Sue Hartigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: CINCINNATI, April 21 (UPI) Jury selection was under way in Hamilton County Court in the first prosecution of a person charged under a new state law that makes it a death penalty crime to purposely kill a child. Shawn Heard, 24, is charged with the Nov. 4 aggravated murder of her 19-day-old son, Brendan Walker. The child was discovered by Cincinnati firefighters after they received a report of an infant not breathing. He was taken to Children's Hospital Medical Center, where he was was dead on arrival. Heard, who is described as having a ``developmental handicap,'' is accused of shaking, striking and strangling the infant, but her lawyers, John Keller and Roxann Dieffenbach, said they will tell the jury that their client did not intend to kill Walker. If the jury agrees with that contention, the death penalty would be eliminated as an option for sentencing. However, Assistant Prosecutor Gerald Krumpelbeck said he will tell the jury that after the boy was shaken and strangled, Heard ``gave him a good whack in the head.'' He said the coroner will testify the child could have died from the shaking, the trauma to his head, or the strangulation. Krumpelbeck told the Cincinnati Enquirer, ``She strangled it so viciously that there were fingernail marks in the neck.'' -- Two rules in life: 1. Don't tell people everything you know. 2. Subscribe/Unsubscribe, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the body of the message enter: subscribe/unsubscribe law-issues
