By Anika Khubchandani
WOODLAND – A Yolo County Superior Court jury late Friday delivered a guilty verdict against Edwardo Aguilar Castro, who was charged with 22 instances of sexual assault, most of them including lewd and lascivious acts with children under the age of 14.
Three victims came forward in March leading to his arrest. Castro has been in custody on bail of $1 million. Facing life in prison, Castro is set to be sentenced Dec. 2, before Judge David Reed
Deputy District Attorney Garrett L. Hamilton delivered a blunt and compelling argument in the child molestation case, encouraging the jury to review Castro’s interview to determine that “his 
denials are not convincing.”
The defendant uses Spanish curse words like “chingada” because he knows he is in trouble and guilty, said Hamilton.
The defense, led by Deputy Public Defender Karen Soell, attempted to convince the jury that the defendant did not commit these crimes, because the whole family was tirelessly working “so there was no opportunity for him to be at home alone with the victim over the years.”
In response, Hamilton emphasized that the family did seasonal work, meaning that some weeks were busy but there were also weeks without work so Castro had many opportunities to be alone with the victim.
“You gotta say nah nah nah” to the fact that the defense said “there was never an opportunity for him to molest her,” argued DDA Hamilton. “Over a span of years, a guy is going to find time if he is determined to be alone with the child to molest her and that’s just common sense.”
The defense relied on the testimony of witnesses to prove that the family was always at work.
Hamilton suggested to the jury that “there are better ways to prove things like that than the way they were attempted to be proven to you,” noting that evidence such as time sheets are a “much more credible source of information on how this happened and when this happened.”
At the end of his statement, Hamilton stressed the fact that the evidence presented proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Eduardo Aguilar Castro committed these crimes.
Prosecutor Hamilton told the jury to “start with Count 1 and start with the evidence and literally sit there and ask yourself” who was at the scene of the crime. Since Castro was there and one of the victims was there, “you know the witnesses told you the truth.”
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