SAN MARCOS -- A Hays County jury on Thursday sentenced a 24-year-old father to 14 life sentences for severely abusing his young children.

The sentences for Cesar Mojica are the maximum allowed by law, but will run concurrently, meaning Mojica must serve the equivalent of a single life sentence. He will be eligible for parole after serving 30 years.

Mojica showed no apparent emotion as he heard his sentence, but the foster mother who is caring for and hopes to adopt his young children exclaimed "yes!" from her seat in the courtroom.

Some jurors also fought back tears.

During the trial, jurors heard evidence that Mojica's three children -- a then-4-year-old girl and twin 3-year-olds, a boy and a girl -- suffered months and possibly years of abuse at their father's hands. The children were covered in deep bite marks, bruises and welts. They were malnourished and had untreated broken bones.

"This is the worst case I think any of us had ever seen," said Hays County Sheriff Allen Bridges. "We couldn't believe what we saw when we started this investigation."

Last week jurors convicted Mojica of 14 counts of injury to a child, a first-degree felony.

The children were in the courthouse, but not the courtroom, for the verdict. They later met privately with jurors.

"They were all just happy to see the kids," said Hays Co. District Attorney Sherri Tibbe, who sat in on the meeting. "There were tears all around. They were just happy to see these kids and see that they are safe now, that they're in a happy good home."

The foster mother testified the children are small for their and have developmental disabilities. One child can't run and another can't ride a tricycle, she said.

"These children are going to have to live with this for the rest of their lives," Tibbe said outside of court. "They are going to have issues for the rest of their days, if not physically, emotional. Child abuse is not something that goes away once you are taken away, and those kids are going to have to live with those issues forever."

Tibbe said she never saw the cases as deserving anything less than life sentences.

"We are happy with the verdict," she said. "We feel like we got justice for these kids today."

Defense attorney Will Holgate, however, said life was too severe considering Mojica's background, which includes abuse when he was a child. He said Mojica has limited mental abilities and sees the world through the eyes of a child.

"His reaction was he wanted pictures of his children," Holgate says. "He does act like an 8-year-old. I deal with him, and it's like dealing with an 8-year-old boy, and I think that's how he took it...

"Cesar was beaten all his life," he said. "What do you expect? If you beat someone that long over that period of time, abandoned at age year and a half, has children when he's 19, no parental skills, (becomes) addicted to drugs, alcohol, basically to self-medicate his pain away. It's terrible crimes and terrible injuries, but I can see how it might have happened."

Holgate had asked jurors for a sentence of probation, or a sentence of five years in prison on some counts and 10 years probation in others, so Mojica would remain on probation after he served his prison sentence.

"If the jury had really believed he was an 8-year-old child, I think it would have been appropriate," he said. "Apparently, they didn't."

The mother of the children, Sara Amaya, remains in custody. She faces 14 counts of injury to a child. Her trial has not been set.