KAREN VIBERT-KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette Brittany Borges, second from left, enters the Lycoming County Courthouse for her trial on Friday morning in Williamsport.

KAREN VIBERT-KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette
Brittany Borges, second from left, enters the Lycoming County Courthouse for her trial on Friday morning in Williamsport.

After deliberating for about three hours Friday, a jury acquitted Brittany Borgess in the death of 4-year-old Samaria Motyka.

The jury had been charged with determining if Borgess, of DuBoistown, acted recklessly by leaving Samaria, the daughter of her then-fiancee, in a car for 6 1/2 hours on July 22, 2016. Temperatures that day reached the mid to upper 90s outside and were measured at 120 degrees or more inside the vehicle Samaria was left in.

Borgess was fighting charges of involuntary manslaughter, endangering a child and recklessly endangering another person. She was acquitted of those charges, but was charged with leaving a child unattended in a car while it was running, a summary offense with a $25 fine attached.

The lesser charge stems from Borgess leaving Samaria in the car while she took her younger son into day care on the day that Samaria died.

“When a child dies under these conditions, we felt that charges are appropriate because we believed then and we believe now that this type of behavior is reckless and criminal,” Lycoming County’s First District Attorney Martin Wade said in response to the verdict.

During the morning session of the trial yesterday, Dr. David Diamond, a neuroscientist from the University of South Florida, had offered his theory of forgotten child syndrome as a defense for Borgess’ claim of forgetting Samaria was in the car.

His hypothesis was that the brain changes in response to stress or trauma. Diamond interviewed Borgess, and based on reports from police and medical personnel given to him by the defense, he came to the conclusion that, although Borgess had planned to drop Samaria off at day care that day, she was distracted by stress and construction on Route 180.

This distraction caused her to go into “auto-pilot,” he said. Instead of taking the planned Maynard Street exit to go to the day care, she continued on to her work at Compu-Gen on West Fourth Street, Diamond claimed.

Borgess also was suffering from sleep deprivation due to her 2-year-old son not sleeping through the night, Diamond said. Text messages sent to Samaria’s father showed that she was making plans for their wedding in September, which Diamond said indicated multi-tasking, another contributing factor for the brain to going into auto-pilot.

“Without a doubt, Brittany did not make a conscious decision to leave Samaria in the car,” he concluded.

Wade asked Diamond if he was aware of the expert testimony from the first day of the trial by a construction specialist from the state Department of Transportation who said the construction was near the Maynard Street exit, but that the exit was not blocked and that traffic was being diverted toward the lane nearest the exit, not away from it. Diamond said he based his information on his interview with the defendant.

Wade also called Raymond Kontz III, a retired city police Agent who, along with Agent Jason Bolt, conducted the investigation into the incident. Kontz said that he and two other officers travelled the route in question and that traffic was not being diverted away from the exit.

During his closing argument, defense attorney Peter Campana told jurors the question wasn’t whether Borgess left Samaria in the hot vehicle, resulting in the child’s death.

“The issue,” he said, “is did Brittany entertain the state of mind to make her a criminal.” He argued that Borgess would have to be proven guilty of consciously disregarding substantial and unjustifiable risks that caused death in order for the charges to apply.

“She didn’t have any motive,” Campana said. “She didn’t want this to happen.”

Wade pointed to the fact that Borgess had left Samaria in the car, which was running, while she took her son in to day care as an indication of the defendant’s childcare habits.

He also questioned why Borgess didn’t mention the road construction during the interviews with police after the incident.

Borgess also admitted that this was not the first time she nearly arrived to work with children still in the car, Wade said.

“She knew it could happen, because it almost did,” Wade said. The fact that she took no steps to counter this tendency, such as putting an object in the backseat to remind her or a note on the dashboard to alert her, showed a conscious disregard for the safety of the children, Wade said.

That morning, Borgess also reached across Samaria to get her younger son out of his car seat to take him into the day care and that she had told Samaria to say goodbye to her brother, according to testimony.

“In the 3 1/2 minutes before she missed the exit, she (Samaria) was in front of her awake,” Wade said. He also noted that Samaria had been dressed in a bright pink outfit.

“Is saying I forgot a reasonable explanation for leaving a kid in a car,” he asked jurors.

After the jury returned their decision, Wade said he felt Diamond’s testimony had “certainly played a part in the jury’s decision.”