San Diego County prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Leticia McCormack, the Spring Valley mother accused of torturing and starving her 11-year-old adopted daughter, Arabella McCormack, to death in 2022. The case has already produced one of the largest child-abuse civil settlements in California history, but the criminal prosecution against McCormack and her parents is only now moving toward trial.
Prosecutors announced the decision to pursue capital punishment for the mother accused in the girl's death, according to NBC 7 San Diego. Grand jury indictments in the case named Leticia McCormack, alongside her parents, Stanley Tom and Adella Tom, charging all three with first-degree murder, conspiracy, torture, and child abuse tied to hundreds of overt acts against Arabella and her two surviving sisters. Court scheduling as of April 2025 indicated the criminal trial was not expected to begin before 2026, a delay tied to the scope of the grand jury indictments and pretrial motions, per a report reviewed by NBC 7 San Diego.
What Investigators Found in Spring Valley
When emergency responders arrived at the family's Spring Valley home on August 30, 2022, Arabella McCormack weighed under 48 pounds, less than she weighed at age five, and she later died from severe malnutrition, cardiac arrest, and physical trauma after suffering 15 separate bone fractures, according to the Times of San Diego. Hours after deputies responded to the home that day, the girl's adoptive father, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian McCormack, died by suicide in his vehicle near the residence, the outlet reported.
Before her November 2022 arrest on murder and torture charges, Leticia McCormack held visible standing in the community. She served as an ordained elder and youth ministry coordinator at Rock Church in San Diego and volunteered as a crisis interventionist with the San Diego Police Department, according to the same Times of San Diego account.
A $31.5 Million Reckoning for Institutions
The criminal case follows a $31.5 million civil settlement finalized in December 2025 for Arabella's two surviving younger sisters, resolving claims against public agencies, a charter school, and a local church over systemic failures to report ongoing abuse before Arabella's death, as reported by The Guardian. The settlement included $10 million from the City of San Diego, $10 million from San Diego County, $8.5 million from Pacific Coast Academy, and $3 million from Rock Church, according to CBS 8.
Civil court filings alleged that a San Diego Police Department officer provided wooden paddles to Leticia McCormack for hitting the children and failed to report obvious signs of severe abuse to authorities, per The Guardian's reporting. Hoodline first reported on the lawsuit in July 2023, before the settlement was finalized, detailing the claims against SDPD, Rock Church, and county social workers on behalf of Arabella's surviving sisters.
Why a Death Sentence Would Be Largely Symbolic
Even if prosecutors secure a capital conviction, any death sentence would remain symbolic under the state's current legal landscape. Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order in March 2019 establishing a moratorium on the death penalty, shutting down San Quentin's execution chamber and halting all lethal injection protocols during his tenure, according to the Office of the Governor.
California has not executed a death row inmate since Clarence Ray Allen in January 2006, yet the state continues to hold the nation's largest capital punishment population, with more than 550 inmates sentenced to death as of 2026, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. That backdrop means the pending capital case against McCormack and her parents will play out in San Diego Superior Court largely as a determination of guilt and sentencing on paper, even as the underlying civil liabilities against the city, county, school, and church have already been resolved.
