A 10-year-old boy died of thirst after his parents refused to give him water for FIVE days as a punishment for wetting his bed.
Jonathan James was forced to stand on an X drawn on the kitchen floor while sun beat down on him through a window in 100 degree heat, a court in Dallas, Texas, heard.
An emergency room doctor testified that the boy went into cardiac arrest, had multiple organs failure, blood poisoning and muscle breakdown as a result of being deprived of water.
Doctors tried desperately to resuscitate him for about two hours, but were unable to save him.
"He was dead when he arrived. We were able to get his heart restarted, but even in the time period that we were able to get his heart restarted it would have been considered a comatose state," said Dr. David Bryce from Charlton Methodist Hospital.
"He was completely unresponsive and unable to communicate with us."
He said not a drop of urine was found in the Jonathan's bladder, which doctors said was significant because it meant he was markedly dehydrated.
Throughout his ordeal there was no air conditioning in their Duncanville house, prosecutors said.
Jonathan's step-mother Tina Marie Alberson, 44, is on trial accused of a first-degree felony charge of injury to a child. If convicted, she faces up to life in prison. She alleged to have taken part in what prosecutors said was 'torture' of the boy at their home in Duncanville.
The victim's father, Michael Ray James,43, goes on trial next month on the same charge.
Jonathan's twin brother, Joseph, is expected to testify in the trial. He said in an interview after the arrests of his father and stepmother that Jonathan was put in a room without air conditioning and was told to stand by the window as the sun beat down on him.
Joseph said that on the day his brother died, Jonathan had peanut butter stuck in his throat. But he said Alberson and James wouldn't give Jonathan any water to wash it down.