A Canyon Country man pleaded no contest Wednesday to second-degree murder in connection with his 2 1/2-month-old daughter’s death nearly four years ago.
Marcel James Taylor, now 30, was immediately sentenced to 15 years to life in state prison, according to Assistant Head Deputy Jonathan Hatami with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office’s Complex Child Abuse unit.
Taylor was charged in the September 2021 death of his daughter, Jelani.
Authorities concluded that the girl died from blunt force trauma.
In court papers filed shortly after Taylor was charged, Hatami wrote that the defendant told Los Angeles County Sheriff’s homicide detectives, “I shook her. I know I shouldn’t have shook her … I know I’m a terrible father, a horrible father. I live with that the rest of my life. I killed my own, my only 2-month-old daughter. I got to live with that on my conscience.”
Taylor called 911 at about 3:01 a.m. Sept. 26, 2021, and reported in a call that “lacked any emotion” that “I have a baby here, and she is not breathing,” according to the prosecution’s 2021 filing.
Paramedics took the girl to Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital in Santa Clarita and then to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, where she was pronounced dead Sept. 29, 2021.
Authorities said an “exhaustive investigation” led to the arrest of the girl’s father.