BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — On Wednesday, Kern County Superior Court Judge Charles Brehmer announced that Maya Hernandez and the Kern County District Attorney's office came to a settlement agreement, ultimately dropping the first-degree murder charge in exchange for 15 years in prison and two strikes on her record.
Hernandez will plead no-contest to the involuntary manslaughter allegation and two additional enhancements to the allegations of child cruelty.
Late last year, a jury returned a mistrial verdict on the first-degree murder, leaving the door open for Hernandez to be retried on those counts. Kern County Chief Deputy District Attorney Eric Smith said that's what they wanted to do, but look at the situation after looking at the situation as a whole both parties agreed a plea deal was more prudent.
"We did a review of is there anything that we could potentially do different in a second trial? We also took — put great weight into what the jurors didn't provide in this case. Ultimately, it was a mistrial for count one, the murder count. We took into account that 12 members of our jury heard all of the evidence, and ultimately it was split towards not guilty, so we had to take that into account as to their result. So based on that, we decided to enter into settlement negotiations, and that's what she pled to today," said Smith following Wednesday's hearing.
Hernandez is slated to be sentenced on March 5th at 8:30 a.m.
(This is a developing story; more information will be added as it becomes available.)
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