Bellino did not merely report a suspicion. He agreed to be an expert witness, and in his report he made some statements that are not universally accepted - specifically, that intracranial and retinal hemorrhages never occur spontaneously in children.

"People who work in this field will always think about why else do you get bleeding in the retina? And one of those is vitamin K" deficiency, Repka said.

Likewise, spontaneous bleeding in the brain can occur if someone has a coagulation or liver disorder, though it is not usually fatal. It may be triggered by the knocks and bumps of everyday life.

During the closed-door presentation by the dueling doctors, Lisa was a wreck. She waited and waited for Hehmeyer to tell her what had happened. Finally, that night, she called him, but the news wasn't promising. Some committee members hadn't been convinced.

She felt sick.

"I thought they were going to see the truth," she said. "I thought Alejandro was going to be out of jail the next day."

A decision

Yet Marshall, the prosecutor, was wary of going to trial. He would have to prove Alejandro was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. And he knew Morton and Rorke-Adams were heavyweights.

"The last thing I wanted was Holmes Morton or somebody being able to write in the New England Journal of Medicine that vitamin K deficiency is a legitimate defense for shaken baby," he said.

The next day, Nov. 10, Marshall called Hehmeyer. He was offering a deal.

Alejandro had been in jail for more than two years without bail. If he would plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter, he could go free. It was a big retreat from the state's initial quest for the death penalty.

But the defense attorney suspected his client wouldn't go for it, and upon calling him in jail, found he was right.

"I'm not going to take any deals," Alejandro said.

The prosecution and the defense negotiated some more, and another deal was offered: Alejandro could go free if he pleaded no contest. He would admit no wrongdoing, yet in the eyes of the law, it would be a conviction.

Sitting in his cell, Alejandro mulled it over. If he didn't take the deal, the Costa Rican immigrant would go on trial before a jury from rural Centre County - not likely to be a sympathetic audience, he thought.

So far, a prosecutor and a judge couldn't even get his last name right - referring to him incorrectly by his mother's last name, Vargas, instead of Mendez or Mendez Vargas, in keeping with the Latino convention.

And he was missing his life. His grandmother had died while he was in jail.

Lisa cried when she heard about the offer. She didn't want him to take it; she thought he should stand up for himself. But her father, Ron Mullenax, said: "Lisa, you can't tell him what you want."

"What do you want me to do?" Alejandro asked her, from the jail telephone.