A California court of appeals has ruled that Santa Clara County prosecutors went too far in filing a murder charge against a dealer for supplying the fentanyl ultimately killed 18-month-old Winter Rayo.
The 6th District Court of Appeal earlier this week ruled that Santa Clara County can not charge 34-year-old Phillip Michael Ortega with murder for the 2023 overdose death of 18-month-old Winter Rayo — for which Rayo's parents, Derek Vaughn Rayo and Kelly Gene Richardson, have already been convicted.
As Bay Area News Group reports, a three-judge panel at the appellate court ruled unanimously that the murder charge against Ortega was prosecutorial overreach.
"Despite clear evidence of petitioner’s conscious disregard for human life, we conclude as a matter of law that his own actions in providing drugs to the parents were too remote from the parents’ life-endangering conduct to support prosecuting petitioner for implied malice murder," wrote Justice Adrienne Grover in the ruling.
The justice added that Ortega's "sale of fentanyl may have contributed to Winter’s death, but her death was not a ‘natural’ consequence of that act, because the chain of causation required an intervening act or omission by those responsible for her safety."
The parents' drug use and disregard for their child's safety, however, got them convicted of second-degree murder in May, in addition to child endangerment.
Derek Rayo and Richardson were housemates with Ortega and a fourth person, Paige Vitale, and initially all four housemates faced murder charges. In 2024, a Santa Clara County judge ruled that there was sufficient evidence for Rayo, Richardson, and Ortega to face trial, but dismissed a murder charge against Vitale. She still faced charges of felony drug possession and misdemeanor child endangerment.
Ortega still faces charges of felony child endangerment and drug dealing.
The death of Winter Rayo is one of several cases in the Bay Area in which small children have died of accidental overdoses due to their parents' neglect. Also in 2023, three-month-old Phoenix Castro died of fentanyl exposure in Santa Clara County, and that fentanyl also reportedly came from Ortega. He was charged with murder last year in that case as well, however the appellate court ruling likely means that the murder charge will be dropped in that case too, as Bay Area News Group notes.
Two toddlers in Santa Rosa met similar fates in recent years. 13-month-old Liam O'Neill died of a fentanyl overdose along side his 29-year-old father in 2019 — and the dealer in that case, Santa Rosa resident Leanna Zamora, was also criminally charged. In 2022, Zamora pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute fentanyl, and one count of distribution of fentanyl resulting in serious bodily injury and death, and she was sentenced to six years in prison.
Also in Santa Rosa, a 15-month-old girl died of a fentanyl overdose in 2022. Her parents, then 26-year-old Evan Frostick and then 23-year-old Madison Bernard, were both charged and ended up pleading no contest to voluntary manslaughter in 2024, for which they were each sentenced to 11 years.
Previously: San Jose Parents Found Guilty of Murder In Fentanyl Overdose Death of Toddler
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