The Uncle on Trial: The State Rests, a Charge Is Dismissed, and What Changed Was One Investigator

David Prevatte says he found his five-year-old niece unresponsive and tried to save her. The State of North Carolina says he is the one who killed her. Investigators named him in 2018. They charged him in 2022. Since the opening statements, this trial has carried a question the State never answered in public: what changed in those four years?

Day 7, Monday, 2026-10-12, is the day the jury got the answer, and it is the day the evidence ended. The State called its last three witnesses and rested. The judge threw out count two, one of the three charges. The defense rested without calling a single witness, and David Prevatte told the court the decision not to testify was his own. Closing arguments open Day 8, and the State goes first.

Here is what I want you to carry through this whole piece. No new lab result came in to explain the four years. Two DNA witnesses took the stand on Day 7 and neither one identified anybody. The answer the State gave was a person: an investigator who took over an unsolved file in 2020, looked at the photographs again, and decided that a pair of earbuds found in the house fit a mark the original investigators had never matched to anything. The arrest rests on that reading. So the question I am asking, and the one twelve jurors now have to answer, is whether that was an investigation finally done right or a conclusion that arrived before the evidence did.

David Prevatte is presumed innocent. Nothing in this article is a finding. The jury has not ruled on anything, and the State still has to prove every element of the two remaining charges beyond a reasonable doubt. I am going to tell you what the record showed and where I think the process deserves hard questions. I am not the jury and neither are you. Only those twelve people decide.

A DNA Lab That Could Not Name Anyone

The first witness of the day was Lyndsey Sanney, a senior DNA analyst at Bode Technology, a private laboratory. She has been there about ten years and told the jury she has testified as an expert roughly forty times. The court qualified her in forensic DNA analysis without a fight, and her report came into evidence without objection.

What matters is why she was there. In 2021, the year before the arrest, the State sent material from this case to an outside lab. Bode received four swabs and two extracts that the state crime lab had already prepared, along with a request for Y-STR testing. Sanney explained it as "a male specific type of DNA testing." In plain English, that is a test that looks only at the Y chromosome, so it can pull a male signal out of a sample that is mostly someone else's DNA. If you believe a male left DNA behind and ordinary testing has not found him, this is the test you order.

Here is what it produced. The four swabs never got past the first step. Sanney said they were stopped "because no male DNA was detected." The first extract had a small amount of male DNA in it, but too little to produce a profile at all. The second gave her a partial profile that looked like a mixture of at least two people, and she put the limit on it herself: "no conclusions could be made on the partial mixture profile."

Luther Johnson Britt III, who represents David Prevatte, kept his cross-examination short. He did not need much. Sanney agreed that the state lab's earlier screening had come back negative, and that Bode was told so. She agreed that for the last two items Bode received only extracts, that the lab was not told exactly where the second sample came from, and that the earbuds themselves were never sent to her. Mr. Britt put it to her that the quantities involved were very, very small, and she said yes. In her own words, one extract "falls below the threshold" Bode sets for detecting anything. She agreed the data was too limited to draw any conclusion, and she agreed she could not make an identification of anyone.

The State asked her nothing further.

I want to stop on the timing, because the jury should. This testing was requested in 2021. The arrest came in February 2022. Whatever moved this case from a named suspect to a charged defendant, the State's own outside analyst told the jury it was not her work. When DNA comes up in closing arguments, that is the testimony to hold it against.

WATCH: CASE STORY PART 32 DNA Lab Draws No Conclusions as Uncle on Trial Investigator Says Facts Led to One Individual FULL TESTIMONY (live 4:30 PM ET) Lyndsey Sanney: Full Testimony, the Uncle on Trial DNA Analyst Who Could Identify No One

The Answer to What Changed Was a Person

Investigator Eric Short took the stand next and stayed there for most of the day. He works for the District Attorney's Office now. In 2020 he was with the Pender County Sheriff's Office, and on October 20 of that year he was handed this file after the original investigator, Detective John Leatherwood, retired. He described it as an unsolved case that he picked up "with a fresh set of eyes."

