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Maya's father, Valentine Escobedo, was convicted of battery in her death. Maya's mother, Kristen Byers-Escobedo requested a prison sentence reduction in June 2012. (South Bend Tribune photo/Provided / June 29, 2012) |
SOUTH BEND—
In the end, no one was happy — not the judge, not the attorneys, not even Kristen Byers-Escobedo, who had requested a hearing to have her prison sentence reduced.In 2010, Byers-Escobedo was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the neglect of her 2-year-old daughter Maya, who died in 2008 after sustaining injuries and abuse at the hands of her dad, Valentine Escobedo, who was later convicted of battery in the girl’s death.
On Friday, Byers-Escobedo returned to court to ask St. Joseph Superior Court Judge Jane Woodward Miller if she would be willing to reduce, even suspend, her prison sentence.
And backing up the request were the very people who had prosecuted the case in 2010.
Chief Deputy Prosecutor Ken Cotter asked Miller to reduce Byers-Escobedo’s sentence by 10 years, as a way to acknowledge the help she provided prosecutors during the trial of her husband.
But Miller, who presided over both parent’s trials, said she wanted to know how much help Byers-Escobedo had actually provided.
“What did she do that was so helpful,” Miller asked St. Joseph County Metro Homicide investigator James Taylor, who spearheaded the investigation into the girl’s death.
“She was helpful in explaining the different events, connecting some of the dots and the time frames of the 18 months before the case,” Taylor testified.
“But what dots,” Miller said, seeking specifics.
Taylor, try as he might, was unable to give Miller an answer that satisfied her question.
Miller said Byers-Escobedo, as a convict, could have been subpoenaed and forced to testify in the trial — making any deal for her cooperation unnecessary.
Cotter countered by saying that a willing and helpful witness was much easier to work with.
“It was beneficial that she was so candid with her testimony,” Cotter said.
‘It didn’t have to happen’
To Miller, however, that fact didn’t seem to be enough.
The judge asked Byers-Escobedo if she was willing to take responsibility for her role in the death of her daughter — an admission the mom had been unwilling to make in 2009.
Then, during the trial, Byers-Escoebdo testified that she was unaware that her husband was abusing their daughter — “It didn’t even enter my mind that he would intentionally hurt her,” she said then — a statement the jury refused to believe.
But on Friday, Byers-Escobedo said she has since realized how blind she was to her husband’s actions.
“I accept that I was responsible for what happened to my daughter,” Byers-Escobedo told Miller. “She’s not here, she would have been six in two weeks, and I’m partly to blame.”
