Tuesday, October 22, 1996

Drunken driver sentenced in fetus case

By PAULINE ARRILLAGA
Associated Press

CORPUS CHRISTI - A drunken driver was sentenced to 16 years in prison Monday in the death of a baby who was delivered prematurely after an auto accident.

The infant's grandmother whispered "Oh God" as the punishment was read, while the child's mother and father embraced quietly.

Frank Flores Cuellar, 50, had faced anywhere from probation to 20 years in prison for intoxication manslaughter in the death of Krystal Zuniga, who was delivered shortly after the accident and later died.

The case, one of the first in Texas to test whether a person may be prosecuted for harming a fetus, has been monitored by both sides of the abortion debate because it touches on the question of when life begins.

However, Krystal's relatives said that question was answered by the jury's verdict and sentence.
"She wasn't a fetus. She had a heartbeat," said the baby's grandmother, Rebecca Coronado, who was in the car when the accident occurred.

Krystal's mother, Jeannie Coronado, declined comment. Speaking on her behalf, Rebecca Coronado said knowing Cuellar will be behind bars would help her daughter deal with her loss.

"He's not going to be out on the street. We stopped him," she said. "We lost (Krystal), but I know we won at the end."

Defense attorney Anne Marshall vowed to appeal, however, saying Cuellar should not have been prosecuted because Krystal was not alive at the time of the accident.

She cited the state's legal meaning of person, defined as an individual who "has been born and is alive."

"When is a crime committed? It is committed when the prohibited behavior is committed," she said. "I'm very confident we'll get a reversal on appeal."

A state appeals court considered a similar case in 1994, overturning the conviction of a Walker County woman charged with reckless injury to a child for smoking crack while pregnant.

In that case, the court said the Legislature had specifically limited the application of laws to conduct that injures a human being who has been born.

Nevertheless, District Attorney Carlos Valdez said he was certain the verdict would stand if the law is interpreted correctly.

"I'm going to ask the court to just strictly construe the statute," he said. "If you read something into it, you may come up with a different result."

Cuellar was intoxicated at more than twice the legal limit when he crashed his truck into a car driven by Jeannie Coronado as she returned from a late-night trip to the grocery store on June 15.

Coronado, 7 1/2 months pregnant, gave birth to Krystal by emergency Caesarean section. Weighing just 4 pounds and having suffered extensive brain damage, the baby died 44 hours later.

After his sentence was read, Cuellar - a laborer with no high school education and three previous drunken driving convictions - apologized for his actions, saying: "I didn't intend for any of this to happen."

The seven-woman, five-man jury took just one hour last week to convict Cuellar but deliberated six hours over his punishment. After 4 1/2 hours of deliberations on Friday, jurors reported they were deadlocked on a sentence and recessed for the weekend.

After the trial, a female juror said several jury members had held out for probation. Marshall had asked the jury for the lighter punishment, arguing that Cuellar was an alcoholic who needed counseling - not prison - to cure his illness.

"Several jurors felt that 20 years was too much and that he really needed help," said the juror, who refused to give her name.

The same juror said the panel had no difficulty deciding to convict, despite Marshall's argument that Krystal was not a person when the accident occurred.

"The baby was human," the juror said. "The baby had a birth certificate, a death certificate and died of injuries resulting from the accident."

Cuellar still faces trial on two related charges - felony DWI and intoxication assault for minor injuries sustained by Jeannie Coronado. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison on each of those charges.

Regardless of how an appeals court rules on the manslaughter verdict, the case could lead to new state laws giving legal standing to unborn children in criminal cases.

Such statutes, which have been adopted in other states, have been considered by the Legislature in past years but never approved.

Rebecca Coronado said she hopes state lawmakers reconsider, so that another family will not have to go through what hers did.

"There should be a law, because a fetus is a human being," she said. "Unborn children need rights."