By his own account, the file he inherited had a hole in the middle of it. Nobody had matched any object to the mark the pathologist documented on Paitin, and in his words there was "no DNA or physical evidence that matched" one either. He collected a DNA standard from Paitin's older sister, Savannah, himself, and he sent standards back to be tested again with newer technology. That is the testing Sanney had just finished describing.

Then he gave the jury two things the original investigation did not have.

The first was a set of Google records. The household's own accounts, he said, held nothing of interest. A different account, belonging to a woman who was not in the house that night, held searches from November 2017. One asked whether a house has to be taped off. Another, which he said was run four times, read: "how long does it take DNA tests to see if one matches another DNA?" The investigator told the jury the case file reflected that David would use that woman's phone. He also said he found no record of a phone belonging to David in 2017.

Read that again slowly. The searches sit in someone else's account. On Day 7, what tied them to David Prevatte was the investigator's reading of the case file about whose phone he borrowed. That may be exactly what happened. It is also an inference, and the jury is entitled to weigh it as one.

The second piece is the one the arrest rests on. Short said he measured a belt connected to the case and found it too wide for the mark. He said enhanced photographs showed him something with a hook shape. And he said that of roughly ten cords collected from the house, a pair of red earbuds was "the only item of physical evidence we had in custody that had the loop that was consistent with the latent impression." He walked the jury through the cord: two knots, a stretched section about fourteen inches long, measurements he took with calipers. He said he took that reading to the pathologist, Dr. Karen L. Kelly, and that she told him it was consistent with what she had documented.

The prosecutor asked him whether his mind had been made up. His answer is the State's whole theory of the investigation in one sentence: "the facts in this case led me to one individual."

WATCH: THE EARBUD OPINION Uncle on Trial: Investigator Says in His Opinion Only the Red Earbuds Fit Paitin Fields' Mark

That sentence is a claim, and it can be tested. Did the facts lead him to David Prevatte, or was David Prevatte already where the file pointed when he opened it? The State finished its direct examination by having Short close off the alternatives. No dog leash was ever found. No social services or sheriff's record showed earlier trouble at the house. And when he was asked about the small amount of male DNA the outside lab could not interpret, he did not answer with DNA. He said, "We have to take the physical evidence and let it support the facts," and he told the jury where the earbuds were found: "Right beside the bed" David Prevatte had been sleeping in.

That is a fair point for the State, and I am not going to wave it away. It is also the moment the direct examination ended and the cross-examination began.

The Purpose Was an Arrest

Mr. Britt took the theory apart one support at a time, and he started with the object.

Short agreed that when the pathologist first examined Paitin, her thinking pointed toward a belt. He said he recovered "just one belt." Then the defense put an email in front of him. Mr. Britt suggested the investigator had written to the pathologist that if she could say the cord was consistent with the marks, an arrest could be made. Short answered, "I don't remember quite wording like that." What he remembered was a phone conversation in which she asked what he needed from her, and he told her: "a report saying that you support my findings," or, as he told it, a report saying so if she thought it was a different object. He added, "I don't want you to think that I was trying to coach her."

Mr. Britt then asked him directly whether the purpose of putting fresh eyes on this case was so that an arrest could be made. The investigator's answer: "That's correct, sir."

He dated the conversation with the pathologist to January 18, 2022. David Prevatte was arrested on February 4. That is seventeen days.

WATCH: THE CROSS-EXAMINATION Uncle on Trial: Investigator Agrees With the Defense His Whole Purpose Was to Make an Arrest

Let me be fair to the investigator before I press on this. Making an arrest in the unsolved death of a child is what a detective handed a cold file is supposed to try to do. Nobody should hold that against him. The question is the order of things. An investigator who is not a pathologist formed an opinion about what object made a mark. He then went to the pathologist and asked for a report supporting his findings. Her answer, as he described it, was that his reading was consistent. In a courtroom, "consistent with" is one of the softest phrases an expert can use. It means the evidence does not rule the thing out. It does not mean the evidence picks that thing over every other. And the defense drew out that even her agreement depended on the cord being doubled over the way Short supposed it was.

