Melissa Calusinski Case: Conviction, X-Ray Dispute, and Clemency

The Melissa Calusinski case centers on a former Illinois day care worker convicted in 2011 of murdering a sixteen-month-old boy in her care, sentenced to thirty-one years, and now seeking clemency from Governor J.B. Pritzker on the basis of a disputed confession, a coroner’s reversal on the cause of death, and a forensic finding that the X-rays used against her were altered before being turned over to her defense.

What Happened at the Day Care

On January 14, 2009, sixteen-month-old Benjamin Kingan was found unresponsive in a bouncy seat at the Minee-Subee in the Park day care center in Lincolnshire, a suburb north of Chicago. He was pronounced dead that afternoon at Condell Medical Center.¹ Calusinski, then twenty-two, was a teacher’s assistant and had been alone in the toddler room. The other worker assigned to the room had stepped away to wash dishes and check on her own daughter elsewhere in the building, though state rules required two workers when more than five children were present.²

The Interrogation and Confession

Two days after the child’s death, police brought Calusinski in for questioning. The session lasted roughly nine to fourteen hours, depending on the source, and was conducted by officers from the Lincolnshire Police Department and the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force, led in part by commander George Filenko.³ She had no lawyer and no parent with her.

For hours, she denied harming Benjamin. Accounts put the number of denials at more than sixty to seventy-five.⁴ The defense later described detectives pounding desks, using expletives, keeping her in the room for long stretches without food, and telling her they would not leave until they had the facts. Officers offered scenarios: maybe it was an accident, maybe a moment of frustration. The techniques were associated with the Reid method, which uses behavioral analysis, minimization, and suggestion that cooperation will make things easier.³

Eventually she said on videotape that she had thrown the toddler to the floor. She recanted afterward, saying she believed confessing was the only way to be allowed to leave. “The only way for me to get out was to make a confession, a false confession,” she said in a later account.⁵

Dr. Saul Kassin, a John Jay College psychology professor who studies false confessions, called the statement “worthless” and described Calusinski as a vulnerable suspect subjected to deceptive tactics.⁵ Psychologist Kathryn Thomas and psychiatrist Alexander Westphal later diagnosed her with borderline intellectual functioning, placing her at a 4.8 grade level in sentence comprehension and in the bottom four percent for verbal comprehension, and with PTSD from a prior sexual assault. They concluded those factors made her highly susceptible to suggestion under pressure.⁶

The Trial and What Convicted Her

A Lake County grand jury indicted Calusinski on fourteen counts of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated battery of a child.¹ The three-week trial took place in October and November 2011 before Lake County Judge Daniel Shanes.

The prosecution rested on two things: the videotaped confession, and a forensic conclusion that Benjamin had suffered a fresh skull fracture from blunt force trauma. Forensic pathologist Dr. Eupil Choi, who performed the autopsy for the Lake County coroner’s office, testified the injuries were “recent” and equivalent in force to a fall from a one- or two-story building.⁷ Consulting pathologist Dr. Manuel Montez testified he had physically felt a fresh skull fracture during his own examination of the body.⁸ According to defense accounts, the fracture was referenced thirty-two times during trial.⁶

Defense attorney Paul DeLuca argued the confession was coerced and that Benjamin had a prior head injury from months earlier and a documented habit of throwing his head back when upset. Defense neuropathologist Dr. Jan Leestma testified he found evidence of a pre-existing blood clot and signs of an older injury in the autopsy materials, and that any fracture was consistent with a short fall.⁷

A key limit on the defense involved the autopsy X-rays. Before trial, the prosecution gave DeLuca a disc containing three digital X-ray images in compressed JPEG format. DeLuca later said the images were dark and unreadable, that the prosecution had represented as much, and that he could not open the viewing software included on the disc. Without readable X-rays, he said, he had no way to independently challenge the skull fracture finding and built the defense on the assumption the fracture existed.⁶

The jury convicted her of first-degree murder and aggravated battery of a child, with the battery count merging into the murder conviction. In February 2012, Judge Shanes sentenced her to thirty-one years.⁹

The Forensic Case Falls Apart

Within two years, the medical foundation of the conviction began to crack. In August 2013, Dr. Choi signed a sworn affidavit acknowledging he had “missed” evidence of a pre-existing head injury. Lake County Coroner Thomas Rudd and former Cook County Medical Examiner Nancy Jones had identified a “well-developed, organizing subdural membrane” in the autopsy materials, indicating older bleeding on the brain that predated the day of death, and Choi concurred with Jones’s findings.¹⁰ Choi nonetheless maintained the oversight would not have changed his trial testimony.¹¹

Coroner Rudd went further. His own review concluded the autopsy photos showed no skull fracture at the top of the cranium; what had been read as a fracture, he said, was actually growth plate lines and an accessory suture line. Tissue slides showed iron stain positivity, which he read as evidence of an older, healing injury rather than a fresh one.¹² In July 2015, Rudd officially changed Benjamin Kingan’s manner of death from “homicide” to “undetermined.”¹³

The X-Ray Dispute

In June 2015, clear, uncompressed X-ray files in TIFF format turned up on a computer at the Lake County coroner’s office. They looked nothing like the dark JPEGs provided to DeLuca. Defense experts, including pediatric neuroradiologist Dr. Robert Zimmerman, examined the TIFF images and concluded they showed no skull fracture.⁶

