Wife Sentenced for Part in Husband's Murder

A woman accused by prosecutors of having her husband killed in southeastern Pennsylvania has been sentenced to 12 to 25 years in prison.

Delia Hernandez-Cortes, 31, cried Thursday in Montgomery County Court as the sentence was read, The (Norristown) Times-Herald reported.
 
She pleaded guilty in May to third-degree murder in the April 2010 slaying of Jose Armando Cazares-Olarte, who prosecutors said was abducted from his Collingdale home, driven to Upper Merion and beaten with a rock.
 
Gabriel Martinez, 25, of King of Prussia was convicted in November of first-degree murder in the slaying and faces a life prison term without possibility of parole.
 
Public defender Edward Rideout said he had hoped for a lesser sentence given the alleged physical and sexual abuse suffered by his client during her relationship with her husband.
 
"In 13 years I've never seen anything as bad as the torture this woman was put through," he said
 
Hernandez-Cortes testified through a translator that she was forced to come to the United States illegally and alleged that her husband told the men who smuggled her across the border that they could rape her as a form of payment. She also said she was tied up by him several times and locked in a closet for days with only bread and water.
 
Anna Davile, of Philadelphia, said she met Hernandez-Cortes while translating a parking ticket for her husband and tried to find a safe place for her, but he found her after three weeks.
 
"I thought I did my best," she told the court tearfully.
 
Judge Joseph Smyth said the case looked like first-degree murder but the plea was for third-degree murder, and without other circumstances she could have been sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison. After the sentencing, Smyth said he wished the defendant's friends in the United States had been able to do more to help her.