"Baby John" GUTIERREZ - 5 months - Murrieta CA

MURRIETA - A Lake Elsinore man accused of shaking his 5-month-old
son and throwing him head-first into a playpen was acquitted today of
felony charges but found guilty of misdemeanor child abuse.
Jurors deliberated about a day before clearing
23-year-old David Anthony Gutierrez of two felony child abuse counts
and instead found him guilty of two counts of misdemeanor child abuse.
He was sentenced to a year in jail and five years
probation, but was immediately freed from custody with credit for time
served.
Gutierrez must also take anger management and parenting classes.

"It's what we were expecting. It's what we were hoping for," said
Christina Crowder, the defendant's aunt. "Now he can get back on track
and build a relationship with his baby."
"He has a good support group behind him, so I think he'll be just fine," she added.

Gutierrez's son, who will be 2 years old next month, is healthy and lives with his mother, Crowder said.

Gutierrez, who could have faced 24 years in state prison if convicted
of the felony charges, was arrested at Riverside County Regional
Medical Center on Aug. 27, 2008, after being questioned about his son's
injuries.
A doctor testified that the infant had a bruise to his head, bleeding on the brain and a broken rib, leading the physician to suspect child abuse
because the infant was too young to crawl and too old to have been injured that

way at birth.

Dr. Frederic Bruhn said the baby had a rib fracture that was healing
when he examined the infant. He said he became concerned since the baby
could not have bumped his head while crawling, as older children often
do, and any
bones broken during birth would have been healed by then.

"Actually having force enough to produce a brain injury was worrisome,"
Bruhn said, though he added that the injury itself was not major.
Earlier this week, a pediatrician testified that the
baby's injuries were non-life-threatening, though almost certainly
caused by physical abuse.
"If your baby doesn't move, it doesn't get bruises," said Dr. Carol Berkowitz.

Gutierrez had been watching his son while the child's mother, Jeopardy
Judge, was away. When she returned home to their Lake Elsinore
apartment, she found a spongy spot on the side of the infant's head and
rushed him to the
hospital, Deputy District Attorney Julie Baldwin told jurors.

Doctors found two injuries to the child's head, including bruising on
the surface of the brain, and the broken but partially healed rib,
according to testimony.
During the investigation, Gutierrez admitted squeezing
the baby's torso and shaking the child two weeks before he threw him
into his playpen, Baldwin told the jury.