TRIAL OPENS IN CHILD'S DEATH.Byline: Jason Kandel Staff Writer Maricela Arcelia Chavez brutalized her 4-year-old niece using karate-like chops, and then dressed her in a Communion outfit as she was dying, a prosecutor said in a Van Nuys courtroom Tuesday. ``She sets up an altar for the child, dresses her in a Communion dress, sets a candle, places a doll with the child, stays with the child as the child's life expires,'' said Deputy District Attorney Maureen Green. Chavez then took her niece's body to the LAPD's North Hollywood division and claimed she had drowned, Green said. The details came during opening statements in the case against Chavez, 47, who is accused of beating her 4-year-old niece, Maria Isabel Cervantes, to death in September 2001 after the girl wet her pants and spit up food. A jury of nine men and three women listened intently as Green told her account of the crime. Wearing a gray sweater and grasping a handkerchief handkerchief. In classical Greece pieces of fine perfumed cotton, known as mouth or perspiration cloths, were often used by the wealthy. From the 1st cent. B.C. , Chavez shook and sobbed as prosecutors described the evidence they would present to the jury during the trial. Chavez has pleaded not guilty to one count of murder and two counts of inflicting corporal punishment corporal punishment, physical chastisement of an offender. At one extreme it includes the death penalty (see capital punishment), but the term usually refers to punishments like flogging, mutilation, and branding. Until c. on a child under eight years old. The attorney representing Chavez, Dennis Chavez, Dennis (1888–1962) U.S. representative/senator; born in Los Chavez, N.M. Although he never finished high school, he worked as a clerk in the U.S. Senate and graduated from Georgetown University Law School (1920). He served in the U.S. Cohen cohen or kohen (Hebrew: “priest”) Jewish priest descended from Zadok (a descendant of Aaron), priest at the First Temple of Jerusalem. The biblical priesthood was hereditary and male. , declined to give his opening statements Tuesday, saying he will wait until the prosecution's case ends and his opens. During the prosecution's opening, Green described how Chavez stayed in the room with Maria's body and the makeshift altar through the night. Chavez' daughter, Patricia, eventually knocked on the bedroom door and convinced her mother to go to the police station, she said. ``Her boyfriend drives the defendant to the North Hollywood station and the defendant walks into the station with the child in outstretched out·stretch tr.v. out·stretched, out·stretch·ing, out·stretch·es To stretch out; extend. outstretched Adjective arms,'' Green said. ``She tells the police that (Maria) drowned.'' LAPD 1. LAPD - Link Access Procedure on the D channel. 2. LAPD - Los Angeles Police Department. Officer Lizette Makarenko said during testimony she was the first one to see Chavez when she walked into the station Sept. 28, 2001, with a bundled pink blanket. ``She said, 'Help me, please. She drowned,''' Makarenko said. But later during police interviews, Chavez confessed to the crime, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. the testimony. ``She said she never lost her temper like that before. She said she wanted to die with the child,'' Makarenko said. The officer also testified that Chavez had contemplated disappearing with the child's body Noun 1. child's body - the body of a human child juvenile body - the body of a young person baby tooth, deciduous tooth, milk tooth, primary tooth - one of the first temporary teeth of a young mammal (one of 20 in children) . Chavez had taken custody of Maria in November 2000 after her mother, Magdalena Sandoval, was gunned down by stray bullets fired by gang members on Blythe Street in Van Nuys. |
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