A California criminal case that began with a child’s death inside a small church has now turned into a sweeping test of how far religious belief and racial bias arguments can stretch in court. Prosecutors say a San Jose mother tortured and killed her three‑year‑old daughter during what the family called an exorcism, while the defense now insists the state is punishing a sincere belief in the supernatural and should throw the case out. At the center is Claudia Elisa Hernandez, accused of seeing her little girl as “possessed” and now asking a judge to erase the charges under California’s Racial Justice Act.
The San Jose church ritual that ended in a child’s death
According to investigators, the tragedy unfolded inside a modest church in downtown San Jose, where relatives gathered for what they described as a religious ritual to drive out evil spirits from a toddler. The child, identified in court proceedings as three‑year‑old Aureli, was brought to the sanctuary by her mother, who believed her daughter was “possessed” and needed spiritual intervention rather than medical care. What followed, authorities say, was not a symbolic ceremony but a prolonged ordeal in which the girl was restrained and subjected to intense physical force under the guise of casting out demons.
Police reports and later testimony describe a scene in which the family focused on prayer and physical restraint instead of emergency help, even as the child’s condition deteriorated. A coroner would later testify that Aureli’s cause of death was a combination of mechanical asphyxia and smothering, and that she had internal bleeding and other injuries consistent with sustained pressure on her small body, details that emerged in a recorded coroner account. Authorities say the ritual, framed by the family as an act of faith, instead became the mechanism of the child’s death.
Who is Claudia Elisa Hernandez and what is she accused of?
At the center of the case is Claudia Elisa Hernandez, a young California mother now charged in connection with her daughter’s killing. Prosecutors allege that Hernandez, convinced that her three‑year‑old was under demonic control, led the effort to restrain and suffocate the child during the church ritual. In charging documents, they describe a pattern of escalating behavior in which spiritual explanations were used to justify increasingly extreme physical measures, culminating in the fatal exorcism that left Aureli dead on the church floor.
Hernandez has become a polarizing figure, portrayed by the state as a parent who crossed the line from misguided belief into lethal abuse, and by her supporters as a woman whose faith and background are being criminalized. In public filings and media accounts, she is consistently identified as a California mom who allegedly tortured her daughter to death during the exorcism, while her defense team now argues that she is being targeted because of her religious practices and ethnicity, a framing highlighted in coverage of Claudia Elisa Hernandez and her legal strategy.
The family’s exorcism beliefs and the “possessed” child narrative
From the outset, Hernandez and her relatives have framed what happened in the church as an act of spiritual warfare rather than a crime. They believed, according to court records and interviews, that the three‑year‑old was “possessed” and that only an exorcism could free her from malevolent forces. This conviction was not a fleeting idea but part of a broader family culture steeped in faith healing and exorcisms, where prayer and physical intervention were seen as legitimate tools to confront what they perceived as supernatural threats…