Holding either side of a large brown box Thursday, prosecutors walked toward the police officer seated in the witness box.
AnCharlene Davis set the box down and motioned to it. “Can you describe the label on that item?”
The officer looked it over. “This is the victim’s blue shirt and pajama pants,” he said.
“Could you open each individual package as well?” Davis asked.
As the officer ripped the paper bag, a family member began sobbing in the Hamilton County Criminal Court gallery. The officer pulled out the last shirt toddler Demarcus Bryant wore, a baby-blue print. Then he unearthed the 23-month-old’s white pajama bottoms with green and brown dots.
The courtroom was silent.
But Davis had one more request for the officer: Stand before the jury with the evidence.
The evidence is what prosecutors hope will persuade jurors to convict 52-year-old caretaker Jaqueline Escareno of criminally negligent homicide. They say she killed her 23-month-old nephew by placing a 25-microgram fentanyl patch on his back in March 2014.
Davis said the patch didn’t get there accidentally; it was placed, she said. She referred to a medical examiner’s anecdote from the day before about using forceps to peel off the patch, which “was smoothly, evenly and uniformly placed on Demarcus’ back,” she said.
Escareno was watching Demarcus and his 4-year-old sister on March 21, 2014, because the children’s mother was having surgery. But after a long day scurrying between hospitals, Demarcus wouldn’t calm down.
Davis said Escareno took one of her prescribed fentanyl patches and placed it on his back. The next morning, he was cold, stiff and dead.
Most of the three-day trial hinged on Escareno’s responsibility for the placement.
Prosecutors argued Escareno understood the dangers of her prescribed fentanyl patches and should have avoided the “substantial and unjustifiable risk.”
Defense attorneys Lloyd Levitt and Fisher Wise countered she had no motive to kill the child, and said the patch accidentally wound up on the child’s back while Escareno bathed him.
Davis said that simply wasn’t possible.
“If [the patches] fall off, they do not stick on as well the second time,” she said, adding that Escareno admitted as much during interviews with police.
She said Escareno understood the risks of her medication because she routinely met with her doctor, who testified Thursday she’d had trouble keeping patches on in the past.
Prosecutors called numerous medical experts, police officers and family members. In his closing arguments, Levitt circled back to Sarah Bryant, the mother, and her testimony. She trusted nobody but “Aunt Jackie” to watch the kids, Levitt said.
Levitt said accounts of Escareno’s solid caretaking over the years didn’t conform to the state’s theory.
“Does that sound like somebody who would put a deadly patch on a baby to make him go to sleep?” he asked. “That makes no sense.”
Escareno never noticed the transfer because she lifted Demarcus out of the bathtub and never looked at his back, he said. She picked him up, laid him on the bed, applied some cream for an infection the toddler was suffering, and changed him into clothing.
“Did anyone see this patch until two days later?” he asked jurors.
What jurors must decide, Levitt said, is whether the state met its burden of proof. Did prosecutors show Escareno subjected Demarcus to “substantial and unjustifiable risk?”
The prosecutors have a point, Levitt said, “but they don’t meet the burden.”
Jurors will reconvene this morning in Judge Don Poole’s courtroom to begin deliberations.
Contact staff writer Zack Peterson at zpeterson@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6347 with story ideas or tips. Follow @zackpeterson918.