WISCASSET – The foster mother who is charged in the death of 5-year-old Logan Marr, bound and gagged the child in a plastic highchair with 42 feet of duct tape, covering her mouth and head and possibly part of her nostrils, before leaving her in a cluttered basement storage room for a “time out,” a prosecutor said Tuesday.

Sally Ann Schofield, 40, of Chelsea is accused of both murder and manslaughter in the nonjury trial, which began Tuesday morning in Lincoln County Superior Court. The trial is being heard by Justice Thomas Delahanty II.

Deputy Attorney General William Stokes told the judge in opening arguments that Schofield “literally duct-taped [the child] to the chair.”

Schofield, a former state Department of Human Services worker, was charged after the child’s death in late January 2001.

The prosecutor described Logan’s cause of death as “mechanical asphyxia,” saying there was no pathological explanation why she died. The defendant told police the child had tipped the highchair over, but Stokes said there was no evidence of a head injury.

When first interviewed by police, Schofield denied putting duct tape on the girl, Stokes said, but it made no sense to the medical examiner that a child could wrap the tape around the chair and her body. According to Stokes, the pieces of duct tape had evidence on them, such as “mustache” hair from the child’s upper lip and a label from the back of the high chair. There was a “bloody froth” on the duct tape, as well, he said.

When Schofield removed the tape from Logan’s hair, she told police the child made no sound. There was no sound “because Logan was dead,” Stokes said.

The prosecutor theorized that when Logan and her younger sister, Bailey Marr, moved into the Schofields’ 13 Skyline Drive home in Chelsea, Logan acted as though she were the parent of her sibling and “that set the stage for a power struggle” between Logan and Schofield.

Stokes described the taping, saying there were four layers of tape around the circumference of the child’s head, possibly running from the top of her head down around her chin, forcing her jaw shut, and 10 layers of tape around her body and the chair.

Duct tape was a familiar staple in the Schofield home, according to the written grand jury testimony of Schofield’s 17-year-old son, Derek Owens. Assistant Attorney General Andrew Benson read Owens’ transcript, which stated that the family’s Christmas gifts were wrapped with duct tape, placed inside wooden boxes that were nailed shut and duct taped on the outside, too. The custom was to make it more difficult to open the gifts, he said.

Owens said that he kept a couple of rolls of duct tape in his bedroom to fix things and that there was usually a roll on top of the refrigerator.

The defendant grinned when the testimony about the Christmas tradition was read, but otherwise showed no emotion throughout the day.

Defense attorney Jed Davis of Augusta said the cause of death was from a pre-existing condition that caused a seizure.

Davis told the judge his client had requested medical records for Logan. He said that there are DHS records showing that Logan had seizures as a younger child.

To prove Schofield guilty of depraved indifference murder, the court must show an absence of moral sense, savagery or brutality, Davis said. “Her life was devoted to the protection of children,” Davis said, referring to comments from Schofield’s DHS evaluations.

On the day Logan died, she was being disciplined for telling her foster mother that morning that there was no school because of snow, when in fact school was open.

Kindergarten teacher Colette Galarneau of Pittston testified that while Logan was a pupil in her Chelsea School class, she had no problems with her. The teacher said she had not observed signs of seizures.

Day care provider Rebecca Doughty of Pittston testified that Logan, while in her care, had exhibited no signs of seizures. Doughty, who is related to Schofield by marriage, said that sister Bailey was “warm and fuzzy” toward Schofield, but “Logan seemed to have a wall up … it was more cold.”

“There seemed to be a power struggle between the two of them,” she said, adding that Schofield once told her “she couldn’t be a warm, fuzzy mom with Logan. She had to be a drill sergeant.”