ROCKFORD — Chief Judge Joseph McGraw will deliver a verdict next week in a homicide case that Winnebago County Assistant State’s Attorney Marilyn Hite Ross called the “ultimate child abuse.”

Kayla A. Lund, 25, has pleaded not guilty of first-degree murder in the Sept. 22, 2011, death of her infant son Jaxon in South Beloit, a baby that Hite Ross said died of starvation.

“She starved this child to death, to the point that he couldn’t cry anymore,” Hite Ross said today. “He had no energy left. He had no body fat. This child depleted every ounce of energy in his little body.”

“This is the ultimate child abuse, because it’s silent,” Hite Ross said. “Eventually, he couldn’t cry, maybe couldn’t even whimper.”

McGraw, who presided over the bench trial, said he will deliver his verdict at 9 a.m. Tuesday.

Lund’s public defender, Nick Zimmerman, said that although Lund may have misjudged how ill Jaxon was, she loved the baby and didn’t intentionally harm or kill him.

Zimmerman attempted to place the cause of death in doubt by saying that not every possible disease had been ruled out or tested.

He argued that the expert doctors who testified for the prosecution had disregarded evidence that Lund had fed the baby. Zimmerman argued that the experts had based their findings in part on readings of a scale that had not been calibrated and may have been faulty.

Although Zimmerman said she was not guilty, he acknowledged that if Lund was found guilty of anything at most it should be the lesser charge of endangering a child by not taking him to the doctor.

“It is possible that Ms. Lund misinterpreted the signs,” Zimmerman said. “And no one is more sad about that than Kayla Lund.”

Lund believed that Jaxon was having trouble keeping down his formula, an issue she had successfully dealt with in her other children by reducing the amount of formula and increasing the frequency of feedings, Zimmerman said.

“She didn’t feel there was a health concern,” Zimmerman told McGraw.

Although McGraw heard from experts that starvation was the cause of death, he didn’t need a pathologist to tell him that, prosecutors said.

All he needed to do, they said, was take a look at Jaxon’s pictures.

They said he was born a healthy boy with a full face and body. He died looking like the skeleton of a baby, little more than “skin and bones,” his ribs clearly visible, his jaw line strangely clear and stomach concave.

The autopsy photographs and a photo taken in the ambulance were so shocking that defense attorneys objected to them being displayed so that Lund’s family or the public could see them.

“That’s not what a normal baby’s legs look like,” Assistant State’s Attorney Pamela Wells said of the photos. “It looks like an old man, this baby’s neck. The inside of his calves have folds of skin. All the fat is gone from the bottom of his feet. His arm is nothing but a bone with folded skin around it.”

McGraw also heard from Lund’s friends and family who said she was a caring and loving mother.

They testified that although Lund’s infant son Jaxon looked small, he didn’t appear unusually skinny and was similar to one of his brothers. They witnessed Lund feeding, bathing, playing and generally caring for Jaxon and her other children as they expected.

But in what may have been a blow to the defense, McGraw asked Jaxon’s paternal stepgrandmother, Brenda Faust, about whether she had voiced her concerns about Jaxon to Lund.

“When Ms. Lund picked up Jaxon, what did you say to her about Jaxon needing to see a doctor?” McGraw asked Faust.

Faust and her husband, Chester, had cared for Jaxon over a weekend when he was 5 weeks old. Faust said she could see his ribs during a bath and was skinny but “acted like a healthy child.”

She seemed to confirm Lund’s testimony that Jaxon had trouble keeping down his formula. To help, she had used a hot water bottle for his belly and tried to make sure she burped him often.

But Lund lied to Faust saying that she had spoken to the doctor by phone about the problem and had a medical appointment for Jaxon that week when Faust asked about it.

“I said, ‘Good, you should talk to him about changing his formula,’ ” Faust testified.

There was no appointment and Jaxon was never taken to a doctor.

Hite Ross argued against finding Lund guilty of anything but first-degree murder.

“This is not endangerment. This is not recklessness,” Hite Ross said. “This is the first-degree murder of a small child who was born healthy and died 49 days later because his mother decided to knowingly and intentionally withhold food, to withhold medical care. He died at the hands of his mother.”

Jeff Kolkey: 815-987-1374; jkolkey@rrstar.com; @jeffkolkey