Farm Supervisors Take Plea Deal In Heat Death

The supervisors initially were charged with involuntary manslaughter in the first-ever criminal case over a farmworker's heat-related death in the country.

Heat regulations, which California introduced in 2005 as the nation's first, were in place to protect the state's 450,000 seasonal workers, but advocates say the rules were routinely violated.

Authorities said Maria Isavel Vasquez Jimenez, 17, died because supervisors denied her shade and water as she pruned grapes for nine hours in nearly triple-digit heat. The teenager was two months pregnant at the time.

Under the deal approved Monday by a San Joaquin County judge, Maria De Los Angeles Colunga, the owner of now-defunct Merced Farm Labor, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of failing to provide shade. She received 40 hours of community service, serve three years of probation and pay a $370 fine.

Her brother, Elias Armenta, who was the company's former safety coordinator, pleaded guilty to a felony count of failing to follow safety regulations that resulted in death. He received 480 hours of community service, five years of probation and a $1,000 fine.

The deals also banned both from ever again working in farm labor contracting.

Farmworker advocates and family members of Maria Isavel, who had called for tougher punishments for the two, said they planned to drive to Sacramento later Wednesday to protest the sentences and demand a meeting with Gov. Jerry Brown.

"It's really apparent that the entire system has failed Maria Isavel and the other farmworkers who died in the field," said Merlyn Calderon, vice president of United Farm Workers of America. "This is an unjust sentence for the negligence demonstrated."

In 2008, an investigation by The Associated Press found the understaffed California Division of Occupational Safety and Health failed to consistently hold employers accountable for workers' deaths. Since 2005, 13 farmworkers have died of heat stroke.

Merced Labor had previous worker safety citations, and after Maria Isavel's death it surrendered its license. The agricultural firm also was hit by a record $262,700 fine.

"For them, Maria Isavel was only another farm laborer whom they could replace easily," the teen's uncle Doroteo Jimenez said in court Wednesday before the sentencing. "For us, the loss was eternal."

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)