Jennifer Rosenbaum seems nothing like the people who are typically charged in the death of a child. She isn’t the drug-addled mother guilty of neglect, or the live-in boyfriend who lashes out, or the father who traps his child in his own mental illness.

She appeared to be a promising foster parent. A candidate for the Henry County Commission, Emory law student, and intern at the state Legislature and local juvenile court, the 27-year-old Rosenbaum had been a foster child herself.

Yet four months after Laila Marie Daniel arrived in Rosenbaum's home the 2-year-old was dead, her abdomen struck with such force that her pancreas was transected. Rosenbaum would go on to be charged with her murder.

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Fulton DA Fani Willis (center) with Nathan J. Wade (right), the special prosecutor she hired to manage the Trump case and had a romantic relationship with, at a news conference announcing charges against President-elect Donald Trump and others in Atlanta, Aug. 14, 2023. Georgia’s Supreme Court on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025, upheld an appeals court's decision to disqualify Willis from the election interference case against Trump and his allies. (Kenny Holston/New York Times)

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