Chad Jacobs lived across the road from Joyce Hardin Garrard for five years before one Friday afternoon in February 2012, when he saw the woman out in the yard with her 9-year-old granddaughter.

It was a little after 4 p.m., and Garrard was with Savannah, a child Jacobs said he had seen occasionally. He could hear the woman though, yelling at the little girl.

"Keep running," Jacobs said he heard her shout. "I didn't tell you to stop!"

Savannah was running, something she was good at, according to her teachers at Carlisle Elementary. The same pattern - back and forth, across the yard to a fence at the road, and back again.

Hours later, Savannah Hardin collapsed in that yard of a seizure and was taken to a Gadsden hospital. She died days later after what two pathologists said was prolonged physical exertion. On Friday night, an Etowah County jury convicted Garrard of capital murder after just three-and-a-half hours of deliberation.

That same jury next week will begin considering whether Garrard should receive the death penalty or life imprisonment.

The verdict came after six days of testimony over two weeks, during which a picture emerged of what happened on Feb. 17, 2012 at a home in Carlisle Acres, just outside Attalla. The shocking story of the woman who ran her own granddaughter to death as punishment for lying garnered attention worldwide when it was first recounted. But the unusual circumstances of the case emerged during testimony, and ultimately led to her conviction.

The witnesses

Jacobs and his wife Jolie told jurors last week that they only saw Savannah running at isolated moments - Chad noticing the punishment escalate as he was in and out over several hours, while Jolie saw it as Savannah was wearing down.

On four different occasions over the span of roughly three hours, Chad saw Savannah running, and Garrard shouting at her to keep going in a "very stern" "drill sergeant" voice.

When he came back after a short trip, he saw her this time carrying sticks to a burn pile on the property. The Garrards were there with Savannah's stepmother, Jessica, and Savannah's little brother on a corner property canopied by several tall trees.

When Jolie saw what was going on across the road after 5 p.m., the punishment had been going on for some time. Garrard was still "hateful, hostile," she said. "You better move it!" echoed down the road. The Jacobs said they assumed the child was getting an occasional break.

When the two returned home again at 6:30 p.m., it was obvious that hadn't been the case. Savannah was now down on the ground.

"Get up! I better not have to tell you again!" Jolie said she heard Garrard yell.

By this time, the child was begging to stop. Jolie said she thought she heard "skin on skin" across the street, as though Joyce was striking the child.

Savannah was vomiting. Still Joyce barked at her to carry the wood, even as she was crying.

Savannah was on her hands and knees. Joyce tried pouring water into her mouth, telling her she'd better drink up or she couldn't go to the bathroom. The water was running out of her mouth. It was getting dark. Chad, unable to watch any longer, went inside.

Jolie stayed on the porch a few minutes, until deciding it was time to intervene, she said. She went inside to Chad, who put his shoes back on to go across the road. When they went outside, they saw medics had arrived.

The punishment

But why was Savannah running?

A day earlier, Raeanna Holmes, the trial's first witness, discovered candy bar wrappers on her school bus, which Savannah rode home on most days. Holmes said the wrappers came from candy sold as part of a school fundraiser, and she thought Savannah may have taken them from another student and eaten them.

Savannah at first told Holmes she didn't do it. Then, when confronted with the evidence, Savannah admitted that she had. Holmes later told Garrard that Friday morning after her route. Then Garrard called Juanita Sweatt, the mother of the child whose candy Savannah had taken.

"Savannah is in trouble," Garrard told Sweatt. She wanted to know if Savannah had been bullying the girl. Sweatt said no, that there was nothing to worry about. But the tone of the conversation made Sweatt call Joyce again, just to make sure Savannah wasn't in trouble for something the child hadn't done.

Holmes didn't see Savannah on the afternoon bus ride, because the child had been picked up at school. When she came by the Garrard home that afternoon on her route, there was Joyce at the road to meet her, as shown on the school bus video played in court.

Holmes saw Savannah picking up sticks in the yard, and Garrard told her the child was "gonna learn" about the dangers of lying.

"She's gonna run until I tell her to stop," Garrard is heard to say, while holding two bottles of water in her hand.

"Is she okay?" Holmes asks, peering through the window at the child.

The question of intent

Much of Garrard's defense hinged on the question of whether the woman intended to kill her granddaughter when she made her run. Garrard, on the stand for more than two hours Wednesday, at first said the two of them spent at most 45 minutes picking up sticks in the yard.

She said that Savannah had wanted to get better at running in order to win a medal, a chain with a metal foot token, at school. Garrard denied wanting to punish the child, that she had gotten "her point across" about lying by making her pick up sticks.

But then, while answering questions from her own defense attorney, she said it was always important to keep Savannah moving.

"If I can keep her moving, her attention is on me," Garrard said, in a matter-of-fact voice. "The more she's moving, she's listening to what I got to say."

In summing up the state's case, Etowah County District Attorney Jimmie Harp said the punishment became murder because Garrard would not stop. Savannah became defiant at first, and then slowly broke under the exertion and verbal abuse. As Garrard continued to badger the child, her punishment crossed the line of intent, leading to the eventual outcome of the child's death.

"When she got home that day, Joyce was going to show her," Harp said. "She had her to take off running."

When this failed to break the child, he said, she added firewood to the punishment, which prosecutors called "torture." Savannah's autopsy noted marks on her left arm, consistent with a child who weighed 59 pounds struggling to carry cinder block-sized wood in her arms.

As the child failed to show the proper amount of contrition, Harp said, the anger inside Garrard grew.

"When that little girl was on her knees and couldn't go anymore, (Garrard) started to win," Harp said. "She's not going to lie anymore. And she said, "Get up, I didn't tell you you could stop."

By the time medics reached the house, the pathologists testified, it was inevitable that Savannah would not survive. When the Jacobs' heard on Sunday Savannah was in a coma, they understood what they had seen two days before.

Chad Jacobs, who worked for the town of Sardis, called the city's police chief.

Within days, Savannah was dead. By then Joyce Garrard had told several different versions of what had happened in the yard.