By Dan Hinkel, Tribune reporter
February 21, 2014
State appellate judges have rejected the appeal of a woman convicted of murdering a toddler by slamming him to the ground at a Lincolnshire day care center.
The judges on Wednesday affirmed the conviction of Melissa Calusinski, 27, who is serving a 31-year prison sentence for killing the 16-month-old boy in 2009. The appeals judges rejected her attorneys' arguments that the evidence didn't prove her guilty of murder and that the Lake County judge and her trial attorney made technical errors.
Attorney Kathleen Zellner said she would seek review from the Illinois Supreme Court. Calusinski's lawyers are also developing medical evidence they plan to use to challenge the conviction, Zellner said.
 
The case against Calusinski, of Carpentersville, centered on her confessing to throwing Benjamin Kingan, of Deerfield, to the ground, though her defense argued that the confession was coerced during an interrogation that spanned 10 hours. Her lawyers argued on appeal that Lake County Judge Daniel Shanes shouldn't have allowed the jury to hear the confession.
The appellate judges wrote that evidence did not contradict Shanes' ruling that the confession was given voluntarily.
dhinkel@tribune.com