With tears running down their faces, family members applauded as a 3rd District judge sentenced their 15-month-old baby’s abuser to prison nearly 30 years after she died.
Louis Mark Duran, now 57, pleaded guilty last year to two counts of third-degree felony child abuse in the case of Vanessa Nieto as part of a plea agreement in which prosecutors dropped the original charge of first-degree felony murder.
Vanessa had been left in the man’s care on Oct. 3, 1988. At the time, Duran was dating the girl’s mother.
On Wednesday, when Judge Mark Kouris handed down the sentence of zero to five years — by ordering the two child abuse counts to run concurrently — he said there was “not a chance in the world” that the court could truly make Vanessa’s mother whole again.
The sentence was more to punish the abuser, rather than protect society from another offense, Kouris said. He noted that the Louis Duran standing before him Wednesday was not the same man who had stayed up three days in a row, high on cocaine, before taking the baby into his care and inflicting injuries that contributed to her death.
“Given his advanced age, I don’t believe he’s going to do this to another tiny person,” Kouris said of Duran. Despite that, “little Vanessa’s voice has not been heard” for decades, he said.
Although the terms of the plea agreement prevented Deputy District Attorney Robert Parrish from requesting consecutive prison terms, for a 10-year maximum, he told reporters after the hearing that he was happy with the judge’s decision.
And while Duran wasn’t convicted of murder, the court proceedings did provide some resolution for Vanessa’s family. Namely, Parrish said, Duran admitted to abusing Vanessa and will serve time.
Since cold cases are often difficult to piece together so many years after a crime has been committed, Parrish said he thinks Wednesday’s outcome was appropriate.
“I don’t think any of us can even imagine what that must be like, for almost 30 years after a child dies, to finally get closure,” he told news reporters after the sentencing.
While Duran admitted to abusing the child — specifically, sucking on and biting on her cheeks until they were bruised, and failing to adequately care for the child — his defense attorney Deborah Kreeck Mendez emphasized that he did not plead guilty to a homicide.
Duran briefly addressed the court, apologizing, acknowledging the heartache the child’s family has felt, and calling the girl “a ray of sunshine.”
Kreeck Mendez told the court that Duran has shown he’s changed by behaving more responsibly in the years since Vanessa’s death. She said that the 620 days her client had already spent in jail for the offense was adequate punishment for his crime and requested he be sentenced to probation.
In his comments to the court, Parrish said that according to a medical report Vanessa had suffered some injuries before she was left in Duran’s care. But Parrish emphasized that “something” occurred that day with Duran that led to her death.
“Kids fall down a lot, but they don’t break their skull,” Judge Kouris said. The baby suffered multiple high-impact blows to her head, he added, and when Vanessa’s mother arrived home and found her unresponsive in her crib, Duran “immediately yelled, ‘I’m sorry.’ ”
Duran was handcuffed by a bailiff as the victim’s family applauded his sentence. Parrish met with the family before giving a statement to reporters.
“She’s been waiting a long time for justice,” Parrish said of the child.