Foster mom faces a life sentence

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — When Cleo Juan stands before District Court Judge Grant Foutz for sentencing, she will be looking at a life sentence for her role in the death of 18-month-old Colby Shirley in March 2006.

Under a law approved by the state Legislature in 2006, Foutz will have little leeway in sentencing.

Before that, said McKinley County District Attorney Karl Gillson, a person convicted of intentional abuse of a child under the age of 12 that leads to death was looking at a sentence of 18 years. But the new law gives it a life sentence.

“It will be 30 years before she will be eligible for parole,” Gillson said, adding that under state law this is a capital case.

Juan, who has served as a foster mother for the state of New Mexico for almost a decade, was convicted by a Gallup jury last month of shaking Shirley, resulting in his death by severe head trauma.

Juan’s attorney, Mark Fine, presented a defense that the injury to Shirley occurred before Juan came home that morning, but the prosecution relied on statements Juan made later that day that she had done “the most unimaginable thing you could to an innocent child.”

The sentencing is currently scheduled to be March 7, but Fine said he plans to ask for a continuance so he can do more research on the law.

Gillson said the law is so new that Gallup was the first jurisdiction to file a case, so there is no precedence.

“But I am sure that whatever sentence is given, it will be challenged,” Gillson said, adding that his office will ask for the life sentence.

Fine said he will definitely challenge the law, bringing forth a number of mitigating circumstances that he would hope Foutz takes into consideration.

The problem Fine has with the law is that it doesn’t differentiate between a parent who continually abused a child over several years resulting in the child’s death one day and a situation that Juan found herself in.

“She had a history of being one of the best foster mothers in the state,” Fine said.

There was also evidence presented at the trial that Juan was having problems with her depression medicine and had not been taking it regularly. A state social service worker testified at the trial that Juan had been asking the department for several days before Shirley’s death to remove him and his four siblings from her care because she was having problems coping with the children, especially in the morning.

Fine said he is also preparing a motion for a new trial, and if that doesn’t work, his firm plans to appeal the conviction.