PALATKA, Fla. (Court TV) — The attorney representing a woman accused of killing her ex-boyfriend and burying him in a shallow grave tried to delay her trial on Thursday after his co-counsel abruptly stepped back from the case.
Caylen Deller (Putnam County Sheriff’s Office)
Caylen Deller, 32, has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder with a firearm, tampering with physical evidence and failure to report a death. Her attorney, Brian Smith, said that he learned on Wednesday afternoon that Jordan Ackley, who was scheduled to try the case with him, will no longer be available for the trial’s scheduled start on Monday.
Smith explained that Ackley — who was planning to deliver opening statements, argue for a judgment of acquittal after the state rested its case-in-chief and cross-examine half the state’s 36 listed witnesses — could no longer take part in the trial because her pet died. “I’m sympathetic to her concerns,” prosecutor Mark Lewis said. “I actually have a 14-year-old dog I was supposed to put down last Friday.”
“Ms. Ackley will not be participating in the trial. It’s not even a matter of — she will, but her heart’s not going to be in it, her head’s not going to be in it,” Smith said. “She’s not going to participate; it would be me alone. I would not be able to get anybody at the last minute that’s familiar enough with the case that I would feel confident in assisting me in the trial at this point.”
In documents reviewed by Court TV, prosecutors have said that Deller shot and killed her ex-boyfriend, Chad Mullen, at her horse farm and then used a horse to drag the body to a neighboring farm, where Mullen was found buried in a shallow grave more than a month after his disappearance.
Tina Lee-Ellis (Putnam County Sheriff’s Office)
Deller allegedly told several witnesses, who reached out to investigators, that she had killed Mullen because she suspected Mullen had been sexually abusing her then-5-year-old daughter. When investigators conducted a forensic interview with the child, they found no evidence that she had been abused, but said that the child’s comments suggested she had witnessed the killing. “During the interview, the minor child did make several indications that she may have witnessed the homicide by pointing to her chest three times while saying ‘dada’ and ‘boo boo,’ ‘goes into the water, deeper and deeper,’ ‘killed the heart’ followed up with making a ‘boom’ sound while throwing right hand up in the air, ‘pew pew’ and ‘dada dead.'”
Investigators say cellphone evidence shows Deller had help from a friend, Tina Lee-Ellis, who is accused of using a skid steer tractor to dig a hole for the victim’s body on a property where she worked as a part-time security guard. Lee-Ellis, who has pleaded not guilty to charges that include accessory after the fact to first-degree murder and tampering with evidence, is due to return to court in November.
On Thursday, Lewis pressed for the trial to move forward, offering to trim his witness list and arguing that the defense could simply skip delivering an opening statement. “In my experience, most of the defense does not do openings anymore,” he said. “So, I’m not even certain that they would do an opening.”
Smith began listing witnesses Ackley would have cross-examined, only for Lewis to say he did not plan to call any of them. Judge Alicia Washington, finding that Smith could represent Deller on his own, refused to delay the trial and said jury selection would begin Monday morning, as previously scheduled.
