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A 32-year-old mother was convicted on Monday for the grisly murders of her three young children.Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Ricardo Ocampo found Carol Ann Coronado guilty of first-degree murder for the fatal stabbings of her three children—2-year-old Sophia, 16-month-old Yazmine and 2-month-old Xenia—in their Torrance home on May 20, 2014, according to a release from the L.A. County District Attorney's Office. The judge also found true the special circumstances allegations of multiple murders in the case, and agreed with Deputy District Attorney Emily Spear that the killings were premeditated, the Daily Breeze reports.
Her attorney, Stephen Allen, said the judge's ruling was not a surprise, according to the L.A. Times. "Our main issue now is whether or not she was insane at the time of the incident," Allen said.
Coronado will be returning to a Compton courtroom today for the sanity phase of her trial. If it's found that she was sane during the multiple murders, then she could face life in prison without the possibility of parole. Prosecutors have not sought out the death penalty for Coronado. She had waived her rights to a jury trial when she pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
"No sane mother does something like this, especially someone with no record, who loved her kids by all accounts," Allen said.
He also said that he will have three or four doctors testify in court in an effort to show that Coronado suffered from postpartum psychosis.
Spear argued in court that Coronado planned to kill her children because she felt trapped and overwhelmed by having to take care of the kids without her husband's help. He wanted a divorce. She added that Coronado had used three knives in the killings, and had more laid out, leaving the prosecutor to believe that she intended to also kill her husband and herself.
However, those plans were thwarted, the prosecutor said, when Coronado's mother, Julie Piercey, arrived to the home on that tragic day, finding Coronado with her three dead daughters lying in a pool of blood on a bed. Piercey grabbed a large butcher knife out of Coronado's hands and ran outside. She brought Coronado's husband, Rudy Coronado, into the room, and then Carol Coronado took a knife and pushed it into her own chest, puncturing her lung. Her children were pronounced dead at the scene.
"She lost her mind. She lost her mind," Rudy Coronado said outside of the courtroom. "It tears me apart because it's my little girls that I lost. I lost my whole family, my three little girls. And Carol, she didn't mean to do that. I strongly believe that."
