By turns polite and prickly, soft-spoken and sarcastic, Kelly tried Wednesday to convince a Philadelphia jury that he bore no responsibility for Danieal's 2006 starvation death.
"You loved your daughter?" asked defense attorney Earl G. Kauffman.
"I loved her very much," Kelly quietly replied. "I loved her with all my heart."
"Did you do anything to put her in a dangerous situation?" Kauffman continued.
"Never," Kelly replied.
Danieal, 14, who could not care for herself, was found dead Aug. 4, 2006, in her mother's squalid two-bedroom West Philadelphia apartment. She weighed 42 pounds - the weight of a typical 5-year-old - and was on a feces-stained mattress, her back covered with maggot-infested bedsores, one that went bone-deep.
Kelly, 40, is charged with child endangerment on allegations that he abandoned Danieal and her year-older brother, Daniel Jr., in 2005 with ex-wife Andrea Kelly, though he had taken them from her 10 years earlier because of neglect.
Kelly was the only one of three on trial who chose to testify. The last defense witnesses are to testify Thursday morning, followed by closing arguments.
Kelly spent almost three hours before the Common Pleas Court jury, including an hour of rigorous questioning by acting First Assistant District Attorney Edward McCann.
McCann retraced Kelly's custody of Danieal and her brother from 1995, when he took them to Pittsburgh after removing them from Andrea's custody, to his return with them to Philadelphia in July 2003 after years living with a girlfriend in Arizona.
At each problem along the way, McCann pressed Kelly to explain what happened.
"Well, there were multiple reasons for that," was Kelly's common reply, as when he began a protracted tale of bureaucratic delays that kept him from getting Danieal care and schooling after returning to Philadelphia.
