Blue State Maniacs - Dead Girl's Hell Revisited at Stepfather's Murder Trial in New York

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,323120,00.html

Dead Girl's Hell Revisited at Stepfather's Murder Trial in New York

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

NEW YORK - There had been warning signs for years before 7-year-old

Nixzmary Brown died from a vicious blow to the head.

School employees had reported that she had been absent for weeks the

previous year. Neighbors noticed unexplained injuries and noted the child

appeared underfed and small for her age. Child welfare workers had been

alerted twice but said they found no conclusive evidence of abuse.

Two years after the girl's death shocked the city, hastened child welfare

reforms and made her name synonymous with child abuse, a jury was picked

Wednesday to hear her stepfather's murder trial. Opening statements were to

begin that afternoon.

Nixzmary's personal hell is likely to be exposed at trial through symbols of

her horrific demise: the rope used to tether her to a chair, the cat-litter

box she used as a toilet, the bathtub used to dunk her under cold water.

Authorities say evidence against her stepfather, Cesar Rodriguez, includes

crime-scene photos inside the family's three-bedroom apartment and a

videotape of the defendant casting blame on the malnourished victim, who

weighed 45 pounds at the time of her death.

"Sometimes she used to get me real angry and I used to just throw her,"

Rodriguez said during a post-arrest interview made public during a family

court hearing.

Prosecutor Ama Dwimoh has called it a case of torture. Nixzmary "was beaten

repeatedly," Dwimoh said. "She was bound like an animal."

Rodriguez's defense attorney, Jeffrey Schwartz, has sought to blame

Nixzmary's mother, who faces a separate trial, for fostering an environment

of abuse, and an overburdened bureaucracy - the city Administration for

Children's Services - for doing too little to stop it. During jury

selection, the lawyer has signaled he also plans to explore the dilemma of

how best to discipline children.

Schwartz said outside court Wednesday that his client is guilty only of

being "a strict disciplinarian" and reiterated claims that the mother was

responsible. Once the jury hears the defense case, he said, "It's going to

become very clear who the monster is here."

Opening statements - delayed by a last-minute juror substitution - were

scheduled to start Wednesday afternoon.

The case, coupled with a series of high-profile deaths of children known to

child welfare workers, sparked a public outcry for reform. City officials

and lawmakers responded by bolstering the corps of caseworkers and drafting

legislation to give life in prison without parole to parents who cause the

death of a child under 14 through abuse.

Nixzmary's torment began making headlines shortly after Jan. 1, 2006, when

her mother reported that she found the girl unconscious around 4 a.m. in a

home where she was raising five other children, ages 6 months to 9 years.

Nixzmary was dead when authorities arrived.

Prosecutors allege that after the mother and Rodriguez were arrested, they

found evidence Nixzmary had been confined to a ramshackle back room with the

cat box. They also claim the stepfather incriminated himself by seeking to

portray the victim as an unruly child who courted punishment by harassing

her siblings and "always lying to me."

Rodriguez, 29, admitted on video that he restrained the girl "by putting

duct tape on her hand and tying her to a chair."

On Nixzmary's final night, he said, she enraged him by stealing yogurt and

trashing computer equipment. The punishment: holding her under cold water,

just like his father had punished him. Investigators believe that in the

process, he hit her head on a faucet, delivering the death blow.

"She was giving me a hard time, so I pounded her on her back," the

stepfather said in his version. Later, he added, "I laid her naked on the

bed and told my wife to leave her alone for a while."