Then came the hook. The State's theory is that the ear hook on one of those earbuds left its shape behind. So you would expect the hook to be the most carefully tested object in the building. Short agreed the lab never swabbed it. Mr. Britt asked whether he ever sent it back. "No, sir, I did not."

He could not tell the jury which of the two earbuds made the mark. He was not present when the photographs were enhanced, and he said he did not consult the pathologist about the enhancement. He agreed that a feature of the cord does not show up in the enhanced image. Asked how the knots came to be tied in the cord, he said he had "no clue." He agreed nothing was ever found that the earbuds plugged into. And asked whether anything in the original investigation recorded Paitin playing with that cord, he said, "I don't think we have a witness saying that."

Part of this stretch was done with photographs the court has restricted from the broadcast, and they were shown to the jury only. I am not going to describe them, and you do not need them to follow the point. The object at the center of the State's case was matched to a mark by an investigator's eye, supported by a pathologist's "consistent," and never sent back to a lab to see whose DNA was on the part that supposedly did it. Why not? The jury was not given a reason on Day 7.

WATCH: CASE STORY PART 33 Uncle on Trial Investigator Says Lab Did Not Swab the Earbud Hook and He Did Not Resubmit It WATCH: 74 SECONDS The Uncle on Trial: Investigator Says Nothing Was Found to Plug the Earbuds Into

The Other Man in the House and a Child's Third Interview

Five people were in that house that night: David, his mother Lisa Hunt, his stepfather Dale Hunt, and the two girls. Two of the five were adult males. So any case that says "it was David" also has to say why it was not the other one. I want to be careful here. Dale Hunt is not charged with anything, and nobody in that courtroom accused him of anything on Day 7. The point is about method, about how an investigator gets from two to one.

Short agreed that David had been back in the house only two or three days. His reason for excluding the stepfather was that the interviews in the file were "consistent with them both being in the bed basically witnessing each other," meaning the husband and wife each account for the other. He could not recall whether Lisa Hunt had told investigators that her husband got up during the night. He agreed Savannah never said he did. And then he said the thing this whole trial has circled since the opening statements: "the focus on the investigation was David, but still I had to exclude Mr. Dale."

His own interview of Dale Hunt, with a lawyer present, took place on February 2, 2022. The arrest came two days later.

CLIP (live 4:00 PM ET) Uncle on Trial: Investigator Tells Jury How He Ruled Out the Other Man in Paitin Fields' Home

That leaves Savannah. She was a young child in that house, she is still a minor, and the court has protected her voice and her image for good reason. Nothing I am about to say is a criticism of her. My questions are for the adults around her, about what they did and when.

Her account is the only eyewitness evidence that places David near her sister that night. She gave three interviews at a child advocacy center. Short told the jury he had wanted the third one done before any arrest. It did not happen in that order. He interviewed Dale Hunt on February 2. He arrested David on February 4, and that same day he phoned Savannah's aunt in Louisiana. Savannah's third interview took place on February 18.

On cross-examination Short agreed that Savannah did not want to talk in the first two interviews. He agreed that her account changed in the third, which came after the arrest and after he had told her aunt about it. He said the aunt was "the only one that called about status updates," and he denied that anyone coached the child. When Mr. Britt asked why the aunt had been moved to the jury room while Savannah testified earlier in this trial, the investigator called it "trial prep strategy." He also confirmed that Detective Leatherwood, across the original investigation, never tried to interview Savannah himself.

As for what she described, the investigator gave the jury his own reading of it: that what woke her was her uncle "standing over by Paitin's end of the couch," and that he then walked away. Mr. Britt asked what she could have seen by. Savannah never said the television was on. Short's answer was, "I think the kitchen light was on." He then agreed the kitchen is separated from that room by two walls, and that nobody ever tested how much light the room actually had.

