This case is going to be
very emotional.
At any point you find yourself
getting a little overwhelmed,
please step out
of the courtroom,
compose yourself, 
and then come back inside.
This was the case that...
just has followed me
from that night.
It's still hard to believe
two people did all those
horrible things to him.
Gabriel Fernandez was,
at the time of his death,
eight years old.
That was my friend and...
it really caught me because...
it was his parents
who took his life.
He was a very good kid,
very playful, loving.
These two people
murdered this child.
How did this come to be?
How did a child
who had so many signs
of repeated
and long-term abuse
slip through the cracks?
It really wasn't until
I got all of the evidence
that I realized
how egregious the case was.
This was a story
that could not be ignored.
The question was,
could we uncover
what was really going on?
The Department of
Children and Family Services
had significant
involvement in this case.
Board of supervisors
had now taken notice.
There's something
about this kid's death.
There was
no medical follow-up
even to the injuries 
that were acknowledged
by the department.
You're thinking about,
"How could this be true?"
As prosecutors,
we need to up our game.
She didn't just prosecute
the mother and her boyfriend.
She also took the step
of prosecuting
the four social workers.
They had a job, and their job
was to save a little boy.
The system is overtaxed.
The most children I had
was about 280.
I did not commit a crime.
When the details came out
of how this poor child
was tortured,
and all of these people knew,
I think it shook
the county to the core.
Bureaucracies
tend to function
to preserve
the institution at all costs.
The system has
this enormous power.
There are those
who think that,
by not talking,
you can limit the bad publicity.
I believe the ultimate evil
is seeing what's wrong,
and looking away
when you have a power
to make the difference.
That is true evil.
