DOVER, N.H. – Lawyers for a former Rochester man on trial for the beating death of his girlfriend’s 21-month-old daughter told jurors Tuesday that authorities have the wrong man.

Mark Sisti, a lawyer for Chad Evans, said police investigators in Kassidy Bortner’s death jumped to conclusions and ignored important evidence that points to another suspect, Jeffrey Marshall, the child’s baby sitter.

“You will find out that only four to five weeks before hear death she started to go to Jeffrey Marshall’s,” Sisti said during his opening statement in Strafford County Superior Court. “That’s not a coincidence.”

Marshall, who lived with Kassidy’s aunt in Kittery, Maine, is expected to testify for the prosecution, but Sisti said jurors should be suspect of everything he says.

“You’re going to see Jeffrey Marshall raise his hand and swear to tell the truth,” he said. “By the time this case is over, you’re going to deliberate and you’re going to ask yourself, ‘Hey, Jeff, is that the hand you used to beat

Kassidy Bortner?'”

Evans, 30, is charged with second-degree murder and assault in Kassidy’s Nov. 9, 2000 death. He was living with the girl’s mother, Amanda Bortner, at the time the girl died.

Evans was charged in New Hampshire because police said much of the abuse took place in his Rochester home, though the girl died in Kittery. Investigators say the girl was beaten repeatedly in the months leading up to her death.

Senior Assistant Attorney General William Delker in his opening remarks described Evans as a man with a raging temper who would grab Kassidy by the face, beat her and throw her against walls.

Delker said bruises began appearing on the girl shortly after she and her mother moved in with Evans, but that he and Bortner were skilled at making up stories to explain the bruises.

“He told police he would order her into the corner for discipline,” Delker said. “But the defendant told police she would throw herself into the corner, hitting her face on the wall.”

Delker also said it made no sense that Marshall abused Kassidy for months.

“If Jeffrey Marshall was abusing Kassidy the way the defendant wants you to believe, why did Amanda and the defendant allow Kassidy to go back to Jeffrey Marshall’s again, again and again?” Delker said.

Much of the prosecution’s case is expected to focus on the testimony of the girl’s mother. Bortner, who lived with Evans before and after the child’s death, initially refused to testify for the state.

She only agreed last month after being charged with two counts of child endangerment and being offered immunity from prosecution for anything she says on the stand.

Police say she knew about the abuse but did not try to stop it.

“[We] can’t predict what Amanda is going to say because she lived with the defendant for nine months,” Delker told jurors. “Amanda did not side with Kassidy in life and she may not side with her in death.”

The prosecution’s first witness was Jacqueline Conley of Buckfield, Maine, Amanda Bortner’s mother.

She said Kassidy seemed to love Marshall. But she also said Bortner reacted strangely to Kassidy’s death.

“In a way she said she was relieved and would be able to get on with her life and go to college like other girls,” Conley said Bortner told her shortly before Kassidy’s funeral.