On redirect the State had him repeat that the aunt was the only relative who stayed in contact with law enforcement, and that he never saw her coach Savannah. I take him at his word on what he saw. What he cannot speak to is what he did not see, and the calendar is the calendar. The one witness who puts David by that couch gave the account the State relies on two weeks after her aunt was told he had been arrested for it. A child whose family knows her uncle has been charged is not the same witness she was the day before. I am not accusing anyone of anything. Careful investigators lock down a child's account before the news breaks for exactly this reason, and Short himself said he wanted to.

CLIP Uncle on Trial: Defense Gets Investigator to Agree Savannah's Account Changed After the Arrest WATCH: 66 SECONDS The Uncle on Trial: Investigator Agrees Savannah Twice Did Not Want to Talk Before the Arrest

What Was Thrown Away, and What Was Never Tested

There is a version of this case where the DNA settles it. Day 7 was not that version.

Mr. Britt asked the investigator whether David's DNA shows up on the swabs taken from Paitin. "No, sir, it does not." What the State does have is a mixture of Paitin's DNA and David's on the outside of David's own clothing. Short agreed that David had held his niece that morning, which hands the jury an ordinary explanation for how it got there. This is the uncle who says he found her and tried to save her. On the State's own evidence, he was holding her.

Then there is what no longer exists. Short told the jury that hospital staff discarded an item of Paitin's clothing in the emergency room, and that nobody ever retrieved it. I am not putting that on this investigator. It happened in 2017, in a hospital, before the file was his. But the burden of proof belongs to the State, and when a piece of evidence that might have answered the question is gone, the gap does not get filled in the State's favor. The jury is allowed to notice what it was never shown.

CLIP (live 2:00 PM ET) Uncle on Trial: Investigator Says Nobody Retrieved Paitin Fields' Clothing the Hospital Discarded

The list kept going. Short agreed the charging cords collected from the house turned out to have no significant value. He agreed nothing was taken from the mattresses. He agreed that most of the people interviewed in this case did not believe a crime had occurred. He said he knew Paitin had been ill with a cough, and he had heard during this trial that a doctor's appointment had been made for the next day, but he "never found physical evidence" of one. Later, on recross, he said he "didn't find in the medical records" that she arrived at the emergency room with pneumonia or a general illness.

The jury went to lunch with the investigator still under cross-examination. By then the defense had its theme for closing arguments, and it had come out of the State's own witness.

Seven or Eight Interviews the Jury Never Heard

When court resumed, Mr. Britt asked a simple question. How many times was David interviewed? "Several times, sir, over seven or eight times, I believe." By Detective Leatherwood and by others. Short said he tried to interview David himself as well.

Then the defense walked the jury through the arrest. Short said he did not know David was in Louisiana and had not been tracking him. David was found through a Facebook page. A female detective, writing as a former schoolmate, asked him where he was and sent a photograph that Short could not confirm was really hers. Asked whether she recruited other people to that page to win David's trust, the investigator said, "Possibly, sir," and explained that he was "not real familiar with this part of the investigation."

Police are allowed to use a ruse to locate someone they have a warrant for. Courts have said so for a long time and I am not suggesting anything unlawful happened. I am pointing at what the jury learned from it. By the investigator's own account, David was in Louisiana doing storm cleanup and rebuilding houses. Short and a second detective flew down and handed the warrant to local investigators, who stopped David at the end of a driveway. He waived extradition, which means he agreed to come back to North Carolina without a fight. He was flown home on a state plane, and he declined another interview.

That set up the sharpest legal fight of the day. Mr. Britt asked whether anything from all those interviews had been used against David. The State objected, and the jury was sent out.

The State's position was that the question was a way of sneaking the defendant's own statements in front of the jury without putting him on the stand. Here is the rule in plain English. Hearsay is a statement made outside the courtroom that someone offers in court as proof that the statement is true. The State can offer a defendant's past statements against him. A defendant generally cannot offer his own past statements for himself through some other witness, because the prosecutor never gets to cross-examine him on them. So the State told the judge it could choose to put the statements in or not, that it had "elected not to," and that the defense "can't backdoor them in."

Mr. Britt's answer was that he was not asking what David said. He was asking the jury to know a fact: "none of what he has said has been presented in this courtroom. That's not hearsay."

