TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL)--Prosecutors and defense both started this morning with opening arguments to make their case.
"Have you seen or heard from your daughter that night with that man? No."
Tears rolled down Sonya brown's face as she recalled the night her daughter went missing...
Danielle brown disappeared on February 5th 2010, after witnesses say she was last seen with Elijah James.
"They drove away. did your sister talk to you before she was leaving? to my daughter, she said bye bye aunt Danielle," said Nicole Brown, Brown's sister.
James is charged with the murder of Brown and robbery.
This is the first time in Leon county a defendant is facing the death penalty for murder without a body.
"No body, no cause of death, one of the things you need to ask yourself is how did she die there could be a lack of evidence as to that."
But the prosecution says there's enough evidence to link James to brown's disappearance.
"You're going to hear that while we never found his body, we found he DNA, you're going to hear that we forensically took a part that Buick, and that we found gasoline inside of it, but we also found the blood of Danielle Brown in the driver seat and pools in the trunk.
prosecutors say investigators also found brown's earring.
"It was gold like with a teddy bear on it," said Sonya Brown.
Investigators also said they found a button from her jeans, and her driver's license ripped into pieces with James' DNA on the license.
The defense and several other witnesses testified Brown had been involved in prostitution. They say Brown was involved with several men because of her work and those other men could very well be linked to her disappearance.
The trial continues Wednesday morning.
