Jury will now decide if Jason Obermiller killed 2-year-old Adalynn Hoyt

The murder trial against Jason Obermiller came to a close Tuesday morning as jurors heard wildly differing accounts of what happened the night 2-year-old Adalynn Hoyt was beaten to death last summer.

The state argued Obermiller was frustrated and angry at the child’s mother for getting him into a drug-trafficking expedition, in which he found himself in over his head.

Gang members were after his car for drug payment, and since his 2001 Honda Accord was one of his only possessions, the 33-year-old man sought to get even with Lovina Rainey, the person he deemed responsible for getting him into this mess.

And according to prosecutors, he did so by intentionally harming her daughter at around midnight on Sept. 11, before slipping out of the house with his friend and roommate, leaving Adalynn to die quietly in her room next to her mother’s.

“The intent was to harm that child,” said prosecuting attorney Gayle Ervin in her closing argument to jurors. “That harm was inflicted recklessly and intentionally by the defendant and he went too far.”

The defense argued the state’s story doesn’t make sense. Defense attorney Kevin Griffin told jurors Obermiller loved Adalynn as his own daughter, and the thought of a grown man taking out his frustration on a young girl shouldn’t compute.

He also said it’s much more likely the state’s timeline is wrong – that Adalynn was killed sometime around 6:30 a.m. on Sept. 12, not around midnight. He pointed to testimony by an 11-year-old staying in the home who told jurors last week that she heard crying coming from Adalynn’s room while it was “mostly dark” and “getting light” out.

“The state says don’t listen to the 11-year-old, that she lied to CPS,” Griffin said. “But you heard what she heard. And you should find that’s much more consistent with the rest of the evidence.”

Griffin pointed to testimony by Spokane County Medical Examiner Dr. John Howard, who testified to jurors last week on the extent of the toddler’s injuries, and the contents of her stomach, which both sides used to establish a timeline.

Griffin argued that the fact there wasn’t any pizza left in her stomach was indicative that she died sometime around 6 a.m., since the half-life of food in a 2-year-old’s stomach is around three hours, according to Howard’s testimony.

And Griffin contends Adalynn was eating the pizza when she was put to bed a second time around 11:30 p.m. by Obermiller and Rainey. Obermiller corroborated that account when he testified Monday.

“What we know is she ate dinner, and it must have been hours later” when she was killed, Griffin said. “It had to have been.”

But Ervin challenged that timeline, saying it was more likely Adalynn was fed around 9 p.m., and that she sneaked a piece of pizza later when she was put to bed a second time. The pizza being present is important, because the toddler still had a piece of crust in her mouth when she died.

Ervin also offered an alternate explanation as to why Obermiller would kill Adalynn, which involved a ploy to get Child Protective Services to take Rainey’s children away once they found bruising on Adalynn’s body.

Ervin said Obermiller knew it wasn’t enough that Adalynn had a large bruise on her back from a fall off a trampoline, and the cuts on her feet.

“Mr. Obermiller needed more,” she said. “He needed Adalynn to be injured. From that 30-minute time lapse, when he walked out of that garage, he took her upstairs. He initiated injuries enough to trigger a CPS investigation.”

In Howard’s testimony, jurors learned Adalynn had 64 bruises on her body, which Griffin used to try to disprove the state’s reasoning that Obermiller killed her out of frustration.

Griffin also used that testimony in conjunction with testimony given by Trevor Powell, a roommate who was staying right down the hall from Adalynn’s room, which was always left open since the child was scared of the dark. Griffin told jurors Powell was listening intently for when Obermiller was planning to leave the home around midnight, and didn’t hear anything coming from Adalynn’s room.

Griffin mimed hitting his hand with an open fist to emulate the type of sound that would be heard during the beating, and said there were 64 different bruises on her body.

“While he’s carefully paying attention, waiting to hear Jason walk out the room, waiting to catch him, the entire time he’s listening he doesn’t hear anything that would cause him concern,” Griffin said. “He could hear what’s going on and he doesn’t hear anything that causes concern. He doesn’t hear anything. This child was beaten to death and the man across the hallway hears nothing.”

Ervin, meanwhile, pointed to the suspicious activity of Obermiller after he was told Adalynn was killed, which included turning off his phone and going into hiding, at one point even crossing into Idaho and staying at a secluded cabin on Lake Coeur d’Alene.

As she explained this to jurors, she put up a photo of Adalynn staring and smiling at the camera, which was displayed on a large flat-screen TV.

“This is what he wanted to get away from,” she said. “When he learned Adalynn was dead he ran for eight days.”

In her closing words, Ervin talked about Rainey and the loss she suffered.

“Lovina Rainey will never wake her daughter up again,” she said. “She’ll never walk into a room and call out ‘Addy, Fatty, Patty.’ That little girl will never say ‘mommy.’ That is because of Jason Obermiller.”