Baby Lollipops defendant released from jail
Posted on Wed, May. 07, 2008
On the web Department of Corrections: Inmate release information
One of two women charged in the notorious Baby Lollipops case was released from prison earlier this year after serving 15 years of a 40-year sentence.
Olivia Gonzalez-Mendoza was released from prison on Jan. 1, state records show. She was the girlfriend of the baby's mother, Ana Maria Cardona, when police found the baby dead under a hedge in Miami Beach in 1990.
The 3-year-old child showed evidence of having been tortured. Police struggled to identify the child, who was called Baby Lollipops because of the T-shirt he was wearing when he was found.
Gonzalez-Mendoza pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and aggravated child abuse charges and testified against the little boy's mother, Ana Maria Cardona.
Cardona was convicted and sentenced to the death penalty, but the Florida Supreme Court overturned the sentence and ordered a new trial in 2002, ruling that defense attorneys should have been informed of three statements Gonzalez-Mendoza made early on in the investigation admitting that she also beat the child, who was named Lazaro Figueroa.
Gonzalez-Mendoza, 42, was sentenced under the laws that applied in 1992, before the Legislature changed prison gain-time rules to require that convicted criminals serve 85 percent of their sentences. Her release was first reported by WTVJ-NBC 6. She could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Cardona, 46, is in Miami-Dade's Women's Detention Center awaiting a new trial.
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Posted on Wed, May. 07, 2008
On the web Department of Corrections: Inmate release information
One of two women charged in the notorious Baby Lollipops case was released from prison earlier this year after serving 15 years of a 40-year sentence.
Olivia Gonzalez-Mendoza was released from prison on Jan. 1, state records show. She was the girlfriend of the baby's mother, Ana Maria Cardona, when police found the baby dead under a hedge in Miami Beach in 1990.
The 3-year-old child showed evidence of having been tortured. Police struggled to identify the child, who was called Baby Lollipops because of the T-shirt he was wearing when he was found.
Gonzalez-Mendoza pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and aggravated child abuse charges and testified against the little boy's mother, Ana Maria Cardona.
Cardona was convicted and sentenced to the death penalty, but the Florida Supreme Court overturned the sentence and ordered a new trial in 2002, ruling that defense attorneys should have been informed of three statements Gonzalez-Mendoza made early on in the investigation admitting that she also beat the child, who was named Lazaro Figueroa.
Gonzalez-Mendoza, 42, was sentenced under the laws that applied in 1992, before the Legislature changed prison gain-time rules to require that convicted criminals serve 85 percent of their sentences. Her release was first reported by WTVJ-NBC 6. She could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Cardona, 46, is in Miami-Dade's Women's Detention Center awaiting a new trial.
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Besides this being a horrible crime, you thought that was a picture of a man, didn't you???? I did. I had to read the story twice to figure it out.
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