New Trial Ordered in Death of 2-Year-Old Orange County Girl

A state appellate court decision reversing the murder conviction of a man from Orange has again clouded the mysterious 1979 death of the man’s 2-year-old stepdaughter.

A three-judge Court of Appeal panel in Santa Ana ordered a new trial for Leland Roy Dellinger, 34, who is serving a 15-year prison term. The ruling, filed Friday, was released to the public Monday.

Dellinger was convicted on March, 31, 1981, of first-degree murder, which a trial judge later reduced to second-degree murder, in the death of Jaclyn C. Zilles. He had married the baby’s mother, Diane, and was in the process of adopting the girl when she died either from a head injury or from ingesting cocaine. The couple have since divorced.

“Dellinger has always maintained he was innocent--before, during and after the trial,” said state Deputy Atty. Gen. Therene Powell. “We may very well have an innocent person in prison accused of killing a child.”

The Orange County district attorney’s office will review the decision before deciding whether to seek a state Supreme Court hearing, retry the case or set Dellinger free, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. William Bedsworth.

“We’re very concerned about the decision, especially with the age of the case because an old case always makes it tougher to get a conviction,” Bedsworth said.

Dellinger has maintained that the baby fell on her head from a seven-step, carpeted stairway on May 29, 1979. An autopsy determined that the death was accidental and was caused by a fractured skull and swelling of the brain. Three months later, a toxicological report disclosed that there was cocaine in Jaclyn’s blood, liver and stomach.

Further investigation, including a second autopsy, concluded that the force of the fall could not have caused the head injuries. Coroners then recharacterized the death as criminal, and Dellinger was arrested.

Crucial testimony at Dellinger’s trial came from Dr. Carley Ward, a biomedical engineer who, in an unusual experiment, re-created the baby’s fall with a life-size mannequin and supported her findings and opinions with a computer-assisted analysis.

In the Court of Appeal opinion, Justice Edward Wallin, writing for himself and Justice John K. Trotter Jr., decided that the testimony and the experiment should never have been presented to the jury. The prosecution, they said, failed to present enough evidence to establish that Ward was qualified to give an opinion, that the experiment was valid or that the scientific community had accepted the experiment as valid.