RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif.—Mercedes Carrera and Daemon Cins were arrested on February 1 of this year, on charges that they sexually abused a nine-year-old girl, who Carrera later acknowledged was her daughter.
The pair denied the charges and entered not guilty pleas but, unable to meet a bail amount of $2 million each, they have been sitting in jail ever since. And after what was scheduled to be a pre-trial hearing on Friday, they are now facing up to another five months behind bars before they are able to make their case in front of a jury.
Appearing in San Bernardino County Superior Court before Judge Katrina West on Friday morning in Rancho Cucamonga, Carrera and West after conferring privately for about 15 minutes with their attorneys, requested to push the pre-trial hearing to February 14, 2020 — Valentine’s Day. The pre-trial hearing had been previously scehduled for September 13, but at that time it was pushed to October 25. At the October 25 court apperance, the date was put off until today.
But at the scheduled hearing, Nicola Fitzgerald, the lawyer representing Cins, told Judge West that the lawyers needed time for “more investigation.”
“We just need more time,” Carrera’s lawyer, Joshua Castro, told AVN.com, when asked what type of “investigation” was still required. “I don’t really want to say what we’re doing.”
The porn performer and her husband face one 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.
At an evidentiary hearing on August 8, prosecutors played an audio recording of a police interview with the alleged victim in the case, identified in court only as “Jane Doe.”
In the interview, the girl described graphic sexual acts which she said that Carrera and Cins performed with her, in what she referred to as “cuddle sessions.”
In the interview with San Bernardino Sheriff’s Deputy Steven Theis, conducted at the home of the girl’s father, the alleged victim described an incident in which she felt Cins' penis against her clitoris, which the defense attorneys argued did not support the most serious charge, of “sexual intercourse” with a minor.
But Assistant District Attorney Brianne Durose at that hearing told Judge Ingrid Adamson Uhler that the legal definition of “intercourse” with a child required only that the “opening of the genitalia” be penetrated, not necessarily the “vaginal canal.”
The judge agreed with Durose on the question.
At Friday’s hearing, Judge West asked Carrera and Cins if they agreed that their constitutional right to a “speedy trial” would not be violated, provided that their trial opened within 60 days of February 14, 2020—in other words, April 14, 2020.
Both defendants agreed that the dates were acceptable.
