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WICHITA COUNTY (KFDX/KJTL) — The Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth returned its opinion on a case out of Wichita County on Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2025, setting a precedent for prosecutors around the country.

The trial of Daniel Ortiz in January 2024 proved to be one of the more heinous cases of child abuse that Wichita County has ever seen.

“You had binding with duct tape when they were nude, binding them in chairs, waterboarding them under the kitchen sink, putting them in the tub and saying was going to drown them,” John Gillespie, Wichita County District Attorney, said. “He had Blink cameras all over the house, including their bathroom, to watch them at all times. So he had a godlike presence.”

Gillespie, who prosecuted the case, said the jury could barely stomach his reenactment of the abuse during his closing arguments.

“I ordered a life-sized puppet, and started duct taping her, and the jury all looked away,” Gillespie said. “He did it to three little girls over and over and over.”

On Jan. 18, 2024, a Wichita County jury returned a verdict and sentence for Ortiz.

“He was convicted on three counts of causing serious mental injury to children through torture, causing post-traumatic stress disorder,” Gillespie said. “The jury gave him 50 years on each of the counts. And Judge Meredith Kennedy stacked all three of the years. He got a 150-year sentence for that.”

A recap of proceedings for each day of testimony during Ortiz’s trial, which began on January 8, 2024, can be found below:

• Day 1 — Burk man accused of slicing, choking children sees testimony
• Day 2 — Alleged child victims testify in horrific abuse trial
• Day 3 — Third child testifies to water torture in Burk abuse trial
• Day 4 — Chair that kids were allegedly taped to brought into courtroom
• Day 5 — State rests in Burk man’s trial for child abuse
• Day 6 — Defense rests, both sides close in Burkburnett child abuse trial
• Closing arguments in Daniel Ortiz child abuse trial

Gillespie said over the course of his career as a prosecutor, he’s only ever seen one other case like the Ortiz case before: that of Sara Woody.

“I’ve spent my career doing child abuse and child sexual abuse prosecution,” Gillespie said. “I didn’t know what I was seeing in those cases, and that’s why I had to learn about child torture.”

According to Gillespie, many child torture cases end in murder prosecutions, but for the ones that don’t, the victims’ lives are never the same.

“The goal of child torture is to crush the spirit of the child,” Gillespie said. “And when you do that, what the literature shows is that you inflict post-traumatic stress disorder that never goes away. A piece of the child is lost forever.”

But injury to a child carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. For Gillespie, that wasn’t enough.

“I want more than just a third-degree conviction on this,” Gillespie said. “I thought about using serious mental injury, which is a first-degree felony, but there was very little case law at the time.”

Ortiz’s conviction is precedent-setting, if it’s upheld on appeal.

“The issue was whether childhood PTSD from this extreme trauma that he had inflicted upon the three kiddos could be a serious mental injury,” Gillespie said. “The Court of Appeals unanimously, 3 to 0, said, yes, it is, and they affirmed the conviction.”

The ruling from the Second Court of Appeals on Wednesday, Aug. 27, was a landmark decision and a crucial new piece of case law.

“This is a very groundbreaking decision,” Gillespie said. “We haven’t really had a bucket for this type of infliction of emotional trauma on children, and this gives us a way to go after those offenders.”

Gillespie said that the decision is a game-changer for future child torture cases, even those beyond Wichita County.

“We can use it here and other DA’s offices can use it statewide,” Gillespie said. “Now we have an appellate decision that blesses the use of it statewide. So that will have an impact across the state of Texas.”

The case is also gaining national attention, according to Gillespie.

“The FBI wound up reaching out to me because I’ve written an article on it,” Gillespie said. “I’ve worked with other DA’s offices statewide and nationally on it, and I’m trying to get the word out there.”

Gillespie’s even been asked to present the case at the National District Attorney’s Conference next month, hoping to get the word out to prosecutors everywhere that there’s now a new weapon they can bring to the fight for justice for victims of child torture.

“Someone shouldn’t be able to do this to three little girls and just get a third-degree felony for it,” Gillespie said. “This is a wonderful tool to be able to go after these horrific offenders and their evil.”