In the last minutes of his two-year-old murder case, Adan Canela finally spoke up. And he wailed.
His protests of innocence came late Thursday morning in court, but didn?t stop a Baltimore city judge from imposing maximum prison sentences on Canela and co-defendant Policarpio Espinoza for the slayings of three young children.
“I didn?t do this,” Canela said through a Spanish interpreter, his voice dissolving into sobs. Canela, 19, said he loved his cousins ? the children he and Espinoza, 24, were convicted last month of nearly decapitating. “I, too, had dreams, and they?ve been taken away,” he said.
For the May 2004 deaths of 8-year-old Lucero Espinoza, her brother Ricardo, 9, and their cousin Alexis Espejo Quezada, 10, Canela and Espinoza received two consecutive life sentences each without the possibility of parole, plus 30 additional years in prison.
Ever a brutal case of tangled family melodrama, shrouded in dark mystery, the sentencing of Canela and Espinoza drew at least six of their relatives, evidently divided as to Canela?s and Espinoza?s guilt.
Lucero?s and Ricardo?s mother told the court she hadn?t seen enough evidence to believe they killed the children, who were found dead in a Northwest Baltimore apartment. Espinoza?s brother accused Maria Andrea Espejo Quezada, Alexis?s mother, who sat apart from the others, of concealing the identities of the true killers.
In her victim impact statement, Quezada called on Canela and Espinoza to explain why they killed the children. Investigators who worked on the case and jurors from the second trial ? an earlier one in the summer of 2005 ended with a hung jury ? gathered in the courtroom for the sentencing.
Defense attorneys protested that the men were denied justice because they were tried together. They vowed to appeal the case the same day.
But Judge David Mitchell said the murders repulsed a city, and law enforcement officials, seemingly inured to violent crime.
“These children were slaughtered, butchered,” Mitchell said. “The shame is eternal.”
