Man Found Not Guilty In Murder Of Girl, 3

"The child couldn't cry out. The child couldn't scream," Wiethop told the jury.

Defense attorney Robert Whitestone did not dispute that Nevaeh was placed in the closet as punishment or that his client told police that he put his hands around the back of her neck. But the neck bruising was not the cause of death, he said. Instead, he argued that the investigative spotlight turned on his client because he left the child and her mother at the hospital.

"From that moment, the machinery of conviction was set in motion and that machinery ground on relentlessly," Whitestone said.

He questioned why more than two hours passed before the child was taken to the hospital, and why her mother, Sharee Wanzer, didn't "lift a finger" to help her daughter during that time. There was no 911 call. There was no hurried run to a neighbor's house, he said.

"There is an answer to that question, why she would not do that," Whitestone told the jury. "She inflicted those injuries."

Days before the girl's death, Wanzer had called a suicide hotline. Shafeek had told her to call because she had talked about hurting herself and the children, Whitestone said.

Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney William E. Jarvis said that the defense was pointing the blame at Wanzer only to turn the focus from Shafeek.

"If he doesn't throw her under the bus, then he might as well plead guilty," Jarvis said.

Willard Wanzer said that even if Shafeek is sentenced to the recommended 10 years for abuse, the punishment doesn't seem right.

"They are sending people to jail for 30 to 40 years for embezzlement," he said. "It's been a long 13 months, and it just got longer."