A Bexar County jury sentenced Miranda Casarez to 25 years in prison on Thursday for the starvation death of her stepson.
The jury deliberated for more than four hours before returning the sentence for starving four-year-old Benjamin Cervera to death.
The boy died on Aug. 17, 2021. He weighed 28 pounds, and his body was covered in bruises when he arrived at Christus Children's Hospital.
“With this guilty verdict, I hope you never to get to experience the same so you can wallow in the emptiness and despair you left me in,” said Erica Flores, Benjamin’s mother, in a victim's statement read to the jury.
Casarez took the stand again on Thursday with the hope of mitigating the guilty verdict, which the jury came to in just one hour the previous day. Her attorney had argued for probation.
Her testimony on Wednesday was filled with emotional struggles of her life, being sexually abused, and the effect of Cervera’s death on her. But prosecutor Michael Villareal ensured on Thursday that the jury remembered the boy at the center of the case.
He again displayed the bruised remains of the boy, asking how they got there, and asking her to address the abuse allegations made by Cervera’s older brother.
Casarez continued to deny that she had anything to do with the starvation of the boy, and she pushed the blame onto the boy’s father, Brandon Cervera Sr.
Villareal presented her with text messages made between her phone and her mother's phone.
Casarez froze. She denied sending the messages.
The attorney pressed her, asking about the text that came three minutes later, which the woman confirmed she had sent. But Casarez continued to avoid the first, becoming silent.
“You sent that text message, right?” Villareal asked again.
“He would tell me what to say …” she trailed off, implying Brandon’s father was responsible.
“Let's assume that he told you what to say. You sent that text message. Yes. You sent that text message” Villareal said, more a statement than a question.
The woman devolved from staccato denials to silence and then a series of indiscernible yelps, like a person having a bad dream.
After a painful four minutes of denials and diversions, the prosecutor read the text to the jury:
"I don't know how long I can take this before I have a heart attack. My poor son can't even sleep in his f****** room, because a little five-year-old (sic) that everyone thinks is so sweet and innocent is not so innocent. F****** dude figured out how to unlock the lock … I'm about to buy a real lock and just have the other boys on the couch … I'm so done with this s***, I'm going crazy, man. This kid needs a good one,” Villareal read.
Casarez again blamed Brandon Cervera Sr., who was also arrested in the case and awaits trial.
Villareal called the idea that Cervera Sr. would direct her to send this text to her mother “illogical.”
The prosecutor described the woman as unrepentant and asked the jury to give her a maximum sentence of 99 years. “She should have to think about Benji every day of the rest of her life,” he said.
Defense attorney Anthony Cantrell said after the sentencing that he believed his client is innocent, and he planned to appeal.
"I don't think they even looked at the evidence," said Cantrell of the jury's decision after the trial. "They had to blame someone, and they blamed my client."
