In one of our more complex cases, our client was initially suspected of attempted murder (the recommendation of the Article 32 Officer) of his 12-month-old baby and charged with multiple charges and specifications of assault on his child, inflicting serious bodily harm, child abuse, and child neglect. Based on the original charges, if convicted, our client would have likely spent most of his life in prison.
In addition to those charges, and before we were retained on the case, our client escaped from pre-trial confinement in prison.
Upon being retained, we began assembling our team to take these charges head-on and get our client acquitted. This team consisted of Mr. Tim Bilecki as lead counsel, Mrs. Kiley Hyatt (attorney and Of Counsel to the BLG), Mr. Darron Ridder (investigator), Dr. Gregory Yim (one of America’s leading pediatric neurologists).
We immediately conducted our own investigation of the case and targeted the mother of the child as the individual who actually harmed the baby. Based on our theory, we dug into her life and learned that the baby had had numerous other “accidents” while in her care, that the baby took another serious “fall” with head trauma after our client was in pre-trial confinement, that the mother often had more liquor and cigarettes in the house than baby food, and that she had conducted numerous incriminating searches on her computer.
Mr. Bilecki then worked extensively with Dr. Yim to gain a full understanding of the complex and numerous CT scans, MRI images, and over 1000 pages of medical evidence in this case.
Based on an intensive review of the medical records and the expert testimony of Dr. Yim, we were able to prove that the injuries must have occurred when the mother was with the baby and our client was at PT.
We also showed that our client’s explanation in his “confession,” which we believed he made to take the blame off of his wife, was medically impossible. Armed with this information, we took this case head-on at trial and went after the mother.
In what was a week-long trial that took almost a year to get to court, Mr. Bilecki conducted a scathing cross-examination of our client’s wife, exposing her as a liar, a bad mother, and the likely perpetrator of the crime.
We also called our computer forensic expert as a witness to show the inculpatory searches and Internet history of the mother, which validated our case theory.
The icing was put on the cake when Dr. Yim testified and placed the timeframe of the injuries when only the mother was with the child. After nearly a year of waiting and thousands of pages of discovery, our client was found not guilty of all of the assault charges in less than an hour. He was, however, convicted of the escape from prison, a charge we essentially conceded.