05/07/2009
By BETSY BLANEY / Associated Press

A 28-year-old mother of nine who was arrested after authorities found a dead fetus stored in the refrigerator of her trash-strewn home was convicted Thursday of child injury and child endangerment charges.

Jurors deliberated for 32 minutes before finding Gloria Ramirez, who is now eight months pregnant, guilty of one count of injury to a child and six counts of child endangerment. She stood with her head down as the verdicts were read.

Seven of Ramirez's children were removed from the home and the state has temporary custody of twins she later gave birth to.

Jurors will begin deliberating Ramirez's sentence Friday. She faces up to 10 years in prison on the injury to a child conviction, a third-degree felony. Child endangerment, a state jail felony, carries up to two years in prison. She is eligible for probation because she had no previous convictions.

Melanie MacKenzie, a caseworker for Child Protective Services, told jurors during the penalty phase of the trial that Ramirez doesn't accept help for her children from the agency but is willing to accept it when it's "for her benefit and gain."

Ramirez "says she loves her children, however, her behavior makes me question that," MacKenzie said.

She's been late for visitation with her children, hasn't tended to her children well while visiting them and has missed appointments with counselors, MacKenzie said.

Police came to the home in July 2007 after Anthony Moya, Ramirez's husband, called a funeral home to ask about a casket for a fetus Ramirez had miscarried. She placed the fetus inside a white baby wipe box and put it in the refrigerator. When police arrived they found rodents, roaches, dirty diapers stacked in closets, moldy food and trash covering most floors.

Linda Motlong, a member of a Lubbock church group that befriended Ramirez and Moya shortly after the children were removed testified for the defense and said that Ramirez is "immature" in her thinking.

"She thinks like a preteen or a younger person," Motlong said. "I see in her a tender heart, in a lot of ways a little girl."

The church member said she "very surprised" when Ramirez became pregnant with twins in September 2007 and was "flabbergasted" when she learned Ramirez was again pregnant because they had spoken about birth control. Ramirez is expecting her 10th child early next month.

"We advised her not to get pregnant when we first met her," Motlong said.

On cross-examination, prosecutor Jennifer Bassett asked Motlong if she knew that Ramirez has said to CPS officials that "as long as CPS keeps taking my kids away I'll keep having them." Motlong said she didn't know anything about that.

Moya, father to six of the seven children removed from the home, faces the same 11 charges that Ramirez faced. His trial was expected to start later this month. Jurors in Ramirez's case were asked to only consider seven of the charges against her.

In closing arguments of the guilt-innocence portion of the trial, Bassett called the home "a house of horrors" where nothing was done to care for the children.

"That dog in the backyard is a better mother," Bassett said.

Defense attorney Ted Hogan told jurors that Ramirez was so scared of Moya that she didn't confront him about not helping her with the children and cleaning.

"It's important that you look at the reasons why," he said. "The state just wants you to look at what happened. The state thinks we're making excuses."

On Wednesday, Ramirez's oldest child testified Wednesday that her mother threatened her life and her siblings' lives if they told anyone about the filthy conditions. The 11-year-old told jurors her mother showed the dead fetus to all the children and blamed them for the miscarriage "because we weren't letting her get any sleep."

The couple's twins were born in May 2008, less than a year after the seven youngsters were removed. The state has temporary custody of them.

In her statement to police a few days after the children were removed, Ramirez minimized the filth and blamed Moya because he didn't help her clean up.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D981MVK05.html

Emphasis added by H4K Editor