The judge ruled for the defense, with a fence around it. "In the exercise of my discretion, I do not find it to be hearsay." He barred any question about the specific things David said, and he allowed the question of whether those interviews played into the decision to arrest. I think he got that right, in both directions. The content stays out. The fact that the interviews exist, and that the State did not use them, comes in.

With the jury back in the box, the investigator gave the answer: "None of the actual interview has been played, no sir."

CLIP (live 12:00 PM ET) Uncle on Trial: Judge Overrules the State and Lets Defense Ask if His Interviews Were Used in Court

Sit with what that means for this jury. A man was questioned seven or eight times about the death of his niece. The State chose not to play a minute of it. I do not know what is in them, and neither do the jurors. What I can tell you, as my opinion and nothing more, is that prosecutors who have a damaging statement from a defendant usually play it. The State had every right to make the choice it made. The jury has every right to wonder about it. And because David Prevatte did not testify, those twelve people will decide this case without ever hearing his account from anyone.

WATCH: CASE STORY PART 34 Investigator Tells the Uncle on Trial Jury None of the Actual Interview Has Been Played

The State used its redirect examination to repair what it could. Redirect is the second turn the side that called a witness gets, and it exists so that side can answer what the cross-examination raised. The prosecutor put the pathologist's photographs in front of the jury again, with the same restriction on the broadcast, and Short repeated his reading of them. This time he agreed with the prosecutor on two things worth writing down: that what he was giving was a lay opinion, and that he is not a pathologist. Then he stepped down. He had been on the stand, with recesses out, for the better part of the day.

FULL TESTIMONY (live 6:30 PM ET) Investigator Eric Short: Full Testimony, The Fresh Set of Eyes Behind the Uncle on Trial's Arrest

The Last Witness Compared Nothing to Him

The State's final witness was Melinda Wilson, who spent a little over ten years as a forensic scientist in the biology section of the North Carolina State Crime Lab after two years at the West Virginia State Police laboratory. She was accepted as a DNA expert without objection, and she was good at explaining the work. She described the step that multiplies a small sample as "sort of like a molecular copy machine."

Her part in this case was narrow. Another scientist had already produced DNA profiles from a list of items, among them a swabbing of the red earbuds, a phone charger cord and a glue gun cord. Wilson's job was to compare those profiles against one person: Lisa Hunt, David's mother. Lisa Hunt was excluded from two items outright, and excluded as the major contributor on the rest, the earbud swabbing included. Where there was a second contributor in a mixture, Wilson's answer was four words: "The other is inconclusive."

She also walked through a 2020 report. A swab from the wall behind the couch and two samples from a window blind cord were never taken to the copying step, because whatever DNA was there fell below the level that could give a usable profile. A swab from a couch cushion came back inconclusive.

Mr. Britt did not ask her a single question. There was nothing to take back. From the State's last witness, on the object the State's theory is built around, the jury heard who the main contributor was not. The person ruled out was the defendant's mother.

Then the prosecutor stood up. "Judge, the state rests."

That is the end of the phase this trial has been in since the opening statements. For seven days the State took the jury back into that house, one witness at a time. What it proved, and I do not think the defense seriously disputes it, is that a five-year-old girl was badly hurt and died. What it had to prove on top of that is who. On that question the State rested with an investigator's opinion about an object, a child's third interview, a mixture on clothing the uncle wore while he held her, and a set of searches in someone else's account. Whether that adds up to proof beyond a reasonable doubt is the jury's call. Whether it was even enough to send every charge to the jury was the judge's, and he was about to make it.

"A Guessing Game"

With the jury out of the room, the defense moved to dismiss. This motion comes at the close of the State's evidence in nearly every criminal trial, and it usually fails, so it helps to know what the judge is actually deciding. The test is whether there is substantial evidence of every element of each charge, and that this defendant is the person who did it, taking the evidence in the light most favorable to the State. What the judge personally believes does not enter into it. If the evidence is there, the charge goes to the jury. If there is not, the jury never gets it.

