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Adrianna Lucero -- who was 17 years old last year when she fatally snapped the spine of her 2-year-old son at the Kearns apartment of her boyfriend -- was sentenced Friday to prison for 15 years to life.
Before 3rd District Judge Vernice Trease handed down the sentence, a sobbing Lucero told the court that her boyfriend murdered Alejandro Lucero, and that she is being wrongly held responsible.
"I would never hurt my son. That man murdered my child and he is getting away with it," Lucero said, referring to her boyfriend.
Trease also ordered Lucero to serve a one-to-15-year prison term for child abuse, but set that term to run concurrent with the murder conviction.
Tried as an adult, Lucero was convicted by a jury of first-degree felony murder during a week-long trial in December.
Defense attorney Stephen McCaughey said he is still astonished by the verdict.
"I have a real question if the jury understood the meaning of 'reasonable doubt,'" McCaughey told the judge. "This case had reasonable doubt written all over it."
Lucero took the stand in her own defense and blamed her then-boyfriend -- Sergio Martinez-Gonzalez, who is the father of Lucero's 5-month-old twins but was not Alejandro's father -- for killing the toddler on Aug. 24.
But Martinez-Gonzalez, 27, testified for the prosecution that Lucero was alone with Alejandro immediately before he was injured.
Prosecutor Cristina Ortega told jurors
Ortega claimed the young mother literally snapped Alejandro's spine in half, then lied to implicate Martinez-Gonzalez. She added that the boyfriend had no motive or opportunity to hurt the little boy.
But McCaughey noted that Martinez-Gonzalez had pleaded no contest last year to domestic violence assault in an incident involving Lucero.
On the day Alejandro died, both Lucero and Martinez-Gonzalez say they were watching a movie in his rented room in Kearns.
Then one of them -- Lucero says it was her boyfriend and he claims it was her -- took the toddler to another room to get Jell-O. The two agree that within a minute, the injury occurred.
Lucero initially told police the boy had a seizure while she was with him but changed her statement after she learned Alejandro's back had been broken. The mother said she lied at first because she wanted to protect Martinez-Gonzalez, who is in the United States illegally, from being deported.
Martinez-Gonzalez was charged with second-degree felony obstructing justice in connection with the boy's death, but the charge was later dropped. According to a transcript of a Salt Lake County sheriff's interview, investigators told Martinez-Gonzalez if he "worked with them," immigration authorities would "work with him."
As Lucero was led crying from the courtroom Friday, she said to no one in particular: "He killed my son!"
