ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, October 22, 1996 TAG: 9610220067
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CORPUS CHRISTI, TEXAS
SOURCE: Associated Press
A TEXAS JURY gives a 16-year sentence to a drunken driver for the death of a 2-day-old baby born prematurely because of a wreck the man caused.
A drunken driver got 16 years in prison Monday for manslaughter in the death of a baby who was delivered prematurely because of an auto accident.
The case is one of the first in Texas to test whether a person can be held criminally liable for harming an unborn child. Because it touched on the question of when life begins, it was closely watched by both sides in the abortion debate.
Frank Flores Cuellar, 50, had faced up to 20 years in prison in the death of Krystal Zuniga, who was delivered shortly after a June 15 car accident.
Cuellar's blood-alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit when he drove his truck into a car driven by Jeannie Coronado as she returned from a late-night trip to the grocery store.
Coronado, 7 1/2 months pregnant, gave birth to Krystal by emergency Caesarean section. The baby, who weighed just 4 pounds and suffered extensive brain damage, died within two days.
The jury took only an hour to convict Cuellar last week of intoxication manslaughter. It took six hours to decide on a sentence Monday.
Cuellar - a laborer with no high school education and three previous drunken-driving convictions - apologized after the sentence was read, saying: ``I didn't intend for any of this to happen.''
Abortion rights opponents hailed the verdict as a step toward tougher laws against criminals whose actions harm the unborn.
Abortion rights supporters warned it could lead to a new determination of when life begins and, eventually, the outlawing of abortion.
Cuellar's attorney, Anne Marshall, promised to appeal, saying Cuellar should not have been prosecuted because Krystal was not yet born at the time of the accident.
Marshall repeatedly cited the state's legal definition of a person as an individual ``who has been born and is alive.''
The baby's grandmother, Rebecca Coronado, said: ``She wasn't a fetus. She had a heartbeat. We lost her, but I know we won at the end.''
Outside court, a juror said several members of the seven-woman, five-man panel had held out for probation.
``Several jurors felt that 20 years was too much and that he really needed help,'' said the juror, who declined to give her name.
The same juror said the panel had no difficulty deciding to convict, despite the defense'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.''
Several states have laws giving legal standing to unborn children in criminal cases.
Similar legislation has been proposed in Texas in past years, but has not been passed.
A state appeals court considered a case in 1994 that overturned the conviction of a woman charged with reckless injury to a child for smoking crack while pregnant.
The court said the legislature has specifically limited the application of laws to conduct that injures a human being who has been born and is alive.
Cuellar is awaiting trial on drunken-driving and intoxication-assault charges from the accident.
The defense sought a separate trial on those charges so that Cuellar's three drunken-driving convictions would not be brought up during the manslaughter trial.
He could get up to 10 years in prison on each of those charges.
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines KEYWORDS: FATALITYby CNB