Two years ago, Tyler Walrond died seven weeks after his birth. Tired and teary-eyed, Walrond, 21, described to the jury what happened the night of her son's death.

"I came out of the shower. My breasts started to leak. I leaned over the baby on the bed and I saw something was wrong. His mouth was open and there was foam around it. I grabbed him up and showed him to my mother. I said, 'Mama, there's something wrong with my baby.'"

Her voice cracking, Walrond recounts running out to the street to hail a cab to the hospital, clutching the $20 bill her mother had given her. Tears streaming, she explains that she hoped a cab would be faster than waiting for an ambulance. "I told the cabbie hurry up, hurry up, pass the red light. But he wouldn't. 'I'm sorry, miss, I can't,' he told me. I'm crying, 'Something is wrong with my baby, hurry up, hurry up.'"

Walrond is certain she saw her baby die as she sat waiting in that cab for the light to turn green. "He passed in the cab. He left me in the cab. His eyes were different, all of a sudden, in the cab."

Tyler, born weighing almost 8 pounds, died of malnutrition weighing only 5 pounds. While no one disputes that Walrond, then 19, breast-fed her baby regularly, the overwhelming physical evidence of the baby's malnourished state was enough to convince jurors that she was responsible for his death.

During a trial that has gripped New York for three weeks, everything from Medicaid policy to abortion to HMOs to teen pregnancy was brought to bear in the case. According to Bronx Assistant District Attorney Robert Holdman, Walrond's motive was simple: She was angry with the baby's father, Keenan Purell, for leaving her for another girlfriend, also pregnant. Distraught, Walrond said she was going to get an abortion.

"This event, ladies and gentlemen, is what led the defendant to a road that led to Tyler's death," Holdman told the jurors in his opening statement. In fact, Holdman insisted, Walrond never wanted this baby in the first place. Walrond admitted to asking a friend about abortion, explaining, "There's a lot of things to consider when you're pregnant and 19." In Holdman's eyes, this consideration was proof enough that she had malicious intent toward her child, and that she starved him to exact revenge against Purell.

But defense attorney Susan Tipograph insisted Holdman's conclusions were absurd: "To imply that if a woman considers an abortion that must mean she later wants to kill her baby? That's a fairly offensive concept." Tipograph presented Walrond as a devoted and caring mother who was being used as a scapegoat for a host of social ills. "This was a breakdown of a lot of different systems, including mother, father, Medicaid, friends, city," Tipograph said. While Walrond failed to recognize that her baby was ill, she was not "a crackhead who left her baby in a bathroom somewhere," Tipograph said.

In the end it must have been the pictures presented by the prosecution that tugged at the hearts and minds of the jurors. The post-mortem images of a starved and emaciated infant were so disturbing that some jurors turned away in horror. The photos show a baby with sunken, gray cheeks, protruding ribs, a concave belly and bony, fleshless legs. They were pictures that made viewers want to grab Tabitha Walrond and shake her and say, "How could you not see this baby was starving?"

It is difficult to combat such visceral images, even with facts. The defense mounted a vigorous case, presenting Walrond as a conscientious mother-to-be who went to all her prenatal checkups, paid $175 out of pocket for childbirth classes and avidly read up on parenting. "I read birthing books, BabyTalk, Parenting magazine, Lamaze magazine and they all said that breast is best," Walrond told the jury. Based on what she read and learned, Walrond decided that breast milk, rather than formula, would be best for her baby. But her decision would prove easier to make than to carry out.

As a 15-year-old with a bra size of 42G, Walrond had had two breast-reduction surgeries. Such surgeries often make breast-feeding impossible or difficult. Adding to the complications, Walrond had an emergency C-section and developed an infection. Two days after Tyler was born, doctors put Walrond on antibiotics. She couldn't breast-feed for 10 days, so Tyler was fed with a bottle. Infants who are initially bottle-fed sometimes develop a syndrome called "nipple confusion" when presented with the mother's breast. In addition, women who have breast-reduction surgery may encounter problems with their milk supply. Though the breast-reduction surgery was noted in her records -- as well as the 10-day nursing suspension -- no one monitored Walrond's milk supply or advised her that there might be problems.

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