[FONT=&]Defense attorney Michael Sklar began his summation by telling jurors that “the evidence in this case requires you to find (Aguirre) guilty of (second-degree) murder, not first-degree murder.[/FONT][FONT=&]“I recognize how difficult it will be to put aside your complete horror,” he said, while asking the panel to consider the evidence “clearly, conscientiously and dispassionately.”[/FONT]
[FONT=&]Sklar acknowledged “unspeakable acts of abuse over a period of time” by his client, but urged the panel as a matter of law to focus only on the evening of May 22, 2013, when Aguirre and Fernandez allegedly gave Gabriel the beating that caused his death.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]Aguirre was angry because Gabriel had asked his mother to leave Aguirre and then denied saying so, calling his mother a liar in front of Aguirre, the defense attorney said.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]“Isauro exploded in a rage of anger” and later “described his anger as a 20 on a scale of 10” to a detective,” Sklar said. “He was completely out of control.”[/FONT]
[FONT=&]Sklar cited testimony by Gabriel’s siblings as corroboration, recalling that one of them said Aguirre, who the kids called Tony, became “really, really, really mad.”[/FONT]
[FONT=&]Once his client realized Gabriel was unconscious, “he immediately took steps to begin to revive him,” the defense attorney said.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]Sklar recalled Gabriel’s brother testifying that “Tony began CPR before somebody on the phone told him to, and he continued until paramedics arrived,” arguing that “an attempt to save is contrary to an intent to kill.”[/FONT]
[FONT=&]Sklar said his client did not match the portrait of an evil man outlined by the prosecution, telling the jury that Aguirre once worked in a retirement home caring for dependent elderly residents, a job requiring “considerable patience and compassion.”[/FONT]
[FONT=&]He had no prior history of abuse, other than his own, according to Sklar.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]“His own mother disciplined him with cords and burned him with cigarettes,” the attorney said. It was Pearl who had “a long history of volatility, violence, abuse and neglect toward her children,” Sklar said.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]He alleged that Gabriel’s mother was the one who hit the boy with a belt, shot him with a BB gun, forced him to eat cat feces and was responsible for much of the abuse prior to his death.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]Sklar urged jurors to listen again to the 911 call, rather than relying on any attorney’s recollections, and played part of Aguirre’s confession once more for the panel.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]“(It) demonstrates Isauro’s tears are borne of genuine remorse … and are not expressions of self-pity for his own predicament,” Sklar said.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]The defense attorney said the prosecution’s basis for first-degree murder requires the jury to “accept that Gabriel was at death’s door” before the beating and to see that night as “the culmination of a systematic plan … rather than a rash act,” claims Sklar said are “not supported by the evidence.”[/FONT]
[FONT=&]And it was Pearl Fernandez, not Aguirre, who texted that she was watching “murder cases,” Sklar said, calling the prosecution’s implications “sinister.”[/FONT]
[FONT=&]“Does it seem likely that they would send (Gabriel) to school … with obvious injuries … if their plan was to slowly torture him to death?” Sklar asked. “He did not act with a cold, calculated decision to kill … it was a rash act … not deliberate and premeditated.”[/FONT]
[FONT=&]“We’re not asking you not to punish Isauro Aguirre,” the defense attorney said, but asking for “a verdict that serves the ends of justice. Follow the law down the path it takes you … do what is right and just.”[/FONT]