Suddenly, the police were everywhere.

Lisa's father remembers at least 10 cars: one cruiser at each end of the curved driveway, others in the street, officers with rifles out by the barn.

Prosecutors had taken an unusually hard line: Not only did Alejandro shake Lucas, he meant to kill him.

Alejandro was arrested on a charge of first-degree murder.

Lisa was hysterical as her husband was led away. Be strong! she cried out in his native Spanish. But police told her to be quiet, or else they'd arrest her, too.

Alejandro was held without bail. The next month, the District Attorney's Office announced it would pursue the death penalty.

An Amish case

D. Holmes Morton became a doctor to heal children. He never dreamed he'd spend so much time tangling with prosecutors.

Then, two days before Christmas in 1999, Sara Lynn Glick died. The youngest of eight children of an Amish couple who lived north of Harrisburg, the 4-month-old baby suffered from bleeding in her brain and right eye.

When the Plain People have a medical problem, they turn to Morton. He works in a sturdy, wood-framed health clinic that they built for him in the middle of a Lancaster County alfalfa field, where both cars and horse-drawn buggies are parked outside.

Once a pediatrician at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Morton was drawn to Amish country by the prospect of treating rare genetic diseases that occurred in these insular communities. The mustachioed West Virginia native would become famous for this work, last year receiving a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation award - sometimes called a "genius" grant.

After consulting with doctors at Geisinger Medical Center, prosecutors suspected that Sara's mother had committed abuse, perhaps shaking the baby in frustration. The girl's seven brothers were placed in non-Amish foster homes, provoking angry disbelief in the Plain community - a group leery of outside intrusion even in normal circumstances.

Despairing, Sara's parents asked Morton to take a look. Because of the bleeding, the doctor wondered if the child had had a clotting disorder, perhaps due to a lack of vitamin K. If so, the baby's blood would contain abnormal proteins that would otherwise have been used up in the clotting process.

So Morton sent a sample of the baby's blood for a test called PIVKA-II - protein induced by vitamin K absence.

In a healthy person, PIVKA-II levels are at or close to zero, as measured in nanograms of the protein per milliliter of blood.

Sara's level was over 100.

Morton then enlisted the help of Lucy Rorke-Adams, a renowned neuropathologist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. She examined the pattern of bleeding in the baby's brain, and concluded it could not have been caused by shaking.

The doctors suspected the real problem was a disorder in the baby's liver, which would prevent her from using vitamin K, meaning she could not make use of key clotting enzymes.

Morton called on Charles Hehmeyer, a Philadelphia lawyer who represented children with metabolic disorders. He agreed to represent the Glick family without pay.