Jurors will return Wednesday to continue deliberating in the child abuse trial of Atlantic City's mayor.
They will start by rehearing audio evidence in which Marty Small is heard threatening to "earth slam" his daughter.
About an hour into deliberations, the jurors said they wanted to rehear an audio recording from Jan. 3, 2024.
"I’m going to earth slam her down the steps,” the mayor is heard saying in one recording, according to the transcript. “Come past this line and I’m gonna grab you by the head and throw you on the ground! Nothing is going to happen to me!”
As they were leaving for the day, the jurors had more questions, and were brought back in.
They want exact dates of texts about sexual activity that the Smalls found on the girl's cell phone, sparking the issues.
Those texts were not available during the trial, with the defense previously saying the girl had deleted them. The texts read in court were said to be similar, but were after the events for which he is being tried.
The jurors also wanted the "simplification" of aggravated assault versus simple assault.
The closings Tuesday asked the jury to decide who was telling the truth.
Did Small abuse his daughter and ignore the aftermath of alleged abuse by his wife, Superintendent Dr. La'Quetta Small, and then ask the girl to lie after criminal charges were filed?
Or is the daughter a rebellious teen looking to find her freedom through lies buoyed by a prosecutor's office with a political agenda?
Defense attorney Lou Barbone and Assistant Prosecutor Elizabeth Fischer presented those two vastly different views Tuesday morning, as they wrapped up their cases.
"This shows how the state of New Jersey imposes itself into the family relationship," Barbone said. "Why are we here? Why have we taken this man's life and made a spectacle of it? Because they can?"
While acknowledging there are are clear cases of child abuse that deserve to be criminally prosecuted, "this is not one of them."
Instead, he said that the girl was angry at her parents, and found that there was power in going to the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office.
"This is extorsion by the child," Barbone said.
But the girl had no power, Fischer countered: "She's not a mastermind, she is a victim."
Both sides pointed to a plan the girl and her boyfriend had for them to stay on the phone at all times, and him record whenever something happened, leading to the audio evidence presented by the state.
Barbone portrayed this as a way to trap her parents. Fischer said it was because the girl worried no one would believe her.
The 43 character witness that took the stand for her father backed up her concerns, Fischer said.
"You have a child who is brave enough to come forward on her own," she said of the girl.
But the soft-spoken teen who took the stand last week is not the same as the one the Smalls were dealing with inside their home, Barbone said.
He showed again cell phone video taken by Dr. Small when the girl had her phone taken by her father.
Marty Small is seen holding the phone as the girl screams for him to give it back.
At one point, the girl tries to reach around her father from behind and grab the phone, she then punches his shoulder and calls him by his first name.
"Marty? I'm Marty?" he replies.
Throughout, La'Quetta Small can be heard telling her daughter to "sit down" and "just relax."
In another clip, the girl pushes her father onto his bed, and climbs on top of him trying to get the phone.
That was a set up moment recorded after the criminal charges had been filed in an attempt at defense, Fischer said during her closing.
At the center of the case is an allegation that Small beat the girl unconscious with a broom during an argument Jan. 13, 2024, when she refused to go to a peace walk in the city.
Both Small and the now-17-year-old girl testified at the trial.
The teen talked about her father striking her with the bristle end of the broom "more than once" and how she fell back and blacked out, coming to with her father yelling for her brother to get water.
The first thing she saw, she testified, was the blade of her ceiling fan.
But Small said it was his daughter who picked up the broom, after wielding a butter knife at him when he came into her room.
"That's a lie," the girl said during her testimony. "He's knows that's a lie."
Small stood up during his testimony last week, as he showed the jurors how he grabbed the broom to defend himself and his daughter fell back and hit her head.
He did not report it because he did not want his daughter charged, Barbone said.
The big question from the state asks why the girl was not taken to the hospital after Small saw his daughter with "her eyes rolled up in her head."
Small testified that his daughter said she was fine.
Fischer pointed out messages between the girl and her boyfriend where she complained of pain, including headaches and dizziness. She said she worried she might not wake up.
The boyfriend, E.L., was her comfort person, Fischer said.
Small became mad when E.L. went on Instagram and did a live video talking about the alleged abuse, the teen testified.
Barbone noted, that as many times as the jury heard about E.L., he never took the stand.
The Smalls did take their daughter to the hospital Jan. 16, 2024, after she told Atlantic City High School Principal Constance Days-Chapman she was having headaches.
The pair never left their daughter's side at the hospital, where she told the nurse she was injured running with her brother in the house.
That was not offered by her father, who just agreed with it, Barbone said.
The defense rested Monday morning after presenting more than 40 character witnesses over two days.
Following closings Tuesday, the jury broke for lunch, and then were coming back at 1:30 p.m., when the judge will read their instruction.
That will include the understanding of corporal punishment, which is allowed in New Jersey.
The state argued against the instruction, since the defense has insisted the girl was never struck at all. But it was allowed in due to the threat Small is heard making on audio recordings, the judge indicated.
"If a person can corporally punish a child, they can threaten to corporally punish," he said.
"Reasonable infliction of corporal punishment" is allowed, Barbone told the jurors during his closing. "What's reasonable? That's for you to decide. Here's what will make it easy, he didn't do anything."
