2009 Minee Subee Daycare Killing Profiled on '48 Hours'

In 2009, a 22-year-old woman caring for a 16-month-old Deerfield boy at a Lincolnshire daycare center hurled the child to the ground, causing a severe brain injury that ultimately claimed his life. If you believe Melissa Calusinski’s confession, that is.

A confession which ultimately led a Lake County jury to convict the Carpentersville woman three years later and send her to prison on a 31-year sentence for murder.

But Calusinski says she was pressured to confess, she didn’t kill little Ben Kingan at the Minee Subee Daycare Center, and the current Lake County coroner says he believes the forensic evidence used to convict her actually points to her innocence. On Saturday, a national TV audience heard Calusinski’s story on CBS’s 48 Hours in a segment titled “Blaming Melissa.”

Calusinski says she crumbled during a 10-hour interrogation two days after Kingan’s death and — after 70 denials she did any harm to the child — admitted tossing the boy to the ground in frustration because he wouldn’t let her wash his hands after a snack of animal crackers and fruit juice. She told police she saw Kingan crawl to a bouncy seat and then she found him passed out on the floor. Calusinski was a teacher’s aide at the daycare center and was in a room with seven other toddlers, including Kingan’s twin sister Emily.

Calusinski’s sister, who worked there and got her sister the job at the daycare center, administered CPR on the boy, who died a few hours later at a hospital

Her attorneys say her low IQ, measured at 74, and the pressure the police put on her played a role in her confession.

Her attorneys sought a new trial, noting that the pathologist who testified against her wasn’t certified, but appellate court judges rejected her appeal last year.

Lake County Coroner Thomas Rudd, a medical doctor, told 48 Hours that Calusinski should not have been convicted based on the forensic evidence. Rudd took office in 2012 and began reviewing the records at Calusinski’s father’s request. Rudd says he found significant and obvious evidence of a prior brain injury. And a former Cook County coroner enlisted for a second opinion agreed with him.

“I was stunned. It was like a light bulb in a dark room,” Rudd told Fox News reporter Larry Yellen last fall . “Did the jury really understand the medical evidence? OK, if they did, they wouldn’t have convicted her.”

The pathologist who performed the autopsy in January 2009 indicated Kingan sustained the brain injury on the day he died. The child had no cuts, bruises or other marks on his body. Years later, the pathologist signed a sworn affidavit admitting he erred and missed the prior injury.

Rudd says prosecutors knew the child had sustained a head injury months before that left him vulnerable.

He believes the case should be reopened. Kingan was known to throw himself around and bang his head, and Rudd suggests it’s likely that even a minor self-inflicted head bump could have exacerbated the already-present brain injury.

“I do not see any evidence that she did it other than her confession,” Rudd told 48 Hours’ Erin Moriarty.

Lake County authorities deny Calusinski’s confession was coerced and insist jurors had all the relevant information about the boy’s condition. They also said the prior injury was insignificant.

Lake County has been troubled by false confessions and wrongful convictions, however, reports CBS News. Calusinski’s legal team is hoping the evidence now tilts in their favor.

The attorney handling her appeal now, Kathleen Zelllner, is an expert in wrongful convictions cases. She said the video that shows Calusinski tossing a doll to the ground doesn’t even correlate to the prosecution’s theory of how the head injury was sustained.

“She’s naive. She’s trusting. She’s a people pleaser,” Zellner said, and she just wanted to get out of the room, and that’s why she ultimately changed her story to satisfy the officers questioning her.

Lake County State’s Attorney Michael Nerheim says he will not reconsider this case.

» subscribe to a Patch email newsletter

YOUR TURN: What do you think? Should Melissa Calusinski’s case be reconsidered? Discuss in the comments.