Jury Deliberating in Starved Baby Case on KMOT-TV North Dakota's NBC News Leader

Jury Deliberating in Starved Baby Case | Video

Retha Colclasure

10/22/2009

The fate of Stevie Buckley is now in the hands of the jury. Both sides finished making their arguments in the case of a teenage mom accused of starving her baby to death.

Several of Buckley`s friends and family members were on hand to listen to an expert witness testify in her defense. Dr. James Stone is a forensic examiner from Iowa. He testified that he had reviewed records from the doctors who treated baby Kyra and the autopsy report. He says he didn`t see anything that made him believe Kyra died from chronic starvation.

"I didn`t see anything that would substantiate that. There was hypovolemic shock, and eventually dehydration," he testified.

But prosecutors say no matter what the defense wants to call it, Buckley didn`t feed her baby, and that starvation definitely caused her death.

"I didn`t shoot you. I didn`t kill you, the bullet did. If I pulled the trigger, I killed you. The defendant pulled the trigger when she didn`t take care of her daughter," Lloyd Suhr, Assistant Burleigh County State`s Attorney, told the jury.

Prosecutors say Buckley acted recklessly in caring for, or not caring for, her daughter. But the defense argued that the state never proved Buckley knew she was putting Kyra in any danger.

"There has to be a direct link between her behavior and the cause of her death," her attorney, Kent Morrow, argued to jurors.

Morrow says Buckley followed all of the feeding instructions she got from family members and WIC nutritionists. But prosecutors say a baby who was being fed regularly would have gained weight, and for the last few months of her life, baby Kyra never did. Jurors deliberated until 6:30 this evening. They will continue again tomorrow morning.

BACK TO REGIONAL STORIES

Search News Stories

BACK TO NEWS HOME

Sister Stations: KFYR TV in Bismarck, KUMV in Williston, KQCD in Dickinson