Day 1: The State Pointed at Her. The Defense Pointed at Him.

Three years ago, paramedics found a 6-year-old boy dead on a bed inside a home in the town of Medary, Wisconsin. His name was Alexavier Pedrin. His family called him AJ. He had spent his last verifiable hours of life sleeping next to his father's girlfriend, Josie Dikeman, and two of her children. Sometime between 3 in the morning and 9 in the morning, he stopped breathing. By the time the deputies arrived, rigor was already setting in.

Three years later, twelve men and two women sat in a La Crosse County jury box and finally heard both sides of what happened.

Today was Day 1.

I have spent the last three years watching this case crawl through pretrial like every other case the system tries to grind down. Bond reductions denied, then granted. Change of venue motions filed, then denied. Discovery violations. Expert witnesses excluded for prosecutorial misconduct. A trial date set, then moved, then set again with the judge declaring "this is the hard date, it's not moving." I have read the criminal complaint. I have watched the court hearings. I have watched the family wear "Justice for Alexavier" T-shirts to every appearance.

And in all that time, the only side of this case the public has heard is the State's.

That ended today.

What the State Built

Matthew Torbensen is a paced, professional prosecutor. His opening was clean. He knew exactly what story he wanted the jury to hear. He opened on the word HOME, and immediately inverted it. For Alex, home was where the defendant kicked him in the chest and face, choked him, struck him with her hands. For the last 14 hours of his life, there was one and only one adult home with him. That adult is in this room.

Then he walked the jury through the autopsy. This was not a list. This was a rhythm. He named bruises on different planes of the boy's face, each one requiring a different blow. He told the jury the medical examiner started shaving Alex's hair to document the bruising and kept finding more bruising under each section, until they had to shave his entire head. Then he said the sentence the room is going to remember.

Torbensen sequenced the autopsy, the 911 call discrepancies, the staged scene theory, the deleted surveillance footage, the 100 plus text messages with another man during a welfare check, the order of phone calls the morning Alex was found, and the children's independent forensic interviews. He pointed across the room, named the defendant in the room, and said somebody emptied that pill bottle, somebody staged the scene, that somebody is in this room.

It was a brutal opening. The jury sat with it.

▶ WATCH PT 1 "That Boy Was Put In The Ground With NO HAIR" - State's Brutal Opening

Then Torbensen did something disciplined. He preempted the defense's strongest framing. Around the one-hour mark, he conceded openly: there is plenty of blame in this case that belongs to Derek Pedrin too for neglecting Alex. But we are not here for that in the next couple weeks. We are here to decide her culpability. That single concession is going to come back in closing arguments. Either side can use it.

What the Defense Punched Back With

Christopher Zachar took the podium after a short break. He started with a line that frames everything that follows.

His second sentence named someone else as Alex's killer.

That sentence is the entire theory of the defense delivered in eighteen seconds. The trial inverted in the room. The case is no longer "did the State prove she did it." The case is now "between two people who could have done it, can the State eliminate Derek Pedrin beyond a reasonable doubt."

Zachar conceded the only thing the defense could not contest. Alex was a battered child. There is no dispute. The question, he told the jury, is who was doing it.

Then he played video. Not a still photograph. Not a description. Actual video of Derek Pedrin screaming at Josie at midnight, telling her her last words to him were her last, calling her a nutcase because she had once been hit in the head with a baseball bat by Alex's biological mother, refusing to leave the room she had retreated to, telling her to get out, please, while she begged him not to entrap her. That video played in the courtroom on Day 1. The defense told the jury they would see dozens like it.

He named Derek's pattern of violence against the children. Brantley with his fingers in his ears, conditioned earmuff reflex. Major sobbing and shaking in a closet because Derek had backed him into one. Brantley at five years old telling his drunk father, dad, stop it, you're drunk and you're scaring us, just go to sleep. Witness Ted will testify he saw Derek hit the children more than a dozen times during a month-long stay. Derek admitted on tape to investigators that he hit Alex in the car for not wanting to leave without his toy monster truck.

Then the cause of death. The State's own pathologist Dr. Reade Quinton, Zachar told the jury, cannot rule out overdose. Cannot rule out accidental overdose. The defense pathologist Dr. Eric Christensen will testify Alex's internal blood loss was approximately one seventeenth of his total blood volume, far short of the roughly one third needed to cause death by exsanguination. Quinton, the defense expects, will testify Alex died over hours, inconsistent with strangling. The Xanax level was lethal even for adults. Alex's symptoms were prototypical for fatal overdose.

Then the source of the Xanax. Derek told investigators three different stories. First Josie was getting it from her mother, who had never been prescribed Xanax. Then from a man named Ted, who has never been prescribed Xanax. Finally Derek admitted he had been buying Xanax off the street for Josie. The investigators accepted that explanation at face value. They did not ask Derek why he had lied twice before. They did not ask why he would buy a drug for a woman who was leaving him. They did not ask whether Derek was buying it for himself.

