Sitter on trial in deaths of 3 babies

On Feb. 11, 1989, 2-month-old Shauna Cunnington was with the baby sitter in a Phoenix park when she stopped breathing. Seven months later, 8-month-old Zachary Mann was napping in the Scottsdale apartment of the same baby sitter before the woman said she found him bloody-mouthed and breathless.

The next month, 4-month-old Jordan Whitmer was napping in the same baby sitter's home, a Tempe apartment this time, before the woman said she found him bluish and rigid, police reports show.

All three babies died before reaching a hospital.

Now, Amy Lynn Scott is facing her second week of trial in the deaths. Scott was indicted by a grand jury in 2004 on three counts of first-degree murder. Scott, 39, has pleaded not guilty.

At the time the babies died, a medical examiner listed their causes of death as sudden infant death syndrome.

But years later, detectives who didn't believe the ruling reopened the cases in Scottsdale and Tempe.

In April 1997, seven forensic pathologists agreed the babies were likely killed.

In December 2002, Maricopa County Medical Examiner Philip Keen ruled that Jordan likely died of "compressional asphyxia," or suffocation from a hard squeeze. Zachary's death was suggestive of suffocation, he wrote, and suffocation couldn't be ruled out in Shauna's death.

Prosecutors last week argued that medical science caught up with Scott. Doctors now understand much more about sudden infant death syndrome than they once did, they said.

In 1989, Scott told Scottsdale police that all she did was love the babies.

"If there's anything wrong with loving the babies, then put me in jail for the rest of my life," she said. "I don't think I did anything."

Scott met all of the babies' parents at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Scottsdale. Records show one parent was a neighbor, another a childhood friend and the third a Mormon home teacher.

In January 2004, Scott told Tempe police she'd forgotten about much of the time period surrounding the babies' deaths.

She said her marriage was in tumult in 1989 and she'd miscarried twins. She accused her husband of physical, sexual and emotional abuse.

Scott eventually gave birth to four daughters and got divorced.

Scott has been in Maricopa County's Madison Street Jail in Phoenix since her November 2004 arrest.