The State's answer was that who did this is a question for the jury. The judge did not leave it there. He pressed the prosecutor for the evidence behind one charge in particular. I am not going to quote that argument or the ruling's description of the charge. The words are graphic and they do not belong on this page. The substance is this: the State pointed to Paitin's injuries and to a DNA result with three contributors. It conceded that the injuries could have more than one cause. And it conceded that nobody can say whether the third contributor was male or female. Mr. Britt called the inference the State wanted a guess.

The judge took about half an hour. When he came back he went through the three charges in order.

On counts one and three, the motion was denied. The court found "substantial evidence presented to the jury of those two charges," enough for the question to go to the jury.

Count two went the other way. The judge laid out what that charge requires and compared it to count three, which he said "gives the state a lot more leeway." He accepted that the State had shown Paitin was injured. But the only thing connecting David Prevatte to the specific act count two requires, he said, was "a third component of unknown, inconclusive amount of DNA," from a contributor nobody can say is male or female. Then the sentence that decided it: without more, "the jury would merely engage in a guessing game."

He granted the motion on count two and noted the State's objection. One of the three charges is gone.

WATCH: THE RULING Uncle on Trial: Judge Dismisses One of Three Charges and Sends the Murder Charge to the Jury

I question judges on this channel all the time, so let me say it plainly when one does the job. Dismissing a charge in a case about the death of a five-year-old, with cameras in the room, is not the easy call. He made it because the evidence was not there, and he said why on the record. That is the process working.

Now the harder question, and it is for the State. That charge sat in front of this jury from the first day of the trial. The lab reports the jury heard about are dated 2019, 2020 and 2021. The State knew what its DNA could and could not say long before a single juror was seated. So what did it expect to prove on count two? The jurors spent seven days hearing evidence under a charge the court has now found could only be reached by guessing. They will be told the law without it. Whether twelve people can fully set aside something they have carried for seven days is a fair thing to ask, and how the court handles that with them is something I will be watching on Day 8.

There is a second question, and it runs the other way. If the DNA cannot say who for count two, what says who for counts one and three? The judge found there is enough for a jury to decide. He did not say what the jury should decide. A denied motion to dismiss means the question gets asked. It is not an answer.

WATCH: CASE STORY PART 35 Uncle on Trial Defense Rests Without Calling a Witness After Judge Throws Out Count Two

The Defense Rests on the State's Evidence

The judge turned to Mr. Britt and asked whether the defense would present evidence. It would not.

Before he let that stand, the judge spoke to David Prevatte directly. He asked whether he understood his right to remain silent, whether he understood his right to testify, and whether the decision was his own. Prevatte answered yes to each, and the court found the choice knowing and voluntary. Judges do this so that nobody can claim later that a lawyer made the decision for the client. The law does not allow a jury to hold a defendant's silence against him. The burden never moved off the State's table.

Then the jury came back, and it happened in about four seconds. "Mr. Britt, the state has rested. Do you wish to present any evidence?" No. "Defense rests?" Yes. The judge told the jurors that "all of the evidence has now been presented," and sent them home until 9:30 a.m. on Day 8.

With the jury gone, the defense renewed its motion on the two remaining charges, which lawyers do to protect the issue for an appeal. The prosecutor answered that there was "ample evidence," that there were "only five people in that house" that night, and that whether David Prevatte is the person responsible is up to the jury. The judge agreed that it goes to them: "I will deny the motion to dismiss at the close of all the evidence."

So the second phase of this trial, the defense case, never happened. Since the opening statements the defense has pressed one point above the rest: the evidence cannot say who. It chose to make that case entirely through the State's own witnesses, and on Day 7 the State's own investigator gave it most of what it needed: the focus was David, the purpose was an arrest, the hook was never tested, the interviews were never played.

That is a real bet, and I am not going to pretend it has no cost. A jury that wants to hear from the uncle will not. A jury that wants another explanation for what happened in that house was not handed one by a defense witness. The defense is not required to provide one. The State has to prove its case, and the defense is betting that it has not.

