LOS ANGELES—Adult performer Mercedes Carrera and her husband Daemon Cins appeared in San Bernardino County, California, Superior Court Friday morning for what was intended to be a pre-trial hearing in the child sex abuse case against them. The pair have been in custody on the charges since February.
Now it appears they may remain in custody until next February before they get a chance to bring their case before a jury. On Friday, Judge Michael A. Knish granted a request by Carrera’s attorney Joshua Castro, and Cins’ lawyer Nicola Fitzgerald, to put off the pre-trial hearing until December 6.
If the December pre-trial hearing goes ahead, and the defendants—who both entered "not guilty" pleas at an August 19 formal arraignment—do not change their pleas, a trial would be required to start within 60 days. That puts the potential trial date sometime in early February, at which time Carrera and Cins will have been behind bars for a full year.
Castro told AVN.com that he and Fitzgerald simply require additional time to prepare their case for trial.
“It’s a complex case,” Castro said. “There’s a lot of moving parts.” Castro added that he could not yet reveal specifics about what steps he and Fitzgerald are planning in their trial preparation.
Carrera and Cins face a charge of “Sexual Intercourse/Sodomy with child 10 years old or younger,” as well as seven charges each of “Sexual Penetration/Oral Copulation” with the same child, a girl who in an earlier statement Carrera acknowledged to be her daughter.
At an August 8 evidentiary hearing, as AVN.com reported, Deputy District Attorney Brieann DuRose played a 75-minute audio recording of the girl, named only as “Jane Doe,” describing the sex abuse to which she was allegedly subjected by Carrera and Cins, in explicit detail.
The child made the detailed allegations in an interview with San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Deputy Steven Theis, conducted at the home of the girl’s father.
Among other incidents, the girl alleged that a video recording, filmed by Carrera on a smartphone, showed the child performing oral copulation on Cins’ penis. But police would not confirm the existence of the video. Asked at the time about the video by AVN.com, DuRose declined to comment.
Castro acknowledged that the year spent in jail by Carrera and Cins before trial was “a long time,” but added that he and Fitzgerald needed to be certain that they could stage the best defense possible.
“I just want to be sure that she gets justice,” Castro said of Carrera. “My intention is that she’ll be found not guilty and released from custody.”
