Twelve jurors found Brandon Cervera Sr. not guilty of the crime of injury to a child with serious bodily injury late Wednesday night. A guilty verdict could have meant the rest of his life in a Texas prison.
Cervera wept, folding his body onto the defendants table — shielding his eyes and tears from the courtroom. HIs lawyer Jodi Soyars laid her hand on his back.
The verdict is a surprise. The boy’s stepmother Miranda Casarez was found guilty of the same crime this spring and will serve as many as 25 years.
The state argued Cervera helped starve his 4-year-old son Benji Cervera to death in 2021.
Soyars presented Brandon as a concerned parent who consulted doctors and followed recommendations. She called the case a “scary” one for parents who could be prosecuted for doing what they were told.
She leaned into the fact that starvation deaths are so rare as to be nearly nonexistent in the United States.
Both of the defense's medical experts testified they did not believe the boy died from starvation.
UT-Health San Antonio doctor Daniel Gebhard — a critical care pediatric doctor — testified while some dehydration existed and the boy clearly lost weight, both were non-fatal.
The defense pointed to things like undiagnosed diabetes or seizures. She said Bexar County Medical Examiner Dr. Kimberly Molina essentially had blinders on.
The system just wanted someone to blame.
“They were looking for abuse,” she said.
The state batted away the defense’s medical experts ideas, dismissing the opinions as paid for. “This guy’s about the money,” Villareal said of one of the doctors who was paid around $18,000.
Hedging her bets a bit, Soyars also pointed at the stepmother — saying there had been some unexplained trauma to the boys body and implied it had occurred with Casarez while Cervera was at work.
Bexar County district attorneys argued Benji was intentionally starved, pointing to locks on the pantry and fridge, his loss of weight, videos of the boy begging for bread and the testimony of the state’s medical experts.
Before his death, multiple people had called in concerns to the state’s child welfare system and to police over his weight and over two black eyes he showed up with a month before his death.
“The system — up until his death — failed Benji,” said Michael Villareal, a prosecutor with the Bexar County District Attorney’s office told jurors in his closing arguments, referencing the missed signs.
“This child should not have stayed with this defendant who was starving him,” he said.
Despite these systemic failures, Villareal argued the weight of the death fell on the boy’s father, Brandon Cervera.
“At the end of this case there is just one true verdict, that is this defendant is guilty,” said Villareal.
In the end, the jury disagreed.
Miranda Casarez sits in a Texas prison for the same crime, having recently lost an appeal.
Benji Cervera is dead; the state said it was caused by starvation. The jury said if it was, the father wasn’t to blame.
