DeAnndra Day denied on the witness stand that she caused the death of her 3-year-old daughter.

But then she startled the lawyer for the man accused of the crime -- her husband, Michael Day -- during a break in his 1995 murder trial by claiming it was she who was responsible after all.

She said she put her child over her knee and violently beat her with a shoe.

	After denying it on the witness stand, DeAnndra Day startled her husband's lawyer by claiming it was she, not Michael Day, who caused the death of her 3-year-old daughter. Click photo for larger image.

Prosecutors to that point had cobbled together a circumstantial case of murder against Mr. Day buttressed by two experts, who suggested the child could have died as a result of chest compression while being raped. The jury would never hear Mrs. Day's confession because a lawyer appointed by the court quickly convinced her to invoke her Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.

In the years since her husband was sent to prison for life, Mrs. Day has repeated her confession in writing, on tape to the trial judge, and to police, social workers, her own mother, Mr. Day and to a reporter.

Prior to an appeal, Mr. Day thought his arguments were bolstered by Dr. Karl Williams, now Allegheny County Medical Examiner. After comparing the autopsy reports to the confessions -- which the jury never heard and which were not available to the doctors at trial -- he not only questioned the extent of the child's injuries, but said it was clear they were more consistent with the wife's version of events than the prosecutor's.

During an appeals hearing, Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Robert Gallo noted that while there are now substantial contradictions in the scientific testimony, he was not allowed to even consider the confessions or their ramifications on the scientific evidence because in a ruling earlier, an appeals court said the confessions were barred because they were not introduced at trial.

That left the judge to consider only inconsistencies among the experts.

"Put simply, there was no expert who could conclusively testify regarding the cause of death," Judge Gallo said in denying Mr. Day a new trial.

The weight of forensics
Scientists make great courtroom witnesses. They use big words, possess confidence and composure, use impressive charts and visuals, and most importantly, often provide the proverbial smoking gun of guilt in criminal trials.

As a result, juries often tend to give heavy weight to forensic testimony -- especially that offered by the government -- after experts state they believe "with a reasonable degree of scientific certainty" that their work is sound and trustworthy.

The credibility accorded expert witnesses has led some social scientists to suggest juries are so taken with the science -- influenced by popular forensic TV shows -- that they might not be listening to the evidence.

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The flip side of this so-called "CSI-effect" is it causes juries to demand oversimplified explanations of complex forensic issues and when they find this real life science to be confusing, they simply disregard it, even, in some cases, when it is the only reliable evidence available.

For years, Mr. Day has argued his case is a prime example of how forensic testimony can be flawed if experts see only some of the evidence. In this case, that's exactly what happened.

On the night of Aug. 10, 1994, 911 operators received a call from a frantic Mrs. Day who said her child wasn't breathing.

"She was trying to get out of the tub and she fell and when I went to go grab for her and she hit her head," Mrs. Day said during a taped call from her Turtle Creek house that proved to be full of lies.

When paramedics arrived, they found Mr. Day in the kitchen of their two-story townhouse wearing only a bed sheet trying to revive the nude body of his stepdaughter, Tequayla Pierce. He would later tell police he took his shirt off during the episode and removed his underwear after she vomited on them, even though no evidence of that was ever found.

After she was pronounced dead on arrival at Braddock Memorial Hospital, Dr. Shelia Buchko noticed injuries to the girl's vaginal and rectal areas and reported the case to Allegheny County Children and Youth Services. Officials there sought out Dr. Mary Carrasco, of the Family Intervention Center at Children's Hospital, to scrutinize the case. She would be joined later by Dr. Lucy Rorke, of Philadelphia Children's Hospital, a pediatrician.

Despite the suspicions, the original cause of death was listed as meningitis with drowning as a contributory cause. The autopsy report also mentioned a rectal contusion, which became a rectal tear after the state's experts later viewed photographs of the autopsy. By the time a coroner's inquest was staged, experts discounted meningitis and drowning from passing out in the bathtub as the cause of death and focused on a sexual assault-related killing.

The doctors retained by CYS said studies of autopsy reports and photos showed the child did not drown and the meningitis was in remission. Instead, they said the child was killed by compression of her chest during a sexual assault that was proven by tears in the child's private parts.

While they are not forensic pathologists, did not participate in the autopsy and do not routinely attempt to determine causes of death in their work, the doctors for CYS were allowed by the court to testify that an examination of pictures and reports helped them conclude the child died by compression during a sexual assault. They said the rectal tearing was proof. In fact, the autopsy report only mentioned one rectal contusion and no vaginal tearing, but Mr. Day's jury never heard an expert dispute that.

Mr. Day, who had no felony record, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder, rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and endangering the welfare of children, and the man who had never been locked up before hasn't been free since.

Her story challenged in trial
At trial in November 1995, prosecutors told his jury that both he and the child were naked when paramedics arrived, that he lied to police about why he was naked, that Mrs. Day's story to 911 was bogus since there was no water in the tub and the child wasn't wet. The expert scientific testimony from three medical professionals that the child's injuries resulted from a sexual assault sealed his fate, even though they all hedged on the nature of the assault.

Dr. Carrasco, testified that based on her review of records and photographs of the child, "a significant amount of pressure for a significant amount of time" on her chest caused the girl's death. She also testified that the genital injuries were consistent with penetration. But because there was no blood, semen or saliva found, she could not determine who caused the injuries.

"So you cannot say to a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the injuries to the vaginal and rectal area were caused by a penis?" Mr. Day's lawyer Sid Sokolsky asked Dr. Carrasco. "I cannot say that; you are right," the doctor responded.

