EVELYN VERDUGO PANIAGUA - 3 yo (2009) - Dakota City (E of Sioux City) IA

Dakota City IA ---- Brisa Paniagua was about to leave the small
bedroom her 3-year-old daughter Evelyn Verdugo Paniagua shared with
her 8-year-old brother in the early morning hours of May 23, 2009,
when a bad feeling came over her.
Moments before, she had pulled a blanket off Evelyn to find her
dressed in the pink cotton shirt and pants she said gone to bed in.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary in the family's two-bedroom
South Sioux City mobile home.
When Paniagua turned the bedroom light on, she testified Monday
in Dakota County District Court, her daughter's skin appeared to be
purple. The curtains were drawn and the bedroom window was open,
not closed as she had left them hours before.
"I thought somebody had beaten her up," Paniagua said tearfully
Monday from the stand in the murder trial of Melecio Camacho-De Jesus.
Camacho-De Jesus, 30, is charged with first-degree murder and
burglary in connection with Evelyn's death. Prosecutors are seeking
the death penalty. Camacho-De Jesus, who has pleaded not guilty, is using insanity as a defense.
During opening statements Monday morning, Nebraska Assistant
Attorney General Corey O'Brien, told a jury of six men and six
women that DNA evidence and the defendant's own confession to
investigators would prove Camacho-De Jesus guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Camacho-De Jesus' attorney Kelly Breen told the jury that there
is no evidence that his client ever viewed child pornography or
attempted to molest a child before the slaying.
"Melecio Camacho-De Jesus is not considered a sexual deviant on
any of the diagnostic categories," Breen said, but admitted that
there is "no doubt" that he caused the girl's death.
According to Breen, tests of Camacho-De Jesus' urine will show
that the level of cocaine in his system the night of the murder was
6 1/2 times that of chronic abusers. He said a defense psychiatrist
will testify that his client was suffering from cocaine-induced
delirium and cocaine-induced psychosis at the time of the killing.
Dressed in a long-sleeved white collared shirt and black pants,
Camacho-De Jesus rested his forehead on his right hand as Brisa
Paniagua told the jury that she met Camacho-De Jesus about seven
years ago while living in Arizona, where Camacho-De Jesus was her sister-in-law's neighbor.
Paniagua and her husband Leonard Verdugo moved from Arkansas to
South Sioux City in February 2009. She testified that the defendant
arrived in the area a few weeks later. He was living in a Sioux
City hotel and looking for work.
The family asked Camacho-De Jesus to move into a white and blue
trailer with them in South Sioux City and help pay the rent. The
defendant resided in the smaller of the two bedrooms, while the
Verdugos and their children shared the larger bedroom.
"He was a friend of mine," Paniagua said of the defendant through an interpreter.
Evelyn's father, Leonardo Verdugo, testified that he worked with
Camacho-De Jesus picking grapes and oranges in the fields of
Arizona, constructing dairies in Salix, Iowa, and at Sioux City
Brick, when the family relocated to South Sioux City.
"I invited him to come and live with us to help him, as well as us," Verdugo told the court.
However, Verdugo set some rules. He said he didn't want
Camacho-De Jesus drinking in the trailer. Brisa Paniagua also asked
that Camacho-De Jesus attend Bible study.
For three months, Paniagua testified that Camacho-De Jesus ate
meals, watched TV and played games with the family. He also
attended a weekly Bible study at the family's trailer and went with
them to meetings twice a week at Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses.
Shortly before Camacho-De Jesus moved out of the trailer to a
home in Sioux City, two weeks before Evelyn's slaying, Verdugo
testified that he appeared quiet and serious and stopped attending
meetings at Kingdom Hall.
Although Camacho-De Jesus wasn't helping out with finances as
much as the family would have liked, both Paniagua and Verdugo said
they did not tell him to leave.
"I didn't have anything against him," Verdugo said.
Investigators say Camacho-De Jesus entered the trailer through
an unlocked bedroom window on May 23, 2009, as the family slept,
and then raped and killed the girl in the bed she shared with her brother.
Paniagua testified that the family ended a Bible study with
three other people at the trailer about 9:30 p.m. the night of the
slaying. After watching TV, Paniagua said she went to bed at 11
p.m. Her 8-year-old son, Brandon, was asleep in the bed, and Evelyn
was sleeping in a chair in the bedroom, where Camacho-De Jesus usedto sleep.
At 11:30 p.m. Leonard Verdugo testified that he picked Evelyn up
off the chair and placed her in the bed with her brother, and then went to sleep in his room.
At 3:30 a.m. Paniagua was awakened by the cries of the couple's
6-month-old son, Luis. Paniagua said she saw light and heard noise
coming from the living room. She went to inspect the source of the
sound, and found the TV on and Brandon sitting on the couch looking
up at the ceiling. When she asked him what he was doing, Paniagua
testified that he told her that a man had climbed through the
window and took his sister's clothes off.
In the children's bedroom, Verdugo testified, his daughter was
"purple or bruised" lying across the bed. He said his wife, who was
crying and yelling, picked the girl up and took her outside to the
car. Verdugo's brother-in-law, who also lived in the mobile home
park, drove Verdugo, Paniagua and Evelyn to Mercy Medical Center.
Melissa Levering, a registered trauma nurse at Mercy, said the
child was not breathing and had no pulse when she grabbed her from Verdugo's arms.
Levering testified that she called a code blue and immediately started CPR on Evelyn.
She noted that the girl had bruising on the left side of her
face and fingerprint marks by her ear, chin and mouth. She also had
red pinpoint marks around her eyelids and on her eyes, and Levering
said those are consistent with a lack of oxygen or a sign of asphyxiation.
Levering also noticed blood in the child's underwear and said
that she had tears to her rectum. As medical personnel performed
CPR, Levering said, blood was coming from the child's genitals.
At 4:25 a.m., efforts to revive Evelyn were ceased. A blood test
showed that she hadn't been breathing in some time, Levering said.
A second witness, Doug Johnson, a criminal investigator with the
Nebraska State Patrol, observed the same red marks on Paniagua's
eyelids and also noticed what resembled a rash on her chest. He
observed linear bruising on her face, which is consistent with a handprint, he said.
Johnson also noticed that there was transferred blood on her right leg.