In 2022, at the suggestion of Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart, defense attorney Kathleen Zellner retained the digital forensics firm Garrett Discovery to analyze the original disc. Analysts Andrew Garrett and Brian Bowman concluded the X-ray images had been “manipulated by someone using a software tool,” producing “black washed out images which were unreadable.” Garrett said he could not “think of an innocent explanation” for what had been done to the files.⁶

The prosecution has consistently disputed that account. At the 2016 evidentiary hearing, the state argued the disc included software that could have brightened the images and that DeLuca simply failed to use it. A software engineer later demonstrated in court that adjusting the JPEG to match the quality of the TIFF was, in the engineer’s words, “child’s play.”⁸ DeLuca has maintained he could not open the software and that the prosecution told him the images were unreadable.⁶

Every Court Appeal Has Failed

The Illinois Appellate Court, Second District, affirmed the conviction on February 19, 2014, rejecting arguments about the sufficiency of the evidence, the voluntariness of the confession, and the effectiveness of trial counsel.¹

Zellner, who took on the case in 2013, filed a post-conviction petition arguing the conviction rested on false medical evidence and that the defense had been denied access to exculpatory X-rays.¹⁴ In June 2016, Judge Shanes granted an evidentiary hearing.¹⁵ On September 30, 2016, he denied a new trial, calling the effort an attempt to “retry on existing evidence” and finding that the original trial attorney could have brightened the X-rays himself.⁹

The Illinois Second District Appellate Court heard argument in April 2018 and upheld the denial that June, concluding the TIFF X-ray was not material because the defense had received the equivalent information on the original disc, and that even if presented at trial the X-ray would only have contradicted several other experts.¹⁶

In March 2019, Zellner filed a federal habeas corpus petition in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Calusinski v. Calhoun (No. 1:19-cv-02122). It sat for more than five years before Zellner withdrew it on June 18, 2024, to pursue clemency.¹⁷

Clemency Before Governor Pritzker

In April 2024, Zellner filed a clemency petition with the Illinois Prisoner Review Board asking Governor Pritzker to exonerate Calusinski or release her for time served. The petition ran several hundred pages and pulled together the Garrett Discovery forensic analysis, the coroner’s reclassification of the manner of death, and the false-confession evaluations.¹⁸

The Prisoner Review Board held a hearing on July 9, 2024, in Springfield. Zellner and DeLuca appeared for Calusinski. Two Lake County assistant state’s attorneys, including one who originally prosecuted the case, appeared in opposition.⁶ State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart wrote to the board that his office “strongly opposes” the petition and that “no such new evidence has been presented to our conviction integrity unit, or in this clemency process.”¹⁸ Benjamin Kingan’s parents spoke at the hearing and said they continue to believe Calusinski is guilty.

The Prisoner Review Board sent its confidential recommendation to Governor Pritzker in January 2025, past its typical sixty-day window because of a backlog.¹⁹ No statutory deadline requires the governor to act, and as of the most recent reporting, no decision has been announced.

Where Things Stand

Calusinski remains at the Logan Correctional Center. She has served more than sixteen years of her thirty-one-year sentence and is not eligible for parole until 2039.²⁰ Her court remedies are exhausted; clemency is the only avenue that remains. The case was the subject of a CBS 48 Hours investigation titled “Unraveling the Case Against Melissa,” which featured new expert analysis and accounts from former day care employees who had not spoken publicly before.⁶ Her father Paul Calusinski and a group of supporters continue to advocate through a “Justice for Melissa” social media page and public appearances.²¹

1
Illinois Courts. People v. Calusinski, 2014 IL App (2d) 120383-U
2
Corboy & Demetrio. Secures Settlement in Minee-Subee Day Care Death
3
Chronicle Illinois. Proving Melissa Calusinski’s Innocence
4
CBS News. Was a Day Care Worker Coerced Into a Murder Confession
5
CBS News. Melissa Calusinski Clemency Push
6
CBS News. Melissa Calusinski New Evidence
7
Daily Herald. Doctors Disagree Over Meaning of Toddler’s Autopsy Results
8
Illinois Courts. People v. Calusinski, 2016 IL App (2d) Postconviction Appeal
9
NBC Chicago. Melissa Calusinski Day Care Worker New Trial Denied
10
Northwestern University Law. SunTimes SBS Error Report
11
CBS News. Is a Caregiver in Prison for a Murder That Never Happened
12
Chronicle Illinois. The Case for Melissa Calusinski Blinded With Science
13
ABC 7 Chicago. Judge Denies Request by Melissa Calusinski for New Trial
14
People. Kathleen Zellner Melissa Calusinski Daycare Murder
15
Chicago Sun-Times. Convicted of Killing Toddler Day Care Worker Wins New Hearing
16
Chicago Tribune. New Trial Rejected for Former Day Care Center Worker
17
CourtListener. Calusinski v. Calhoun Docket
18
Chicago Tribune. Former Lake County Daycare Worker Seeks Clemency
19
Chronicle Illinois. Defense Demands New Look at Calusinski Case
20
Fox 32 Chicago. Melissa Calusinski Clemency Hearing
21
ABC 7 Chicago. Melissa Calusinski Clemency Hearing