Media Center > Guatemalan Teen Requests New Lawyer
Sunday, September 28, 2003
Source: The Palm Beach Post
The two women who befriended a Guatemalan teen charges with murdering her newborn say they want what’s best for the girl - a new attorney.
The girl’s attorney who claims the girl is “brainwashed” by the women, decided to go to the Palm Beach County Jail Saturday to find out what the girl wants.
Her answer: a new attorney.
Marc Shiner has been representing Petrona Tomas since the 15-year-old with murder for allegedly killing her 2.8 newborn baby by stuffing tissue deep down her throat and wrapping her in a plastic bag .
The case was a hard one to handle: Tomas speaks only a little-known, in written Mayan dialect, and her reportedly traumatic childhood in Guatemala that included little education and multiple beating left many wondering how she could be tried as an adult.
But for months now, the case has turned into a bitter duel between Shiner and his law-partner and wife, Heidi Perlet, and the two women who want Shiner out, Marisol Zequeira Burke and Aileen Josephs.
Last week, two high profile attorneys met with Tomas and filed a motion to replace Shiner, with Tomas signing off on it.
So before the battle played out in court Monday morning, Shiner visited Tomas Saturday.
“They’ve convinced her that I’m not doing my job.” said Shiner, referring to Burke, Tomas’ court-appointed guardian, and Josephs, an immigration attorney. The women have been visiting Tomas for months.
“I’m at the point right now that the damage is so harmful between (Tomas) and myself that I can’t proceed,” Shiner said. “I most likely will just bow out (on Monday).
Circuit Judge Hubert Lindsey must still agree to a change of attorneys-a move that is not guaranteed but expected since both Shiner and the new attorneys agree.
And now, the already year-old case willbe delayed as the new attorneys get up to speed.
Charged with murder
Tomas was charged with first-degree murder after an ambulance and police were called to her Lake Worth apartment for a reported miscarriage on Oct. 9, 2002, her 15th birthday. They found Tomas bleeding and disoriented, and her newborn girl wrapped in a plastic garbage bag in a garbage can.
An autopsy late revealed a balled-up wad of blood stained tissue stuffed in the back of the premature baby’s throat, the area around it bruised. The autopsy concluded she was born alive and breathing but suffocated because of the airway obstruction. The death was ruled a homicide.
A smaller wad of tissues also was found stuffed in the baby’s ear, according to the report.
Shiner took over the case when he was hired by the Guatemalan-Maya Center shortly after Tomas’ arrest.
It wasn’t long before Josephs befriended Tomas in jail and began visiting her frequently. She told a juvenile judge the young teen was in “grave need of legal advice: and needed a guardian appointed to her - someone who would look out for her best interest in the upcoming legal proceedings.
The judge agreed appointing Burke, also an immigration attorney, from Stuart.
And soon after, the case turned chaotic.
Assistant State Attorney Barry Maxwell extended a plea offer to Tomas, Instead of going to trial on a first-degree murder charge, which would mean an automatic life term in prison if convicted., Tomas could plead guilty to manslaughter, a third -degree felony that gives the judge a wide range of discretion during sentencing.
Shiner indicated he was considering the plea agreement and that’s when “all hell broke loose,” he said.
Shiner and Perlet accused Burke of meddling in the case and accused her of possibly botching it because she is not well-heeled in criminal law.
Burke said she stayed in close contact with Tomas and, because she wasn’t being informed of what was happening in the case, she didn’t know what to tell the teen.
“This is someone I’m looking at as if she’s my child, and I’ve always acted with nothing but her best interests in mind,” Burke said.
In a letter sent to Burke, Perlet wrote: “Petrona is my client, I view you as a nullity - a person to whom I owe no explanation and sadly, a person whose motives are questionable.”
Shiner said: “(Josephs) told me that she was the one who makes the decisions on this kid’s life.”
Shiner said he received calls from several attorneys telling him that Josephs had retained them and that he was fired.
So when he heard news of the Miami attorneys coming into the mix, he wasn’t surprised, He took them seriously because they were the first ones to actually file a motion in court that was endorsed by Tomas.
Still, he maintains Tomas doesn’t understand what’s going on around her.
“I’m extremely worried about her,” Shiner said. “But I can’t do anything else. I wish her the best, I hope her life is salvaged, and I hope she doesn’t wind up dying in prison.”
The new Miami attorneys
Now the case will be turned over to Brett Newkirk and David Kubiliun, a duo from Miami who represented two of the three Muslims students arrested last year on Alligator Alley for allegedly discussing a terrorist plot in a Georgia restaurant.
Tomas became interested in the duo when she saw a local news broadcast report on their latest case, Kubiliun said.
In that case, officers in Miami arrested a 21 year-old Mexican nanny who they believed had abandoned her newborn baby on a Bal Harbour beach.
The girl, who had been working for a Mexican family vacationing in South Florida, gave birth prematurely on the beach. While the girl was washing off in the water, officers found her baby covered in blood and sand and arrested her. Persecutors considered charging her with child abuse, but Newkirk and Kubiliun argued that she was suffering from preeclampsia - a condition that affects about 5 percent of all pregnant women and results in high blood pressure, swelling and protein in the urine. The state dropped the case, and she was reunited with her baby in Mexico within two months of her arrest.
Tomas was interested by that case, and asked Josephs and Burke to get them on board, Kubiliun said. Josephs and Burke met the attorneys in their Miami office Wednesday, and Thursday they all met with Tomas in jail.
“We both worked as public defenders for many years, and you can pick up a vice early on with a client. An instinct,” Kubiliun said. “With Tomas, aside from being so young, she just seemed so innocent. It just feels right.”
The attorneys, after learning of Shiner’s intentions to not put up a fight, expressed relief, They say now they can concentrate on the case and not the bickering surrounding it.
“We have no agenda in this case other than helping her out,” Newkirk said, “The one thing I want to avoid in this case is the atmosphere that apparently has been pervading it up until this point, I have nothing bad to say about her present-former attorney at this point. I have nothing bad to say about her present-former attorney at this point. All I want now is to see justice done.”
Newkirk and Kubiliun said it’s far too early to indicate whether they would want a plea agreement, a trial or something in between, They will spend the next several weeks poring through the evidence in the case.
Meanwhile, Burke and Josephs have opened a trust account to raise money for Tomas’ defense. They opened the account Friday and will hold fund-raisers over the next few months to pay the legal fees.