Three-judge panel picked to sentence Camacho-De Jesus




DAKOTA CITY, Neb. (KTIV)--A three judge panel has been set to decide the fate of a Mexican national convicted of murdering a three-year-old South Sioux City girl.

Melecio Camacho-De Jesus faces the death penalty in the May 2009 death of three-year-old girl who was killed in her home as her family slept.

Judges Robert Ensz of Wayne, William Wright of Kearney, and John P Murphy of North Platte will decide whether Camacho-De Jesus will die by lethal injection or if he'll be given a life sentence.

The judges will read transcripts of the trial before setting a date for sentencing.

The judge who originally presided over the murder trial was expected to sit on the judge panel, but he has since retired.

SOUTH SIOUX CITY — A three-judge panel will hear arguments next month to determine whether a Sioux City man convicted of killing a South Sioux City toddler will be sentenced to death.
Judges William T. Wright, Robert B. Ensz and John P. Murphy will hear arguments at a June 7 sentencing hearing for Melecio Camacho-De Jesus. The hearing will take place in Dakota County District Court, according to the Nebraska Judicial Branch's online case calendar. The panel will choose between a lifetime prison sentence and the death penalty.
On July 1, a Dakota County jury found the 31-year-old guilty of first-degree murder in the death of 3-year-old Evelyn Verdugo Paniagua on May 23, 2009. The same jury who convicted Camacho convened immediately after his trial for an aggravation hearing, where it determined circumstances existed that warranted the prosecutors in seeking the death penalty.
-- Dolly A. Butzhttp://www.siouxcityjournal.com/news/local/article_211ed626-da2d-554b-b6e3-3fad1a1e9945.html

Published Tuesday July 26, 2011

Life term for 3-year-old's death

A Mexican national convicted of killing a 3-year-old Nebraska girl escaped the death penalty Monday when a three-judge panel sentenced him to life in prison.

The panel of state district judges unanimously handed down the sentence more than a year after Melecio Camacho-De Jesus, 31, was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of Evelyn Verdugo Paniagua.

Prosecutors had argued for the death penalty, saying Camacho-De Jesus killed the girl during a sexual assault. The jury found there was an aggravating circumstance that warranted the death penalty during the first phase of Camacho-De Jesus' sentencing.

But Camacho-De Jesus' attorney, Todd Lancaster of the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy in Lincoln, had argued that the jury was improperly instructed to consider the victim's mental anguish in deciding whether to recommend execution. He cited a Nebraska Supreme Court ruling — made in an unrelated death penalty case after the first phase of sentencing in Camacho-De Jesus' case — that threw out that instruction.

The three-judge panel, which convened in Dakota County, cited that instruction Monday in handing down a life sentence to Camacho-De Jesus, Lancaster said.

"The panel in this case essentially said 'We can't give that aggravator any weight.' The only option is to give him a life sentence," Lancaster said after the ruling.

Attorney General Jon Bruning said his office disagreed with the panel's decision.

"Mr. Camacho took little Evelyn from her bed, raped her and smothered her until she died," Bruning said in a statement. "He ended an innocent child's life through horrific acts of brutality. We believe the atrocity of these crimes called for the ultimate sentence."

Prosecutors had maintained during Camacho-De Jesus' trial that he broke into the girl's home on May 23, 2009, assaulted her, then suffocated her as her family slept. Camacho-De Jesus had lived in the home until about two weeks before the killing.

He was arrested a few hours after the girl was killed, at a home where he had been staying in Sioux City, Iowa. The town is across the Missouri River from South Sioux City.

Camacho-De Jesus' attorneys argued during his trial that he didn't understand his actions that night because of cocaine in his system.

A life sentence for first-degree murder in Nebraska means Camacho-De Jesus will not be eligible for parole unless the state Board of Pardons commutes his sentence, "but that happens extremely rarely," Lancaster said.


http://www.omaha.com/article/20110726/NEWS97/707269917/1165#life-term-for-3-year-old-s-death