No Verdict Reached on Baby’s Death : Trial: A day-care worker was accused of second-degree murder. But jury deadlocks over defense claim that child’s mother was responsible.

It was, by all accounts, a massive blow that killed 17-month-old Loran MacDonald, comparable to the impact of a fall from a second-floor window or getting hit by a car.

Beyond that, little is certain, despite a trial that kept this city riveted before ending in a hung jury Thursday.

Jamie Lynn Stone, 27, a Sunday school teacher who took care of other people’s children so she could be a full-time mother to her daughter, was charged with Loran’s murder. Prosecutors do not claim to know why or how she inflicted the injuries, but contend that the act was intentional.

During the trial, however, a sheriff’s captain, a minister and a next-door neighbor testified that Stone was a loving, honest, gentle woman who would scarcely raise her voice, let alone strike a child.

But Stone’s strongest defense was that the killer was Loran’s mother, Deborah MacDonald, who was so stressed in the months before the crime that she told a therapist she feared she would hurt her three young children.

Sacramento County authorities took MacDonald’s warning seriously enough to pay for full-time day care for Loran and his two sisters, who were not in Stone’s care. MacDonald, 34, also said at the trial that on the morning the boy fell into a coma, Loran banged his head on a bathroom faucet.

This week, a judge ordered that MacDonald’s two children be placed in a foster home, based largely on evidence produced in Stone’s trial that MacDonald was abusive.

Prosecutors are considering whether to retry Stone.

“Our case is not that Deborah MacDonald is a terrific mother,” Dist. Atty. Steve White said Friday. “It is that Jamie Stone killed the child.”

Public sentiment seems to run in Stone’s favor. Stone and her lawyer, Robert Blasier, appeared on a local radio talk show and nearly all the callers, including one who identified herself as MacDonald’s cousin, tried to console Stone by expressing their hope that her ordeal was over.

Talk show host Christine Craft proclaimed that--like many in this city--she viewed Stone as a victim, and gave instructions for donating to the Jamie Lynne Stone Defense Fund.

During the trial, Stone testified in her own defense and gave this account:

On the morning of the crime, Sept. 21, Deborah MacDonald arrived at about 7:30 a.m., set down Loran’s diaper bag, and quickly left. Stone, two months pregnant with her second child, had a touch of morning sickness.

She rocked Loran for a few minutes and, as other parents arrived with their children, she sat Loran down in the highchair. She gave him Cheerios, milk and a sliced banana.

She took him out of the chair 35 minutes later, and he wandered into the front room. As she tended to another child, she heard him fuss, and saw him fall and hit the back of his head against the heavy oak coffee table.

When she picked him up, she noticed a lump on the left side of his head. It was the size of a golf ball. She called Deborah MacDonald, who arrived within minutes. Deborah called for an ambulance, cradled her gravely injured son, and pleaded with him to stay awake.

By the time they arrived at the hospital, the boy was comatose. Soon, he was dead.

Medical experts testifying for the prosecution said that Loran MacDonald could not have functioned for an hour at Stone’s home if he had sustained such an injury at the hands of his mother. The injury was too severe, they said. Prosecutors also brought forward parents who said they had pulled children from Stone’s care after finding bruises.

But defense attorney Blasier brought in doctors who said there can be delays between a trauma and the severe swelling that would immobilize the victim. A relatively minor bump, he contended, could have exacerbated a major head injury suffered previously.

Blasier also brought in an uncle of Deborah MacDonald’s who told family secrets--how she had confided to her mother that she wanted to kill her children, and even wanted life insurance on Loran.

Through the trial, Stone’s friends and family filled the courtroom. Her husband, Daniel, an armored-car guard, spent breaks telling visitors how his wife, a high school sweetheart, could never have committed such a crime.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robin Shakely, who interrupted a maternity leave to take the case, remains convinced that Stone committed the crime, and will urge White to refile the charges.

“The life of an innocent 17-month-old child is worth more than one try, given the overwhelming amount of evidence on our side--and the extreme menace posed to children by people like Mrs. Stone, who present such a placid face to the world,” Shakely said.

Under questioning by Blasier, MacDonald acknowledged that she was abused as a child. In various court proceedings, she has accused Lawrence MacDonald, the father of the children, of abusing her and molesting her daughters--charges that he denies.

Lawrence MacDonald, a sometimes homeless man, testified for the Stone defense that Deborah was violent and had an explosive temper. On Tuesday, he appeared before Judge Charles C. Kobayashi with information, much of it gathered by Stone’s defense lawyer, that Deborah MacDonald was threatening to kill her daughters. The judge, citing imminent danger to the children, ordered them placed in a foster home.

In the end, only two jurors held out for a second-degree murder conviction. Two others were prepared to vote for the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter.

Both sides will be back in court Aug. 17. Prosecutors acknowledge that they will have a tough time persuading 12 jurors that Stone is guilty.