Then the femur fracture. Seven facts Zachar walked the jury through: Alex told multiple people Aria pushed him. Aria admitted in forensic interview to pushing him. Brantley said he saw it. Derek told others Aria did it. Major in his first forensic interview said he was not present and Aria did it. Then Major moved into Mark Helruth's house, Mark's mother started talking to Major so much that the lead detective asked her to stop polluting the boy's memory, and Major's second forensic interview said he saw Josie bend Alex's leg until it broke. Two orthopedic surgeons, including one out of system, said the femur fracture was consistent with a stairfall and was not a typical abuse injury. The lead surgeon said he was 100 percent certain the fracture was not the result of direct abuse.

Then Brantley's credibility. Zachar did not mock the boy. He let the words land. Brantley told forensic interviewers his bully poured "poisonous red sprite" into a shower drain that Alex drank, that Alex turned into a green monster, that Josie made Alex walk a non-existent dog while picking up dog poop on his broken leg, and that there was a hidden cache of diamonds and firearms behind a secret door in his brother Aiden's room. Police searched the home. There was no door. No diamonds. No firearms. No paddle.

Then Zachar handed the jury his timeline of the day Alex died. The bathroom incident where Derek dragged Alex from the bedroom for soiling himself, slammed the door, and Josie heard slapping and slamming and Alex screaming. Alex came out red, with tears and snot on his face. The welfare check at 7 p.m. The 15 minutes Alex went from sitting up watching TV to nearly comatose, with only Derek inside the home. Josie was at the door talking to Sergeant Krenine.

Then he projected a photograph. A selfie Josie took with her son Brantley in the same bed at the same time the State alleges she was murdering Alex. He told the jury this was what Josie Dikeman looked like at the moment the State says she beat a 6-year-old to death.

Then the recorded jail call where Josie sobs to Derek through tears that she is so relieved this was not her, so relieved he did not get her medication.

Then four questions. They are the closing argument in embryo.

Then he sat down.

▶ WATCH PT 2 "HE Was the Man Who Killed Him": Defense Blames Father Derek Pedrin

The Structural Reality

Coming out of Day 1, this is not the runaway State case the public has assumed. The State has structural advantages no jury easily sets aside. The autopsy photographs are coming. The children's independent disclosures, if they hold up under cross-examination, are devastating. The 14-hour window where only Josie was home with Alex is a powerful narrative anchor. The 2011 and 2013 prior child neglect convictions, even with a limiting instruction, will work against her.

But the defense came in significantly hotter than expected. They named the alternate suspect in the second sentence. They committed publicly to a brain injury expert, a competing pathologist, the recorded jail calls, the staircase visualization, and a four-question closing structure that they just delivered live to the jury. They previewed video evidence the audience and the jury have never seen. And they framed the police investigation itself as the actual defendant.

The State retains structural advantages. But the State also left vulnerabilities Torbensen did not address. He did not address the Xanax cause-of-death directly. He did not address whether his own pathologist can rule out overdose. He did not address the contradictions between Major's two forensic interviews. And he conceded, in plain language, that Derek belongs in a separate trial.

Every one of those gaps just got named in opening.

What We Will Be Watching

Child homicide cases are the most emotionally charged trials in the American legal system. Jurors walk in carrying the weight of what happened to a child. Community members wear T-shirts. Social media campaigns demand convictions before the first witness takes the stand. The entire system bends under the gravitational pull of an unimaginable loss.

That is precisely when due process matters most.

We will be watching whether the State can prove intent. First-degree intentional homicide requires proving Josie acted with the purpose of killing Alex, not that she was reckless, not that she was negligent. The autopsy tells us how AJ died. The State must prove who did it, and that the person who did it meant to kill him.

We will be watching how child witnesses are handled. The State's case depends heavily on the statements of children who lived inside that home. Children who witnessed violence. Children who are being asked to testify about events from when they were younger, in a household full of trauma, after years living with adults hostile to the defendant. The reliability of their statements, how they were obtained, and how they hold up under cross-examination will be central.

We will be watching whether the alternative suspect framework is enough. The defense is going to point at Derek Pedrin for three weeks. If the jury believes there is a reasonable possibility that Derek caused Alex's injuries, Josie Dikeman must be acquitted, even if jurors think she is "probably" guilty. Probably is not enough. That is the burden. That is the principle. That is what we watch for.

Why This Matters

My father, Steven M. Askin, spent his career fighting for the principle that constitutional protections exist for everyone, especially in cases where the public has already decided. He was prosecuted for teaching people their rights. He was disbarred for refusing to violate attorney-client privilege. He understood, in a way that cost him everything, that the system only works when it works for the people nobody wants to defend.

Josie Dikeman is accused of killing a 6-year-old child. If those accusations are true, the evidence should prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. If the State cannot meet that burden, then the system worked exactly as it was designed to work, no matter how unsatisfying that outcome feels.

The trial begins for real on Day 2. The State puts on its case first. Both sides will spend the next three weeks proving who was right today.

We will be watching together.