involving torture. If she had taken the case to trial, prosecutors said at the time, she could have faced a potential death sentence like Aguirre.
She was instead sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Her resentencing request rejected on Monday was her second such attempt.
"On behalf of Gabriel's family and myself, we want to thank the judge," said LA County Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Hatami. "He made a fair and just decision and he didn't make the family wait, and we're very appreciative of his ruling and what he did."
Aguirre's 2018 trial and previous testimony revealed especially heinous details about the young boy's life and eventual death.
Court records show that Gabriel was tortured by starvation, shot by BB guns, and forced to eat cat litter, cat feces and his own vomit.
Pearl called 911 on May 22, 2013, to report that Gabriel wasn't breathing. Upon arrival, paramedics found him in the nude in a bedroom with a cracked skull, three broken ribs and BB pellets embedded in his lung and groin.
Gabriel died two days later.
The judge presiding over the trial called the conduct "horrendous, inhumane and nothing short of evil."
"You want to say the conduct was animalistic, but that would be wrong," he continued. "Because even animals know how to take care of their young, some to an extent that they sacrifice their own lives in caring for their young."
Members of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services had multiple contacts with the family prior to Gabriel's death, spurring questions about the department's effectiveness. A first-grade teacher of Gabriel reported the family to the department after the young boy asked if it's normal for mothers to beat their children with belts.
Charges were eventually filed, and later dropped, against two social workers and their supervisors following an investigation.
The high-profile case was highlighted in a Netflix documentary in 2020. A Change.org petition created in 2021 calling to prevent her release obtained more than 50,000 signatures