What the Jury Will Be Told

The last stretch of the day had no witness and no jury. It was the charge conference, which is where the judge and the lawyers settle the instructions: the written statement of the law the jurors take with them when they deliberate. It reads as paperwork. It decides what questions the jury is actually asked.

The prosecutor had drafted proposed instructions and a verdict form, and the judge went through them one at a time. The first-degree murder instruction needed repair, because the draft still carried a leftover from the count that had just been dismissed. The judge rewrote that part himself. The result matters. The jury will be asked about first-degree murder under two theories. One is premeditation and deliberation, meaning a killing that was intended and thought about beforehand. The other is felony murder, which in plain English means a death caused during the commission of certain serious felonies counts as first-degree murder without the State having to prove a plan to kill. With count two gone, the felony murder theory now rests on count three.

Go back to what the judge said earlier that afternoon. Count three is the one that "gives the state a lot more leeway." So the charge that is easier to prove is now the foundation under one of the two roads to a first-degree murder verdict. That is the law operating the way it is written, and neither side objected. Readers should still understand the structure the jury is being handed, because both roads still run through the same gate: the State has to prove it was him.

Mr. Britt made two requests, and they tell you what the defense thinks this case is about. He asked that the instruction on identification of the defendant be moved up, ahead of the instructions on the charges themselves. The judge agreed. Before this jury hears the elements of any charge, it will hear the law on whether the State has the right person. He also asked that the murder instruction be read before the count three instruction. The judge kept his own order, so that the same elements would not be read twice, and settled the concern by putting count three "on its own verdict sheet." Mr. Britt said that resolved it.

The judge told both sides the final instructions had been emailed and asked them to go over the document with a "fine tooth comb." The State will argue first. Court adjourned until 9:30 a.m. on Day 8.

WATCH: CASE STORY PART 36 Uncle on Trial Judge Rewrites Part of the Murder Instruction and the State Will Argue First

Where Day 7 Left the Case

The State is not empty-handed, and anyone who tells you this case is over is selling something. First-degree murder is going to the jury, with count three underneath it. The State has two adult males in the house and a file that puts one of them in bed beside his wife. It has Savannah's account of her uncle standing near her sister. It has a mixture of two DNA profiles on his clothing, the earbuds beside the bed he was using, and a set of searches on a phone the investigator says he borrowed. A judge looked at all of that twice in one afternoon and said a jury could decide it.

What the State no longer has is a clean answer to the question it has owed since the opening statements. What changed between 2018 and 2022? On the record of Day 7, Investigator Short took the file. The outside lab found nothing it could interpret. The state lab's last witness compared nothing to the defendant. The object was matched by eye and its hook never went back for testing. The pathologist's support came seventeen days before the arrest, after it was asked for. And the child's account the State relies on came two weeks after the arrest.

My own view, and I will say it as an opinion because that is all it is: I heard a theory on Day 7, and I heard an investigator who believes it. I did not hear the test that would tell a theory from a fact. I am not on that jury. The twelve people who are will hear both sides argue it on Day 8, and they are the only ones whose view counts.

Here is what I will be listening for. Does the State tell the jury why the hook was never swabbed? Does it try to make the DNA say more than its own two experts said? Does it explain why seven or eight interviews stayed in a file? And does the defense's bet hold, or does a jury that never heard from David Prevatte fill the silence on its own?

WATCH THE WHOLE DAY The Uncle on Trial Day 7, No Breaks Edition: State Rests, Judge Dismisses One of Three Charges TOP MOMENTS The Uncle on Trial: David Prevatte Day 7 Top Moments / DNA Limits, the Arrest, the Defense Rests WATCH: CASE STORY PART 37 Uncle on Trial: What Can the DNA Prove After the State Rests and One Charge Is Dismissed?

Every Part of the Case Story, from the opening statements through Day 7, is on the North Carolina v. Prevatte coverage page. Start at the beginning if you are new to this one. A five-year-old girl is dead, a family is split down the middle inside one house, and a man who has been locked up since February 2022 is waiting on twelve strangers. All of them are owed a verdict built on proof.