southbendtribune.com
By MARY KATE MALONE
South Bend Tribune
12:37 p.m. EST, January 6, 2012

SOUTH BEND — Calling his crimes “the worst of the worst,” St. Joseph Superior Court Judge Jane Woodward Miller sentenced Valentin Escobedo to 53 years in prison this morning, the maximum allowed by law.

Escobedo, 25, was convicted by a jury in November of fatally beating his 2˝-year-old daughter Maya in December 2008. He was also convicted of neglecting her throughout the year before her death.

The jury acquitted Escobedo on the charge of murder, deciding the evidence did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he knowingly killed the girl.

In arriving at her sentence, the judge pointed to multiple lies Escobedo told to police, doctors and his own wife on Dec. 2, 2008, when Maya was taken to Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center with injuries throughout her body and a 14-centimeter skull fracture.

Escobedo originally told police he did not know what happened, but at his trial he testified that he accidentally fell on the girl while he was trying to bathe her in the bathtub.

Escobedo received the maximum sentence allowed under law — 50 years for the battery charge, a Class A felony, and three years for the neglect charge, a Class D felony.

“She was so young, and she was so vulnerable,” the judge said as she explained how she arrived at the sentence. “And she was totally reliant on you for care and affection. ... She could not call out for help against you. She had to live in your world, without any means of escape.”

Escobedo testified at the hearing, telling the court he missed his daughter.

“That’s was my daughter, my treasure,” he said.

He added later: “At the end, I know who I am, and nobody’s going to take that from me.”

The judge noted that Escobedo does not have a criminal history, but said she would not consider his clean record as a factor to mitigate his sentence because, she said, he is also an illegal immigrant.

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