A kid accused of killing another kid. Not by accident. Investigators in Franklin County say a fifth-grade girl threw an 11-month-old boy so hard that it caused a brain injury that killed the infant.

Murder, prosecutors say, by a 9-year-old.

This case, like others in which children are accused of abominable crimes, is complex and delicate.

Almost immediately after she was charged with third-degree murder, the now-10-year-old Shippensburg girl’s case was moved to juvenile court. Her attorney is compiling a mound of evidence he thinks will destroy the prosecution’s case against his young client, but even if she is convicted, it’s unlikely she’ll face any hard time.

The only adult involved is a 56-year-old baby sitter, who faces a misdemeanor reckless-endangerment charge. And the prime witness to the crime is an 8-year-old girl.

All this leaves Mark and Shelly Ryder questioning whether anyone will be held accountable for the July 29, 2010, death of their baby, Heath, the youngest of three boys. His remains are in a wooden Noah’s Ark box on the mantle of their Franklin County home.

“He was a very good baby, a great baby,” Shelly Ryder says. “He had a very outgoing personality for as little as he was.”

Shelly and her husband Mark Ryder are trying to grieve, but it hasn’t been easy.

First, they were told they were the prime suspects. Then, for six months, they believed a baby sitter they hired was to blame.

In December, a coroner’s inquest recommended charges. They were shocked to hear investigators say that a girl — in the same grade and school as their oldest son — was responsible for their infant’s death.

“It doesn’t help that I have to relive the day over and over again,” Shelly Ryder says. “I try to put my best foot forward, but we live in a small town, in Amberson Valley, we have to pass the church every day, where we had the funeral. My 3-year-old says, ‘Mama, Brother’s in there? Is he going to wake up? Is he coming home?’”

Conflicting opinions

At a preliminary hearing this month, the most serious charge — involuntary manslaughter — against baby sitter Dottie Bowers was thrown out.

Prosecutors say she waited 57 minutes to call 911 after finding that Heath was breathing oddly in his crib. But a doctor testified it was impossible to know if the delay mattered.

Now, as the case against the 10-year-old girl moves forward, the child’s attorney is asking for a judge to throw out her murder charge as well.

The girl was interviewed for three hours by state police with her mother outside a locked interview room door, says her attorney, Jason Kutulakis.

Also, two doctors — hired by prosecutors — have given written opinions that seem to contradict the police theory of what happened to Heath.

Dr. John Hume wrote that the girl “did not have the mental capacity to form the intent to commit murder,” according to court documents.

And Dr. Kathryn R. Crowell of the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center says the abusive head trauma could not have been done by another child or even a teenager, but had to have been done by an adult.

Kutulakis says there is evidence showing the child had fallen at the baby sitter’s house the day before and might have already have had head trauma. The coroner’s inquest that followed the child’s death rebuts that contention.

Kutulakis says he also thinks the role of the 8-year-old witness was downplayed by police. That child has not been charged.

But those are issues Kutulakis said he’ll present at trial, where he’s already hoping to make some unconventional changes.

First, he wants to use a courtroom ‘Bill of Rights,’ normally used for child victims who have to testify, to allow the defendant to have a stuffed animal on the stand and make sure prosecutors ask her questions that aren’t intimidating.

And Kutulakis wants a jury to decide guilt, skirting normal juvenile court procedure that say a judge makes rulings.

That doesn’t mean a jury of kids, but of residents of Franklin County, where Kutulakis says the child is a good student and a participating member of the community.

To Shelly Ryder, none of those attributes matters. All she knows is that she dropped off a healthy baby boy at a baby sitter’s house and never brought him home.

‘There was something very wrong’

Eleven-month-old Heath Ryder was in his crib at Dottie Bowers’ Southampton Twp. home when police say the girl and her friend went in and picked him up.

Based on the interview of that 8-year-old witness, Ryder was passed back and forth and shaken before being thrown back into his crib by the child charged with the death, prosecutors allege.

The baby sitter, Dottie Bowers, noticed later that the child was breathing differently. She called his mother several times, but waited until Shelly Ryder arrived 57 minutes later to call 911, prosecutors allege.

Ryder is a nurse at ManorCare, a post-hospital facility for the elderly in Chambersburg, and she used to work in pediatrics. She knew as soon as she saw her child that something was wrong.

“I looked at his eyelids,” she says. “And when I saw that his eyes were fixed and dilated, I knew there was something very wrong with him.”

Heath died Aug. 2 at the hospital.

It took six months for his parents — who had lost their other two children, 11 and 3, for a week because Children and Youth Services initially labeled them as suspects — to learn who police believed was responsible.

“I didn’t know what to think,” she says. “I still can’t understand it. You think of them as mother hens, they play with baby dolls.”

'Do they understand the finality?'

Kids kill for different reasons than adults.

There are a few rare budding sociopaths, but most children are mimicking violence they see or experience at home, in the neighborhood or at school. Most children younger than 10 don’t understand death, says Dr. Jonathan Gransee, a psychological evaluator in Harrisburg.

“One question you have to ask yourself when dealing with a 10-year-old: Do they understand the finality? At 10, they should, but sometimes they are still sort of in a fantasy. They haven’t completely switched into thinking like an adult might think,” Gransee says.

One would not expect a 10-year-old to understand sex or finances, having a career or raising a family.

To truly understand, Gransee says, you have to have enough experience to be able to picture it in your brain.

Chris Brown, the father of the now 13-year-old New Castle, Lawrence County, boy accused of shooting his pregnant stepmom-to-be, has voiced similar concerns about his son, Jordan.

“Try to explain to a 12-year-old what the rest of your life means. It’s incomprehensible to him,” Brown told ABC News. “He doesn’t appreciate the magnitude of what he’s facing.”

Jordan Brown was 11 when he was charged, but each side has been in a three-year tug-of-war over where to try the case — adult or juvenile court.

There are times when juvenile hearings barely resemble adult court.

In Dauphin County Judge John F. Cherry’s courtroom, there aren’t “sides.” The prosecutor and defense attorneys stand side by side with the juvenile offender, and the prosecutor often looks the child in the eye, offering help and advice.

It’s not exactly what you’d expect of a judicial setting.

It’s not the Ryder family’s idea of justice, either.

“We just feel that she’s being very much catered to for killing a baby,” Ryder says.

There are two subsections of juvenile court. One, delinquency court, typically deals with children older than 10 and works like many adult court procedures. The other, dependency court, is for younger children and focuses more on treatment rather than punishment.

Kutulakis wants his client in the latter. He says the girl has been scrutinized by child psychologists since November and has no mental-health or personality disorders.

She does understand she’s in trouble — that she’s being blamed for the death of a baby boy that she knew. And it’s a heavy weight on her, he says. She changed schools because of the media attention.

But she can’t grasp the consequences — that she could be locked up for longer than she’s been alive.

“I don’t think a 10-year-old has the capacity to understand what that means,” Kutulakis says.

The only other case in Pennsylvania where this could have been an issue was in 1989, when 9-year-old Cameron Kocher was charged with shooting a 7-year-old girl with his father’s gun from a window inside his Monroe County home. The victim was riding a snowmobile with other kids. Kocher wasn’t allowed to join.

He pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter before the courts worked out where his case would fall.

Kutulakis says that doesn’t seem a likely outcome in this case.

“We are categorically denying the factual allegations that are being made,” he says. “The commonwealth has to show not only that she committed this crime, but that she requires treatment, rehabilitation and supervision, and I’m not so sure they can do that.”