If your victim is under 13, and you are convicted of killing more than one person, you can expect to die by lethal injection in Ohio. That's the situation faced by Brittany Pilkington, a troubled 23-year-old accused of killing her three sons so her husband could pay more attention to her and her daughter.
It doesn't get much sadder than this. Today the young mother is in the Logan County Jail on a $US1 million bond coming to terms with an unexpected indictment for aggravated murder that carries the death penalty.
A few kilometres away, on North Main Street, in the "busy and beautiful" small Ohio town of Bellefontaine, mourners are viewing her youngest and last surviving son, three-month-old Noah, in his casket before a funeral service at 2pm.
When her first son Niall was found dead at three months in July last year, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome was blamed. Then when four-year-old Gavin died in April, a three-year-old daughter and the newborn Noah were placed into care pending an investigation, AP reports.
A judge allowed the baby to be returned home because there was no conclusive evidence the first two boys had been killed.
But police and prosecutors told reporters Ms Pilkington confessed on August 18, the day Noah was found dead. They now believe Ms Pilkington suffocated each boy with his comfort blanket because she wanted her husband, 43-year-old Joseph Pilkington, previously her mother's live-in boyfriend, to pay more attention to her and her daughter.
Logan County prosecutor William Goslee described her as a "troubled" young woman who wanted to "eliminate male children" in the competition for her husband's attention.
Before the aggravated murder charges were laid on Tuesday, Mr Goslee had expressed doubt that death penalty charges would apply given the tragic circumstances of the case, including an abusive childhood and life with a controlling husband who was previously her de facto stepfather.
"To imagine a jury would say that this is a person with a depraved heart that should die at the hands of some chemistry, I don't think that's likely," he was quoted as saying.
