CLAYTON, Mo. (AP) – A trial is underway in suburban St. Louis in the case of a mother accused of poisoning her 9-year-old son for almost a year.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports 36-year-old Rachel Kinsella’s St. Louis County trial on charges of first-degree assault and child endangerment began Tuesday. A prosecutor, Sheila Whirley, told jurors the mother from north-central Missouri’s Meadville put her son, Patrick, at “death’s door” by poisoning him. The boy survived.

Authorities allege Kinsella intentionally made her son sick by secretly giving him prescription medication at a home the two shared in Marlborough from March 2014 until the following January, when the state took Patrick from her.

Kinsella’s attorney countered that the mere presence of medication in the boy’s blood does not prove his client poisoned him.