Dr. Rorke testified compression caused the child's death and her genital injuries were caused within two hours of death, but could not determine who caused the injuries.

The third expert, Dr. Holly Davis, who was working as the director of Pediatric Emergency Medicine at Children's Hospital, testified the child was suffocated but said a sexual assault wasn't the only possible cause of death.

"It could have been from a hand," said Dr. Davis. "It could have been a part of the body; an arm pressing very firmly, pressing the child very firmly against another object, I suppose, but it doesn't have to be an entire body."

The defense offered no experts because Mr. Sokolsky believed he had negated their testimony during cross-examination.

On the witness stand, Mrs. Day said the child was fine when she undressed her for her bath and she went downstairs for a few minutes and returned to find the child face down in the tub. She didn't explicitly implicate her husband, but she didn't mention any physical contact she had with the child either, leaving Mr. Day as the only suspect.

Overcome with guilt
Shortly after leaving the witness stand, she says, she was overcome with guilt and confessed beating the child to Mr. Sokolsky, telling him her husband had nothing to do with a sexual assault or the child's death. When Mr. Sokolsky reported her statement to the judge, the judge appointed a lawyer for her and, on his advice, she invoked the Fifth Amendment, leaving Mr. Day's jury with no information about her assault.

Mr. Day was found guilty Nov. 21, 1995. Weeks later, before he was sentenced to life in prison, Mrs. Day wrote a letter to Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Robert Dauer, who presided over Mr. Day's trial.

"I DeAnndra Day is writing this confession statement in regards to the beating of Tequayla Pierce Day," describing how she beat her daughter for between four and five minutes with a heeled shoe, causing bruises, welts and the rectal injury found during the autopsy. "I didn't come forward because I was scared to go to jail. I am coming forth because I can't [bear] the pain, heartache and most of all I need help."

In a taped interview four days later with police, she admitted savagely beating the child for urinating in her pants on the way to the bathroom.

"I had blacked out after I had hit her, for awhile, it was awhile though. And I was hittin' her in her butt area and everything. I had her bent over my knee and I was givin' her a beatin', how long I don't know. I didn't think I was that angry."

Then she began writing to her husband in prison.

"I wish people would understand that you are innocent," she wrote in a Dec. 18, 1995, letter to Mr. Day. "Why did I lose it like that? I never meant to hurt my baby girl. I don't understand what went wrong with me," she wrote.

DeAnndra Day confessed again in a Dec. 28, 1995, letter to Dorrance T. Greppi of the Allegheny County Adult Probation Office: "I grabbed her by her arms, put her over my knee and started to beat her butt with the shoe. I don't know how long because I had blacked out but [about 3-4] minutes. I told her to get in that tub and as she was climbing in I swung the shoe twice and it went in between her legs."

She closes the letter pleading for someone to listen to her.

"I need to be heard and stop these nightmares. I need help."

The most explicit confession letter she sent came Feb. 22, 1996.

"I know the bruises on Tequayla is my fault, vaginal and rectal tears, everything is my ... fault," DeAnndra wrote.

Then Mrs. Day's mother, Mercile Pierce, wrote in a May 23, 1997, letter to her son-in-law. "She yelled out in the street that all she is guilty of is killing her baby..."

Appeal denied
Despite the confessions, in August 1997 Mr. Day's appeal was denied because the Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled that Mrs. Day did not "acknowledge killing the child by the type of blunt force trauma consistent with the experts' account of death caused by a compression of the child's chest and resultant inability to breathe."

In 2004 during a hearing on Mr. Day's appeal, Dr. Williams -- then working privately in northwestern Pennsylvania -- disagreed with the other experts who were not forensic pathologists on two major fronts that Mr. Day contends would have changed the jury verdict against him.

While the initial autopsy report noted a contusion in the child's rectum, which the state's experts referred to as significant tear proving anal penetration by her father, Dr Williams testified there was no evidence of a rectal tear in the autopsy report or the photos that accompanied it.

Next, he disagreed with the cause of death that her father strangled her during a sexual assault.

"I don't think it's asphyxia due to compression of the chest, and that's what the Commonwealth's argument is. And that's what I have a problem with," Dr. Williams said.

In addition, Dr. Williams said he found no hemorrhaging in the child's eyes and face that should exist if she had been suffocated.

When he compared the scientific evidence to the confessions from Mrs. Day, Dr. Williams said "...this scenario [confessions] could explain exactly the distinctive pattern observed at the time of the autopsy, i.e. below the pressure line on Tequayla's abdomen as it was pressed against Ms. Day's leg."

Neither Dr. Williams nor the other experts revisited the issue of whether meningitis was a significant cause of the child's death.

Despite that, Judge Gallo, who took over the matter after Judge Dauer's death, refused to grant Mr. Day a new trial because he said the new scientific evidence would not have changed the outcome at trial.

In a brief telephone interview on July 19 after numerous attempts to contact her, Mrs. Day reaffirmed that she wrote the letters, made the statements to police and has repeatedly claimed her ex-husband had nothing to do with her child's death before asking a reporter to call her later. A few minutes later, she sent him a text message referring him to a law firm that when contacted, denied representing her.

Despite that, Mr. Day sits in prison for life unless a last-ditch appeal in federal court is successful.

"I get harassed all the time," Mr. Day said. "People have even thrown feces in my food. I just don't know how she [DeAnndra] can look at herself in the mirror and live with herselfknowing what she did to her own baby and me."