By Lisa Chmelecki,Staff Writer

AUBURN – Was Nathaniel Allen a normal, healthy toddler whose mother lost her patience and snapped his neck?

Or was he a young boy suffering from an undetected disorder that had slowed his development and eventually caused his death?

That is the question facing the 12 jurors charged with deciding whether Nathaniel’s mother, Sarah Allen, is guilty of manslaughter.

The jury, a panel of seven women and five men, deliberated for three hours Wednesday before calling it a day. They were sent home at 4 p.m. with instructions to return in the morning – a similar scenario to what happened at Allen’s first trial nine months ago.

That case ended without a verdict because the jurors couldn’t agree. They deliberated for 18 hours before Justice Ellen Gorman declared a mistrial.

Held in the same Auburn courtroom, the second trial ended Wednesday with hour-long closing arguments from attorneys on each side.

Allen wept as Maine Deputy Attorney General William Stokes showed the jury two possible ways that she could have killed her son on Feb. 14, 2003.

“Sit down, Nathaniel. Sit down,” Stokes shouted, as he imitated Allen grabbing her son’s shoulder, pushing him down and jerking him backward.

In another example, Stokes grabbed the back of his own ears and shook his head back and forth. Stokes acknowledged that he did not know exactly how Nathaniel Allen died.

But he reminded the jurors that 11 doctors testified that the boy’s head and neck injuries were caused by severe trauma, and they agreed that significant force was needed – the kind seen in car crashes, high-speed skiing accidents and child abuse.

“I am not suggesting that she was a bad person or a bad mother,” Stokes said. “She got into a physical battle with a 22-month-old, and she lost control. It happened in seconds.”

Allen’s attorney, Verne Paradie, began his closing arguments by telling the jurors that he could sum up the evidence with one sentence: “I hope I’m right.”

Those were the words of Dr. Allen Browne, the pediatric surgeon who treated Nathaniel at Maine Medical Center and made the decision to call in police and the state’s child abuse expert.

Paradie also acknowledged that he didn’t know exactly how the boy died. The reason for that, he said, is because the doctors who treated him didn’t bother to look for other causes.

“Sarah Allen was immediately suspected of having abused her child,” he said.

Paradie mentioned several possibilities: diabetes, viral encephalitis, a respiratory illness or a seizure disorder. Then he questioned why the doctors waited four hours to take blood samples and why they never called in an ophthalmologist.

“None of the protocols were followed in this case,” Paradie said. “No attempts were made to follow up on the direct evidence they had to rule out other causes.”

Sarah and Jeremy Allen adopted Nathaniel from Guatemala when he was 1 year old.

About 10 months later, Allen called 911 screaming that the boy was unconscious and that she thought he broke his neck.

Allen later told investigators that her son spread applesauce in his hair, was fussing in the tub and fell several times in the hours leading up to his death.

The falls could have been caused by a number of underlying disorders, Paradie said in his closing argument. He reminded them of the testimony of Dr. Suzanne de la Monte, a neuropathologist who teaches at Brown University in Rhode Island and was hired by the defense to study samples of the boy’s brain and eyes.

She testified that she found no signs of an inflicted head injury, and she concluded that the boy died after suffering a seizure.

“For you to disregard anything she said, you’d have to believe that woman put her professional reputation on the line and came in here and made up stories,” Paradie said.

Stokes asked the jurors to consider the likelihood that Nathaniel “dropped dead” of an undetected brain or seizure disorder in the middle of a battle with his mother.

“They’d have you believe that this kid was a walking encyclopedia of every medical abnormality that exists,” he said. “The boy was not a defective child. The defense has tried to hypothesize that Nathaniel had anything and everything wrong with him in the hope that you will hypothesize reasonable doubt.”

In order to convict Allen of manslaughter, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison, the jurors must agree beyond reasonable doubt that Allen caused her son’s death by acting recklessly or with criminal negligence.

Justice Gorman told them they could take as long as they needed to make their decision.

Jeremy Allen, who was away on business the night his son was rushed to the hospital, has been convicted of assault for hitting the boy with a wooden spoon the previous day.

A former Navy journalist who worked at the Brunswick Naval Air Station, he was discharged as a result of the conviction and is currently waiting to be sentenced.

The jurors in his wife’s case were instructed not use the spanking or the bruises found on the boy’s thighs and buttocks as evidence.

Copy the Story Link