LIVE: Tanner Horner’s defense makes its case to avoid the death penalty for Athena Strand’s murder by CBS TEXAS on YouTube

Tanner Horner’s defense attorneys resumed their case to spare him from the death penalty Thursday morning.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty after Horner pleaded guilty to kidnapping and murdering 7-year-old Athena Strand in 2022.

After Horner’s mother and a paternal great-aunt testified on Wednesday, two more relatives took the stand on Thursday: Horner’s paternal aunt and a cousin on his mother’s side. Once again, the camera feed from the courtroom was blurred to obscure the witnesses’ identities, and neither woman was referred to by name.

The first witness was a sister of Tanner Horner’s late father Terry Horner. She testified about her brother’s struggles with drugs, and  how he was in and out of jail for much of his life. She also recalled Tanner Horner crying a lot as a baby. On cross-examination, she admitted to the prosecutor that she had only seen Horner a few times in his life.

The second witness, only referred to as Ms. Sullivan, is a first cousin of Horner’s mother. Sullivan said Horner’s mother babysat her as a child, and then she babysat Horner when he was an infant and toddler. Sullivan is about 10 years older than Horner.

Sullivan described how, as a pre-teen, Horner’s mother would leave Horner alone in her care during the summer, sometimes for entire weekends. At about 10 years old, she was left responsible for feeding, diaper changes and putting Horner to bed. The arrangement continued when Horner was a toddler. Sullivan testified that Horner’s mother began by paying her in cash, but eventually paid her in marijuana.

Sullivan said she thought Horner was always different from other children, and that he could sometimes get hyper or aggressive. She also said how Horner would ingest coins as a baby.

On cross-examination, she acknowledged that she had not seen Horner since the early 1990s.

Prosecutors got both Sullivan and Horner’s aunt to acknowledge that, despite their difficult upbringings, they never killed, sexually assaulted or kidnapped anyone.

Expert witness on lead exposure

After Sullivan’s testimony, the defense called expert witness Aaron Specht, an assistant professor at Purdue University with expertise in environmental health and physics.

Specht testified that he measured the amount of lead in Horner’s bones and found it to be 24 times higher than an average person of his age. He said that level of lead accumulation indicates that Horner had significant exposure to lead as a child, which could lead to neurological problems.