The jurors explained their decision by saying that they could not face the little boy or his mother if they gave Santos Rivera less than life in prison.
"This kid has a life sentence," Tommy Newton, 36, said he told his fellow jurors. "If I ran into this kid when he was 20 or 30 or 50, I could not look him in the eye, unless I gave [Rivera] a life sentence."
The child's mother had the opportunity to face the abuser. "I'm glad you won't be able to go out because you won't be able to do that to another kid," she said tearfully. "Why did you have to do that to [my son]? He was just a baby."
At one point, the mother yelled, "look at me!", but Rivera could not, closing his eyes as she spoke. Rivera said that he did not remember raping the toddler as he was under the influence of alcohol and cocaine. DNA tests linked him to the crime and there was an eye-witness. The mother's roommate came into the Irving apartment and found Rivera in the bathroom with the sobbing child. According to testimony, Rivera was baby-sitting while the mother worked as a waitress.
Santos Rivera is from El Salvador and was in the country illegally. He testified that he was abused himself at the age of 7 and lived in the streets for most of his childhood. Authorities say that he came to the U.S. in 2003 and was ordered deported in 2005, but remained illegally.
He will serve his sentence in the U.S. If he is paroled in 30 years, he will be deported back to El Salvador.
