Mom Guilty Again in Baby Lollipops Murder

Ana Maria Cardona faces death penalty a second time after jury returns verdict

It's been nearly 20 years and has taken two separate trials, but the result for the mother accused in the infamous 1990 murder of her young son was the same.

Ana Maria Cardona, who was already convicted and sentenced to die in 1992 for the gruesome murder of her 3-year-old son, will once again face the death penalty after she was found guilty Friday in the retrial of the case.

A jury found Cardona, now 48, guilty of first-degree murder and child abuse just before noon, after a day and a half of deliberations.

Now she'll head to a death penalty trial on August 30.

The case against Cardona began in November 1990, when a child's lifeless body was found in the bushes in front of a Miami Beach mansion. The unidentified boy had been starved, beaten, bitten, his bones broken and his body dumped.

Police called him "Baby Lollipops" for the design on his shirt. He was later identified as 3-year-old Lazaro Figueroa, son of Cardona.

Cardona was charged with his murder, accused of beating him to death with a baseball bat.

What followed was an emotional murder trial. Cardona's lover, Olivia Gonzalez, was the prosecution's star witness. Her tearful tales of Cardona's torturing the boy were key to Cardona's conviction and death sentence in 1992.

But Gonzalez eventually admitted to beating the toddler herself, insisting she was a lesser participant. Cardona argued, however, that Gonzalez had delivered the final, fatal blow with the baseball bat.

Gonzalez eventually pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. After 15 years, she was released from prison in 2008 for good behavior.

But in a twist, the Florida Supreme Court overturned Cardona's conviction in 2002, granting her a new trial.

In the retrial, Cardona's lawyers argued that Gonzalez had told police that she had hit the boy with a bat, but that those details were kept from them by by the prosecution.

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