WARREN - It took a jury about 90 minutes Friday to convict a Transylvania Avenue S.E. woman of murdering her 15-month-old daughter last September.
Joy Lynn Hodge, 29, will be sentenced by Trumbull County Common Pleas Judge W. Wyatt McKay after she was convicted on charges of murder, endangering children and felonious assault.
Police said her daughter, A'nana Brantley, died of blunt force trauma to the head, face and neck and also a lacerated liver.
Hodge hung her head as the verdicts were read, and a family member in the gallery was crying.
Jury selection in the case began Monday, and jurors heard closing arguments Friday afternoon before being instructed by McKay and retiring to deliberate. They delivered their verdicts just before 5 p.m.
Assistant county prosecutor Diane Barber said Hodge faces life in prison. She said Hodge is eligible for parole after 15 years.
Hodge has three other children. Barber said she did not know who has custody of those children.
Jurors also found Hodge guilty of a specification on the child endangering charge that Hodge's conduct resulted in severe physical harm to her daughter. That specification made the charge a felony.
Hodge told several different stories and detectives had a hard time putting together what went on, said the lead investigator on the case, Detective Wayne Mackey. He credited his colleagues in the detective bureau with helping him to piece together the case.
''We were misled so many times, and there were so many avenues to check,'' Mackey said.
According to testimony, Hodge left the child alone to go with friends to a local bar for a night of karaoke. She said she came home sometime between 12:30 a.m. and 3 a.m. that day.
She claimed she gave A'nana a sippy cup at 8:30 a.m. that day and found the child dead five hours later.
Mackey said the case is sad all around and he was not in a celebratory mood.
''There's nothing really to rejoice about,'' Mackey said. ''We have a dead 15-month-old and a mother going to prison.''