Jury hears opening statements in third China Arnold trial
China Arnold, on trial for her life for the third time in three years, sat quietly as attorneys mapped out opening statements.
Assistant Montgomery County Prosecutor Dan Brandt said that Arnold, now 31, killed her baby in a microwave oven on Aug. 30, 2005. She was the only caregiver at her home when the child died between 1:15 and 3:15 a.m., Brandt said.
He also said that Arnold admitted her crime, telling her boyfriend Terrell Talley that I killed my baby.
Defense attorney Jon Paul Rion said that at the time Arnold made that statement, she did not know how 28-day-old Paris Talley died and instinctively blamed herself, thinking she may have rolled over on the baby while they were sleeping together on a couch.
What you have heard is not true, Rion told the jury. Her own daughter, Paris, was murdered, or killed, but not by China.
Rion said Arnold was extremely intoxicated that night and passed out on the couch. He did not say who killed the baby, but noted a witness would testify she saw a boy enter the residence in the middle of the night.
The first witness for the prosecution was Russell Uptegrove, a forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy on Paris. Arnold declined to remain in the courtroom during that testimony, as she had in her previous trials.
If convicted of aggravated murder, Arnold could face the death penalty. The trial opened April 25. Jury selection took six and a half days, much of it dealing with death penalty attitudes, the effects of pre-trial publicity and availability for a four-week trial.
The first trial ended in February 2008 in a mistrial after a boy said he saw another child put the baby in the oven.
Arnold was convicted of all charges in September 2008 and sentenced to life without parole. The Ohio Second District Court of Appeals reversed that conviction in November.
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/...l-1151808.html
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