SAN DIEGO — After tearful testimony from his grown kids, and final arguments from the lawyers, David Westerfield's fate is again in the hands of a jury. The same panel that convicted him of killing 7-year-old Danielle van Dam began deliberating Wednesday whether Westerfield will die for his crime.

The panel of six men and six women spent a little more than an hour in the jury room before calling it a day. They will continue Thursday morning.

The defense's three-day plea for Westerfield's life ended Wednesday morning with the testimony of his son and daughter. Although Neal Westerfield, 19, and his sister Lisa, 21, spent only about six minutes each on the witness stand, their testimony was long on emotion.

"Still love your father?" defense lawyer Steven Feldman asked Lisa Westerfield, a college student with shoulder-length auburn hair and her father's pale complexion.

"Yes," she said, her soft voice cracking.

"Do you miss him?" Feldman asked.

She took a heavy breath, wiped her tear-stained face and whispered, "Yes."

The defendant, seated about 10 feet away at the defense table, looked stricken and rubbed tears from his eyes.

Neither she nor her brother Neal mentioned the February murder of Danielle, Westerfield's neighbor, or prosecution allegations that their father was obsessed with sex with young girls and even fondled their young cousin a dozen years ago. Instead, they gave brief answers to carefully chosen questions from Feldman about their relationship with their father.

"What do you remember most about your dad?" the lawyer asked Neal Westerfield, a college sophomore with slicked-back light brown hair and his father's bulky build.

"Probably laying out by the pool playing chess," he said.

Neal Westerfield lived part-time with his father after his parents' 1996 divorce and sometimes did freelance work for the design engineer.

"He taught me what to do and when to do it. He taught me to respect people," his son testified.

Neal Westerfield's voice caught in his throat as Feldman asked, "It matters to you what happens to your father here?"

"Yes," he said. "Yes."

Westerfield's ex-wife, Jackie, the mother of two children, made her first appearance in court Wednesday, sitting in the rear of the courtroom and clutching a tissue as her daughter testified. Across the aisle, Danielle's mother, Brenda, stared at her lap, slowly picking lint from her pants as Lisa Westerfield recalled practicing softball with her father.

"He took us to the park and hit groundballs to us," she said. Both she and her brother showed jurors snapshots of the family in happier times.

Prosecutor Jeff Dusek gingerly cross-examined her, pointing out that she and her father celebrated their birthdays together this year, something denied Danielle van Dam and the van Dam family.

Dusek tried to quiz Neal Westerfield about his reaction to what the prosecutor described as a defense strategy to blame him during the trial for child pornography in the Westerfield home.

"Did you ever speak to him about that aspect of the case?" asked Dusek. The defense objected to the question as irrelevant and Judge William Mudd ordered him not to answer.

In his summation, Dusek told jurors they had to choose between giving Westerfield "what he deserves or what he wants."

"This man has gotten so far beyond the line that in a decent society he has to pay the ultimate price," said Dusek. "He took her out of her own bed in her own house away from her blankets and her stuffed toys and her innocence and her family."

Brenda van Dam wiped a tear from her eye with a tissue.

Dusek ended by showing jurors a still frame from a video her parents shot during a trip to Disneyland. In it, a beaming Danielle reaches toward the camera with her left hand.

He contrasted that image with her left palm print police found in Westerfield's recreational vehicle.

"That is how she died," he said pointing to a crime scene photo of the print. "This is how he should be," he continued, pointing to the Disneyland photo.

Westerfield's lawyers argued, however, that he was not the "worst of the worst" offenders for whom the death penalty was designed.

Feldman pointed to the positive impact Westerfield's medical designs had on the lives of millions of people, as well as his close relationship with friends and family.

"Take the high road," he urged jurors.

Defense lawyer Robert Boyce argued that there was lingering doubt about whether Westerfield was even Danielle's killer.

The trustworthy suburban dad his friends and family knew was inconsistent with Westerfield as a murderer, the lawyer said.

"You have David Westerfield over here," he said, holding out one hand. "You have a horrible crime over here. The two are not reconcilable."