KEW GARDENS, N.Y. — A prosecutor urged jurors to convict a vegan couple in the near starvation of their infant daughter, saying they "turned their tiny baby into a science experiment" with a diet "whose ingredients looked like they were picked off a horse farm." "This case is not about lifestyle choices. It's about a woefully inadequate diet," Assistant District Attorney Eric Rosenbaum told a Queens Supreme Court jury Tuesday morning during closing arguments in the trial of Joseph and Silva Swinton.

Silva Swinton in court last week

The Swintons, both 32, are accused of severely malnourishing their daughter, Ice, with a strict eating regimen of vegetables and a homemade infant formula that included nuts, soy beans, alfalfa and oat straw. When social services workers removed 15-month-old Ice from the family home in November 2001, she weighed just 10 pounds.

If convicted of first-degree assault and reckless endangerment, they face 25 years in prison. Jurors are to begin weighing evidence Wednesday morning.

The panel of nine women and three men appeared to pay close attention to the summations, which stretched three hours. Lawyers for the Swintons told the jury the couple loved their daughter dearly and had not understood how the diet would affect her.

"Every choice they made was sincere and with the best intentions," said Joseph Swinton's lawyer, Ronna Gordon-Galchus. "Parenthood doesn't come with a manual."

Silva Swinton delivered Ice in the couple's Queens home without the assistance of a doctor or midwife. Her parents spell her name Iice, although court records use Ice.

Joseph Swinton in court last week

Gordon-Galchus noted that the parents opted for cloth diapers, glass bottles and special nipples out of concern for Ice's health and described the painstaking kitchen work the parents did to prepare homemade formula.

"Depraved indifference?" Gordon-Galchus said, referring to the standard of proof for recklessness. "Taking the time to go through all that?"

Silva Swinton's lawyer said the prosecution was blaming the parents for not detecting health problems that health professionals had also missed. Two emergency medical technicians and a social worker visited the house before the girl was removed and reported that she was in no obvious medical distress.

"How can we hold these parents to a higher standard than we would a professional?" asked defense lawyer Christopher Shella, who used the phrase "How were they to know?" as a refrain in his summation.

Both sides told jurors the core of the case is whether the parents knew their daughter was in peril. Doctors testifying for the prosecution said that the girl had rickets, broken bones, no teeth and a distended stomach because of hunger and could not sit up, crawl, walk or babble.

Gordon-Galchus said Ice's development was slow but progressing.

"Childhood is a journey and Ice was on her path," she said.

Rosenbaum ridiculed that suggestion, saying, "Ice Swinton's childhood was stolen and the path she was on was a path to death."

Holding aloft an enlarged photo of a thin baby with a swollen belly and spindly legs, a picture prosecutor's say was taken soon after Ice was removed from her parents, Rosenbaum told jurors, "Ice Swinton had no muscles, she had no body fat. Look at her!"

When she testified last week, Silva Swinton said the picture wasn't Ice. She told jurors her child was "thriving" and only began to experience health problems after social services insisted the girl be hospitalized.

Rosenbaum, however, said during his summation that the child's health problems were obvious.

"A 15-month-old child who cannot walk, cannot stand and cannot crawl — that tells you that something is very wrong," Rosenbaum said.

Silva Swinton, dressed in a baby blue sweater and long navy skirt, crossed her arms across her chest and stared at Rosenbaum as he spoke. Her husband rested his elbows on the defense table and glanced only occasionally at the jury box.

Ice and her baby brother, Ini, born after the couple's arrest, are being cared for by relatives.

The prosecutor said Ice Swinton's physical and mental abilities were so limited by the malnutrition that "it's more like having a gerbil than having a child."