Delilah Williams spent hours in federal court on Friday recounting in graphic detail the vicious beatings inflicted on her 5-year-old stepdaughter, who she said was punished so incessantly that her husband told her he believed the child was declining and close to death.

Delilah Williams told a jury in federal court that Naeem Williams knew that his child, Talia, might be close to death from all the beatings the couple had inflicted in the preceding months.

She said her husband pointed out some bumps on Talia’s stomach and said he thought the bumps might be a sign of broken ribs.

She said he also told her that he believed Talia might be dying and was close to death, and that she talked him out of seeking help for the child by telling him, "OK, we can just call 911 and we’ll be arrested."

Delilah Williams, 30, is testifying as a government witness in the capital murder trial of her husband. The testimony came as part of a plea agreement in which she acknowledged her role in killing the child in exchange for a 20-year sentence.

Naeem Williams, 34, is facing the death penalty for murder through child abuse or as part of a practice and pattern of abuse and torture. Talia died on July 16, 2005.

An unemotional Delilah Williams testified that instead of seeking medical attention, she and her husband agreed to stop beating the girl until her bruises healed and the clumps of hair that she had pulled from Talia’s scalp grew back. After that, they were going to send Talia away to live with Naeem’s mother.

She said she gave her stepdaughter the worst beating she had ever inflicted just 17 days before Talia’s death, after which she said she vowed not to hit her anymore.

"Everything I did to her was wrong, but in comparison was less severe than the June 29 beating," when she said she used a belt on the child for soiling herself.

Articulate and straightforward in describing what happened, she said that after Talia fell to the floor from the beating she stomped on her stepdaughter — including on her stomach — and Talia defecated on herself.

She said she kept stomping, stopping only after feeling what she believed was Talia’s ribs cracking under her foot.

"I started stomping on her," she said. "I just continued stomping on her until it felt like a bone cracked under my foot and she defecated on herself."

And the episode still wasn’t over.

She said she then put her stepdaughter on the toilet and tried to force her to use the bathroom by pushing on Talia’s stomach. When Talia resisted by digging her nails into Delilah’s arms, she got more angry and pushed harder, breaking the toilet. She said that got her even more angry, so she lifted the child up by the hair and slammed her head against the wall.

Delilah said she then left Talia at home alone.

"I left to get my nails done," she said.

It wasn’t the first time she had grabbed the child by the hair, she said, describing a time when she pulled Talia by the hair because the child was slow going up the stairs. "A big chunk of her hair" came out, she said.

Later when she met her husband before the two returned home, she said she told Naeem that Talia had soiled herself but didn’t tell him she had already beaten the girl because she wasn’t satisfied with the punishment she had doled out.

When they arrived at the house, she said Naeem beat Talia to punish her, but that she didn’t pay attention to how her husband was beating Talia because by then she was satisfied that Talia was getting another punishment.

In describing other means of punishment, she said the child would be bound to a bedpost with duct tape from head to ankles, including tape on her mouth and eyes, in order to be beaten.

However, Delilah stopped binding Talia to beat her "because I felt it wasn’t effective," she said. "She was able to squirm and move around and it required too much effort."

Delilah said neither she nor her husband kept their promise not to hit Talia anymore.

When Talia arrived in Hawaii from South Carolina in December 2004 following a custody battle with Talia’s mother, Delilah said her stepdaughter’s inability to control her bladder and bowel movements was not that bad. But by May 2005 she said Talia was soiling herself more often and that her speech and other intellectual functions began to suffer, "like she forgot to count."

By June 2005, she said, Talia was soiling herself every day.

On the morning Talia died, Delilah said her husband tried to hand Talia a breakfast sandwich but that her stepdaughter could only grasp the air.

She said Talia eventually "snapped out of it" and ate the sandwich. At that point she said Talia had not eaten for three days because she and her husband deprived Talia of food as yet another form of punishment.

Later that afternoon, after she said Naeem delivered the fatal blow, she said she saw Talia flat on her back and waving her arms stiffly above her body. She said she told her husband to put Talia in the bathtub and pour cold water over her. She said Talia had been delirious once before and that the cold water helped the child regain consciousness.

The cold water didn’t work and Talia started "wheezing," she said. So Delilah said she and her husband placed the nebulizer mask Talia had to treat her asthma, but they didn’t put any medication in the device.

When that didn’t work, she said Naeem told her to leave Talia alone because, "she just wants attention, she’s just faking."

She said they realized Talia was not faking when they saw discharge coming from Talia’s mouth.

Delilah said her husband told her they needed to call 911 and tell responders that Talia fell in the shower and hit her head. She said she refused to call 911 until she contacted her cousin to come pick up their 4-and-a-half-month-old daughter, Azrah. Then she said Naeem told her, "Wait, I’m going to take a shower. This is going to be my last good shower for a while."

Throughout Delilah’s testimony, Talia’s biological mother, Tarshia Williams, quietly sat in the back of the courtroom crying to herself as she listened to the atrocities.

Afterward, she said she endured the graphic, matter-of-fact testimony "to find out why."

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.