Mom on trial for death of 4-year-old

A New York mother on trial for the death of her special needs 4-year-old daughter said she never took the child to see a doctor in the months before her death. Carlotta Brett-Pierce, 32, of Brooklyn testified that her daughter, Marchella, appeared fine even though she weighed less than 19 pounds before she died in September 2010, the New York Daily News reported. "To me, at the time, it didn't look bad," Brett-Pierce said. "She looked like a child who wasn't sitting on her booty in the hospital all day." Marchella, who spent most of her life in the hospital, was routinely tied to her bed, beaten and deprived of food and water at home, prosecutors said. Brett-Pierce admitted under questioning that she never took her special needs child to a pediatrician during the seven months Marchella was in her care. Marchella's grandmother is being tried on manslaughter charges along with Brett-Pierce. Two social workers involved in the girl's case have been charged separately with criminally negligent homicide for failing to prevent her death.