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Jury Deliberations Continue For Mom In 3-Year-Old's Slaying

PITTSBURGH (KDKA/AP) - Jury deliberations will continue Thursday for a woman charged in the death of her 3-year-old daughter, whose body was found in a ravine last year.

Twenty-seven-year-old Adrienne Williams is charged in Allegheny County in the June 2015 death of her daughter, Adrionna Williams. Prosecutors said the girl was asphyxiated and left in a wooded area in Swissvale.

But Williams' defense attorney says prosecutors haven't proven where, how or why the girl was killed.

Williams told police she dropped the girl off at her grandmother's house, two miles from where the body was found, and then left for work. But prosecutors say surveillance video and cellphone data show her car was in the area where the girl was found, and not traveling to work as Williams claimed.

Prosecutors are seeking a murder conviction.

On Tuesday, the defense rested its case without presenting any testimony.

But before the jury was sent to deliberate, defense attorneys told the panel during closing arguments that in their eyes, the prosecution had not met the burden of proof.

During the prosecution's closing arguments, the assistant district attorney reminded jurors not to base their decision on one piece of evidence, but to draw their conclusion on all the little pieces of circumstantial evidence against Williams.

On Wednesday morning, the jury asked Judge Anthony Mariani for a definition of circumstantial evidence. They also wanted to get an official definition of reasonable doubt, and they asked the judge to explain premeditation.

Once they got their answers they returned to the jury room for more than five hours of deliberations, but by late Wednesday afternoon with still no decision the judge sent them home for the night.

Jurors They'll return to the courthouse in Thursday morning to continue deliberations.

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