A Stanton laundromat janitor enticed an 11-year-old girl into a closet with the promise of free perfume in August 2009 and then did the unthinkable.
Nereo Del Valle locked the door and sexually molested the child, acts Orange County prosecutors successfully labeled as crimes worthy of a punishment of 15 years to life in prison.
But Del Valle refuses to accept his conviction because he claims he didn't think in advance of committing his crimes and therefore couldn't have formed criminal intent to harm the girl.
He believes the kidnapping charge was unfair because he didn't transported her to a different location.
He also insists that fondling the victim's breasts, buttocks and vagina for “just a few moments” should give him some sort of legal discount.
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An unamused California Court of Appeal panel last year upheld the conviction and the state Supreme Court declined to overturn the decision.
In late 2013, Del Valle took his arguments to U.S. District Court, but after a review federal magistrate Judge Jay C. Gandhi “unreservedly” agreed with the state court's rejection of the molester's legal claims.
Court staff closed Del Valle's federal appeal this month.
Upshot: The 63-year-old man will continue serving his sentence inside the medium-security state prison at Soledad.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.