SCHENECTADY, N.Y. (NEWS10) — The evidence portion of the trial of Persia Nelson, the mother accused of killing her 10-month-old daughter after police found the infant in a utility pipe in 2024, concluded Tuesday. The case will now move to closing arguments on Wednesday.
The people called Dr. Stewart Harris, an emergency physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, to the stand on Tuesday. Harris testified that given his medical background and review of security footage of Nelson, she was “clinically sober and cognitively functional.”
Dr. Harris also said he walked the route Nelson had walked and said it was “nothing like going for a walk in the woods. It was like stepping off a ship into the middle of the ocean.” He said that her alleged memory loss made no physiological sense.
Defense argued that the darkness of the evening alone would have impacted her stress and memory in a difficult situation.
“He went down this hill himself. He’s a mountaineer who’s climbed all the largest mountains in the world and had an extremely difficult time,” Defense Attorney Mark J. Sacco explained. “I think in the end, this is a situation that was a fight for survival, and my client, even though it didn’t work in the end, she did everything humanly possible to save this baby. Including shelter for the baby. You’ve got to remember, these conditions that were out there that night. I mean, these are some of the worst conditions that you can be in as a person not familiar with the terrain. Swamps, mount hills, mud up to her knees. And it was very cold. It was 35 degrees out that night.”
The official charges were read Tuesday afternoon. Nelson is facing murder in the second degree, manslaughter, and criminally negligent homicide.
“My client will live with this for the rest of her life,” explained Sacco. “But this is an accident. It’s a terrible, terrible accident. She was lost.”
