PHOENIX — Pima County prosecutors are prepared to retry a Tucson woman whose conviction on child abuse charges was overturned by the Arizona Supreme Court.
Deputy Pima County Attorney Alan Goodwin acknowledged that the high court said Sophia Richter was denied the right at her first trial to claim she acted “under duress” when she played a role in abusing her three children. That included locking them in the house for months at a time and feeding them what one of the girls said was spoiled food.
Based on that conclusion, the justices overturned her conviction and the 20-year prison term.
But Goodwin said his office still believes that Richter is criminally liable for what happened to the girls.
“We are going to go forward with a new prosecution,” he said.
Goodwin said, though, that the case could be resolved with a “non-trial resolution,” meaning having Richter plead to some charge. He did not specify what that would be or what would be the proffered sentence.
That may be an acceptable alternative, said Robb Holmes of the Pima County Legal Defender’s Office, which has been representing Richter.
Holmes noted, though, that if his client is to claim duress she would first have to admit that she committed the offenses charged. Only at that point, he said, could she argue she had no choice but to go along out of fear of her husband, Fernando, who was convicted in a separate trial and sentenced to 58 years in prison.
The facts are generally not in dispute.
Police arrested the pair in 2013 after two of the girls, ages 12 and 13, escaped from a bedroom window and ran to a neighbor’s house to say they were being held captive by their parents and their father was threatening them with a knife.
When police showed up at the house, they found an older sister, 17, locked in a separate bedroom. The older girl said they were fed “rancid” food and made to drink moldy water from plastic jugs.
A trial judge rejected Sophia’s claim that she had no choice but to go along out of fear of her husband, the girls’ stepfather, saying she feared physical harm.
But in a split ruling last week, the state’s high court concluded she should have been given an opportunity to convince a jury that her fears were reasonable. That, the majority said, meant she did not get a fair trial, voiding the conviction.
The case generated a dissent by three of the seven justices, who said that a “duress” defense should be reserved for cases where someone breaks the law because of an imminent threat of harm, rather than a broader, more long-term fear.
