Mother Gets Probation in ’86 Santa Ana Infant Death : Court: Husband is to receive prison time. Couple pleaded guilty to drug and child endangerment charges after murder counts are dismissed.

Less than a week after murder charges were dismissed against a Santa Ana couple in the 1986 death of their infant daughter, the couple pleaded guilty to child endangerment and drug-related charges Friday after a judge told that them he would sentence the husband to five years in prison and grant the wife probation.

Gilbert Delgado, 29, and Debbie Delgado, 26, each pleaded to two counts of child endangerment and four counts related to the possession of illegal drugs.

Debbie Delgado’s plea was technically no contest, but under California law a sentencing judge can consider that tantamount to a guilty plea.

“One of their concerns if they had gone to trial and been convicted was the placement of their two (other) children,” said Ronald G. Brower, Debbie Delgado’s attorney. “It’s going to be an extreme hardship on her with her husband in prison, but at least now the family can stay together.”

Prosecutors had accused the couple of second-degree murder after a county crime laboratory found that their 2-month-old daughter, Stephanie, died from a cocaine overdose in 1986.

But after new information from the lab raised questions of whether cocaine contributed to the child’s death, Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard M. King asked that the murder charges be dropped.

King insisted, however, that he would go forward with the remaining counts because the new crime lab report confirmed that at some point in the baby’s life, she had ingested cocaine. If convicted on those counts, the Delgados could each have faced up to 9 1/2 years in prison.

The Delgados entered their pleas after King and their attorneys conferred in chambers with Superior Court Judge Robert R. Fitzgerald.

While King said he recommended slightly more prison time for Gilbert Delgado, he was satisfied with the judge’s recommendation.

“It was certainly a consideration on our part what would happen to their two children,” King said, explaining why he did not oppose probation for the wife. “Clearly, Gilbert was more involved.”

Part of the evidence presented to the judge was a videotape in which Debbie Delgado told police that she had been trying to persuade her husband to get out of the drug business.

Still to be decided is whether her probation might include some time in Orange County Jail, where she could be kept for up to one year. However, Fitzgerald noted for the record that his “indicated” sentence for her would include “little or no jail time.”

After the hearing, Gilbert Delgado comforted his wife, who was fighting back tears. They both declined to speak with reporters.

“These are two people who truly love each other,” said Dennis P. O’Connell, the husband’s attorney. “And they really have turned their lives around. They are drug free. They aren’t the same people they were when this all started.”

The Delgados were living in Santa Ana when Stephanie died in September, 1986. Witnesses, including Debbie Delgado’s brother, Bruce Chavez, told police that Gilbert was a drug dealer and that his wife acquiesced in his drug activities.

There was also evidence that the couple snorted cocaine and cut up the drugs near the baby’s bottles. The couple went underground when police sought to arrest them after the first crime lab report indicated that the baby died from a cocaine overdose. They were found living in Costa Mesa a year later and arrested.

They had a new baby, Gilbert Jr., but police found that they had continued their drug-culture lifestyle. One of the child endangerment counts related to the second child, and part of the drug counts stemmed from a police search of their Costa Mesa apartment, which turned up drugs.

The Delgados were the first people in the county to be accused of a cocaine-related murder in a child’s death. Their attorneys praised the prosecutor’s decision to drop the murder charges after the lab re-evaluated its findings.

For the Delgados, their attorneys said, Friday’s guilty pleas brought relief that there was “some finality to all they’ve had to go through.”

“The pressure on their marriage has been tremendous,” attorney Brower said. “Debbie’s family problems, of course, include the fact that if they had gone to trial, her brother would have been a prosecution witness.”

An added pressure, he said, would have been if Gilbert Delgado had gone to trial and if she had pleaded guilty in exchange for probation. Prosecutors could then have forced her to testify against her husband.

The Delgados waited in the courtroom while their attorneys conferred with the judge and prosecutor.

“The judge made it clear that he was dealing with each of them individually,” O’Connell said. “But a major concern in Gilbert’s decision (to plead guilty) was what was going to happen to his wife.”

The Delgados, who are free on bail and will report Sept. 20 for sentencing, have since moved to a new home in Santa Ana. Gilbert Delgado is working as an electrician and is coaching Little League.

Both have successfully completed a court-ordered counseling program, and Debbie Delgado recently gave birth to a girl.