Man who served 4 years on overturned child abuse conviction to have record expunged
A man whose child abuse conviction was overturned will have his record expunged almost 16 years after he was convicted.
Terry Ceasor's first-degree child abuse conviction was overturned by the Michigan Supreme Court in March. The court said his attorney failed to request tax dollars to hire an expert witness because he didn't believe his client would qualify.
A motion for the destruction, removal, and expungement of his arrest record, biometric data, fingerprints, Law Enforcement Information Network entry and DNA sample profile was filed by the Michigan Innocence Clinic in October.
St. Clair County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Stephen Guilliat said the prosecution agreed to the motion last week. Once a judge signs the order it will be sent to Michigan State Police, which will remove the information.
Ceasor said it feels great to be exonerated for a crime he didn't commit. The conviction continued to affect his life even after he was paroled from prison four years after his conviction, such as preventing him from being around his teenage son, of whom he had full custody.
"I served four years in prison for a crime I never committed, for a crime that never happened," he said.
David Moran, director of the Innocence Clinic at University of Michigan law school, said Ceasor was watching his girlfriend's toddler when the child fell off the couch and hit his head on the floor. The child suffered a concussion but recovered from his injury with no lasting effects.
Despite this, a doctor in Detroit concluded the child had suffered from shaken baby syndrome, and Ceasor was convicted of child abuse in 2005, Moran said.
Moran said Ceasor suffered an "obvious miscarriage of justice" when Ceasor was convicted after only one expert witness and no defense witnesses testified at his trial.
His case to appeal his conviction has been in the courts almost since he was convicted, Ceasor said.
"Nobody wants to have a criminal record for something they didn’t do and especially something as awful as child abuse," Moran said, "and so Terry wants to clear his name."
Ken Lord, Ceasor's trial attorney, said he secured an expert witness for Ceasor for his trial, however, Ceasor didn't inform Lord he wasn't going to pay for the expert as previously agreed until 10 days before his trial.
Lord said he advised Ceasor against going to trial without an expert witness, but Ceasor insisted on going to trial.
“I did everything I could for Mr. Ceasor," Lord said. "He did very little to help me in his defense.”
Ceasor said he was given no other options for an expert witness other than the one Lord had selected and whom Ceasor could not afford.
Contact Laura Fitzgerald at (810) 941-7072 or lfitzgeral@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: Man whose child abuse conviction was overturned to have his record expunged
