A brutal crime in Pennsylvania has raised a commensurate response form the state government:
For Ethan Katz and Savannah Roberts, the evening of June 15 was already stressful. They had gone to a Pittsburgh hospital seeking treatment for Ari, one of their six-week-old twin sons, who had a bloody and mysterious injury to his genitals.
Their longtime friend, Nicole Elizabeth Virzi, was visiting from San Diego. She was watching the other twin, Leon, in their apartment.
Later that night, they received a harrowing call at the hospital from Virzi. She told them Leon had fallen out of his bassinet and struck his head on the floor.
Baby Leon subsequently, tragically died. But the claim that he "fell out of his bassinet" didn't hold up: Medical investigators found "a severe skull fracture to the left side of the head, along with multiple brain bleeds," injuries that an autopsy determined were "caused by blunt force trauma and were consistent with child abuse."
Nicole Virzi was subsequently charged with homicide and two counts each of aggravated assault and child endangerment. And the state is not messing around:
In a rare decision, prosecutors filed a notice last week saying they intend to pursue the death penalty against her.
'The decision to seek such is made only after careful and serious consideration of whether we believe we have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the aggravating factors outweigh potential mitigating factors,' Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. said in a statement to CNN.
Virzi would be the first woman executed by the state since 1946 (another woman, already on death row, could go before her).
So what, exactly, would the motive be for assaulting and killing two innocent defenseless babies? Prosecutors will doubtlessly try to establish that, although Virzi's academic work involved studying "trauma," "stress" and "critical health outcomes:"
In her university bio, she noted health behavior change and clinical health psychology as among her areas of research.
'My research aims to explore the complex interplay between psychological factors — such as depression, stress, negative affect, and trauma — and critical health outcomes and behaviors,' she wrote.
Pennsylvania allows executions in some cases, such as "if the victim is a law enforcement officer, a child under the age of 12 or a prosecution witness to a murder."
The state, however, has not held executions in 25 years, with Gov. Josh Shapiro urging the legislature to abolish the death penalty altogether.
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