Wednesday, April 10, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
CARSON CITY -- Chief Justice Thomas Steffen says Carlos Gutierrez deserves the death penalty for the torture-killing of his 3 1/2-year-old stepdaughter and tossing her body into a ravine in California.
He told defense lawyer John R. Petty Tuesday that Gutierrez, now 26 years old, took "some type of sadistic pleasure" in the beating death of the child in Reno in June 1994.
During arguments before the state Supreme Court, Steffen said Gutierrez first forced Mailin Stafford to endure cold and hot showers and then to eat her own vomit and feces.
"This is torture, pure and simple," Steffen told Petty, a deputy public defender for Washoe County.
Petty argued the death penalty is excessive because of Gutierrez's state of mind at the time of the killing.
Gutierrez, Petty said, thought the child was a monster who "breathed smoke and fire" and whose head turned like a monster. Steffen said he didn't buy that story.
The child's mother, Tara Gutierrez, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of felony child neglect and received a 15-year term.
The death led to a probe by a Washoe County grand jury, which found numerous errors were made by the county social services agency. The agency returned the child to the home after having first removed her on reports of abuse.
Petty argued the three-judge panel should have taken into consideration that the mother had punished the child also.
At the penalty hearing in District Court, there was testimony from physicians that the child had more than 30 bruises on the head and body, three intestinal cuts, a fractured rib, broken teeth, and bleeding in the abdominal cavity. She died of a blunt blow to the abdomen.
On the day she died, the child and the stepfather were in the bathroom alone, according to court records. The mother heard a loud bang. The girl came out dizzy but then started playing with her sister. She then went and sat in the lap of Gutierrez and died.
The couple then wrapped the child in a blanket and drove out of Reno to California where the body was dumped.
Deputy District Attorney Gary Hatlestad argued for the death penalty because the child had suffered "prolonged agony."
Justice Charles Springer said this killing, if the victim was an adult, would be a second-degree murder case. But the Legislature has enacted a law that a person who kills a child in these circumstances is guilty of first-degree murder and the death penalty.
The court will study the arguments.
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