Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY : COURTS : Third Trial Acquits Man in Infant’s Death

After his third trial, a 32-year-old Santa Ana man was acquitted last week of murder charges in the death five years ago of a girlfriend’s 2-year-old son.

Darrell Roberts, a high school sports referee, still faces the possibility of being tried one more time, for involuntary manslaughter. Superior Judge Robert Turner has scheduled a hearing so prosecutors can tell him whether they want to try Roberts again or have the case dismissed.

Roberts was accused of second-degree murder in the death of Julius Caesar Mathis Jr., who died of internal injuries. The prosecution’s medical experts said the injuries came within six hours of the child’s death, which was when he was in Roberts’ care while the mother was working. But Roberts’ attorneys brought in three of their own medical experts, who said the injuries could have been sustained up to a week before the child died.

Roberts had a hung jury, 9 to 3 for acquittal, at his first trial in 1983.

The Roberts case caused a stir last summer when it was revealed during jury selection at his second trial that one of the county’s forensic pathologists, Dr. Walter Fischer, had misplaced some tissue slide evidence. Its existence was not discovered until after the first trial was over. The Roberts case led to other public criticisms of Fischer, who committed suicide last July.

At the end of the third trial last week, jurors acquitted him of second-degree murder but were hung 8 to 4 in favor of acquittal on a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter.