The child murder and torture trial for a Spring Valley family was supposed to get on the court’s calendar Wednesday morning. Instead, any trial now looks unlikely until the end of 2026 at the earliest.
Eleven-year-old Arabella McCormack died more than two years ago. Prosecutors said her adopted parents and grandparents starved and beat Arabella and her sisters for years, ultimately killing Arabella in August of 2022. Arabella's two younger sisters survived but were hospitalized for three weeks recovering from severe malnutrition. They are now in the care of a new adoptive family.
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Doctors said Arabella weighed 48 pounds when she died – less than her weight at age 5. Medical records showed she was covered in bruises and had at least 15 separate bone fractures.
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SIGN UP Police arrested the girls’ mother, Leticia McCormack, along with McCormack’s two elderly parents, Adella and Stanley Tom, several months after Arabella died. They have now been in custody for more than two years.
Leticia McCormack was a formerly ordained elder and youth ministry leader for the Rock Church. Her mother and father served as volunteers with the San Diego Police Department from 2015 until their arrests.
Brian McCormack, Leticia McCormack’s husband and a border patrol agent, killed himself in front of deputies hours after Arabella died. Prosecutors say he would have faced charges if he were alive. Prosecutors say Brian McCormack encouraged his wife Leticia McCormack via text to not allow one of the girls to use the bathroom and then let her sit in her own waste, according to testimony from the grand jury indictment. The text message read, “She can just soak in that [expletive] and get sick. Bella will be done soon and we will only have two to worry about.”
Investigations
Leticia McCormack and her parents each face eight felony charges of child murder, conspiracy, torture and child abuse for Arabella’s death, and the condition of her two younger sisters. All three co-defendants have pleaded not guilty.
Defense attorneys argue to delay the trial
“I was anticipating hopefully a trial within a year. I didn’t think that was unreasonable,” Judge Patricia Cookson said in an East County courthouse Wednesday morning.
The public defenders representing the trio felt otherwise.
“I think it would be an impossibility at this time to set a hard [trial] date,” said Stanley Tom’s public defender, Shervin Samimi. “We don’t even know if we’re setting a hard date for a death penalty trial or not and that would make a vast difference in what we’re going to be able to do.”
Two defense attorneys picked up the case last year. Adella Tom’s original public defender no longer works for the county. Leticia McCormack initially hired a private defense attorney, though is now represented by deputy public defender Tressa Huber.
“Your honor, I came onto this case in June of 2024,” said Huber. “At this point, it is too early for me to even give a realistic trial date.”
In part, said Huber, because the grand jury indictment added a special circumstances allegation of torture to each defendant. That addition sets the potential punishment to either life in prison without parole or execution.
“That completely changed the landscape of the case and requires [an] incredible amount of work that needs to be done for mitigation in order to be able to present to the district attorney’s office,” Huber said.
The DA’s office still has yet to decide if prosecutors will seek the death penalty, deputy district attorney Meredith Pro told the judge.
Either way, all three public defenders told the judge they need more time to research and prepare their defendants.
Adella Tom’s alternate public defender, Jay Curatalo, told the judge he hired a mitigation specialist after the special circumstances allegation. He said the specialist will need at least one year to prepare a presentation in response to the new allegation for the district attorney’s office — something Samimi and Huber told the judge was not unreasonable.
“I have a client who is 73 years old,” said Curatalo. “There’s 73 years of people that she’s interacted with, jobs that she’s had, that I need to investigate, that I need to look into.”
The public defenders wouldn’t even agree to a future motions hearing before the end of 2025. Huber noted the grand jury indictment transcript alone is 1,400 pages long.
But Pro pushed back, saying the defense attorneys have had that transcript for more than five months. She told the judge that she was ready to set a hard trial date and argued the meat of this case hasn’t changed substantially over the last two years. She questioned why much of the research and prep work lamented by the defense hasn’t already been completed by now.
“I am mindful of the fact that there was a special added at the end of October,” Pro said. “However, this has been a murder case since the date that it was issued against at least Mr. Tom and Ms. McCormack and then later against Ms. Adella Tom. I would imagine that mitigation and collecting that information would have started far before we put on specials. A large part of that work should have already been done at this point. And so I don’t think it is a big ask.”
Ultimately, Judge Cookson said she was sympathetic to the fact this case isn’t the only case assigned to each public defender, though she shared Pro’s concerns about delaying justice.
The judge did not set a trial date on Wednesday. Instead, the co-defendants and prosecutor will be back in court next year, on Feb. 6, 2026, to argue pre-trial motions.
Arguing for access to hearings
Prior to the start of Wednesday’s hearing, Stanley Tom’s public defender, Samimi, asked the judge to prohibit members of the media from recording video of the public defenders’ faces. NBC 7 objected to that request in court on the grounds that it would set an unusual and harmful precedent for public access to public court proceedings in San Diego County and specifically in this case, as prior hearings did not have any such restriction.
Judge Cookson sided with NBC 7, saying she believes strongly in public access and transparency of court business, and allowed the continued camera access in this case.
