BEYOND BELIEF

In 2005, Hailey Castaneda wound up in Texas Children's Hospital at the prestigious Houston Medical Center. The 6-month-old infant was suffering from two broken legs, a broken arm, skull fracture, lacerated kidney, pancreas and liver, along with a nearly severed tongue. Against all odds, Hailey survived and came to be known as the "miracle baby." Houston police and child protective services investigators still call it one of the worst cases of child abuse they have ever seen.

Emmanuel Castaneda, the miracle baby’s father, was sentenced to life in prison for inflicting those injuries on poor little Hailey. Castaneda had come to the attention of the police in 2003 when Hailey’s older sister Charla, then only 4 weeks old, turned up in an emergency room with a broken leg and a head injury. Charla’s mother told doctors that those injuries had occurred after she left the infant in Castaneda's care.

Now comes the real shocker. It turns out that just six years into his life sentence Castaneda is scheduled for a November parole hearing. To most people that is beyond belief.

For parole purposes the State of Texas considers a life sentence the equivalent of 60 years. Castaneda is eligible for parole because at the time he was sentenced, child abusers, like most other inmates, could qualify for parole after serving a fourth of their sentence. By adding the nine years of "good time" credits that he’s earned to the six years he’s served, Castaneda is now considered to have served 15 years, thus making him eligible for parole.

Castaneda would have had to serve half of his term – 30 years – before becoming eligible for parole had he been convicted after 2007. That year the law was changed by adding child abuse or "injury to a child" to the list of violent offenses that no longer qualify for "good time" and requiring child abusers to serve at least half their sentence.

Police refer to Castaneda as a “cold blooded monster” and to me that is putting it rather mildly. I suspect that the parole board will not approve a parole for this human piece of excrement in November or in the foreseeable future for that matter. Any parole board member who would approve Castaneda for release should be confined for intensive psychiatric therapy at Babbling Brooks Funny Farm.