CASE CENTERS ON HOW KID CAME ACROSS POT BROWNIE

OROVILLE - A Butte County jury will decide whether giving a
marijuana-laced brownie to her 5-year-old daughter constitutes
felony child abuse by a Chico mother.

The kindergartner was taken to Enloe Medical Center in Chico last
April 17, after she reportedly told a school nurse she felt "icky and sloppy."

The child's mother, Madeline McChesney, 32, maintains through her
lawyer that a roommate, who had a doctor's recommendation to use
medical marijuana, normally left the drug-laced brownies on top of
the refrigerator.

Due in part to several medications that had been prescribed for
McChesney earlier that month for depression, the single mother
contends she didn't realize the single brownie she gave her daughter
from a pan on the kitchen counter contained pot until it was too late.

In an attempt to rebut that claim, the prosecution played a
videotaped interview of the little girl for the Superior Court jury,
during which she told authorities her mother had given her the
"special" brownies about 10 times.

On the witness stand, though, McChesney's attorney, Jodea Foster,
got the defendant's daughter to say she rarely remembered ever
getting any "sweets."

In her opening statement to the jury, deputy district attorney Kelly
Maloy charged that McChesney gave Chico police several different
accounts of the incident, initially denying ever giving a marijuana
brownie to her daughter.

Blood tests showed presence of the drug in the youngster's system
when she was taken by school authorities to the hospital, according
to the prosecutor.

When the trial resumes on Thursday, a U.C. Davis Medical Center
pediatrician is expected to testify for the prosecution that the
ingestion of marijuana by a child that age could result in great
bodily injury or even death.

On Monday, over the defense attorney's objection, Judge Robert
Glusman allowed the Sacramento doctor to testify in place of another
state expert, whose hospitalization on Friday had forced a brief
postponement in the case.

The original expert had been prepared to testify marijuana could
cause coma in such a young child, according to the prosecutor.

Maloy told the judge outside the jury's presence Monday the doctor
who will testify in her place, would not go that far, but felt
serious injury could result from "an intoxicated child falling off
the playground equipment at school."

Called as a defense witness on Monday, Dr. Ronald Cavanaugh, a Butte
County Behavioral Health psychiatrist who examined the Chico mother
after she was admitted for a 72-hour mental observation
period about two weeks before the brownie incident, testified four
different medications prescribed for McChesney were known to cause
"dizziness, sleepiness" and affect thinking in some patients.

The defendant's boyfriend, William Marx, told the jury he observed a
marked change in her behavior after she began taking the medicine.

Normally happy, she seemed "lethargic ... distracted and unfocused,"
he told McChesney's jury Monday.

The prosecutor got the county psychiatrist to acknowledge he had
only McChesney's word she was taking the medications on the day her
daughter was given the pot-laced brownie.

The defendant's boyfriend conceded that the Chico mother did smoke
pot and ingest marijuana brownies to ease the pain of migraine
headaches, but never in front of her daughter.