48 Hours: Melissa Calusinski
Did you catch 48 Hours (click here for the full episode) this past weekend? If you didn’t, its a story you don’t want to miss. Erin Moriarty tells us of the story of little 16-month-old Ben Kingan. He was at daycare and was being cared for Melissa Calusinski when she says she he started to fall asleep.
“Ben was … sittin’ in his bouncy chair, playing with his blanket. …And then he kind of falls back asleep,” she told Moriarty. “When I saw him startin’ to fall asleep, I’m like, ‘Ben, Ben.’ And no response. …he didn’t look right. …and I touched his hand. He did not wake up at all.”
Ben died from his injuries.
The police interrogated Melissa for nine hours. She denied hurting Ben over 70 times, but then she slowly broke down. She confessed to police that she threw Ben to the ground.
But now she says she is innocent and her confession was false.
As an expert in human behavior, I absolutely believe in false confessions and this case has all the hallmarks of it.
If you aren’t familiar with false confessions, I highly suggest reading the information presented by the Innocence Project. They have some great statistics and facts for you.
The Innocence Project found that 60% of confessions of homicide that were later exonerated by DNA were false!!
Think about that.
I am thrilled to see Kathleen Zellner has taken on this case. I regard her as one of the best attorneys in the country. She is amazing! Many thanks to Erin Moriarty and 48 Hours for doing this show.
I support Kathleen Zellner and Melissa Calusinski, and I hope this case gets re-examined.
I think she is innocent. Perhaps her slight handicap made her extra vulnerable to such a powerful, prolonged interrogation. She said over and over that she didn’t do it, but when she finally caved to the pressure, she became a little child-like. She seemed to be eager to come up with a story that they would go along with. She seemed to be exaggerating, at times. Then, she wouldn’t have been able to throw him to the floor in the way that she was saying she did. The officers came across very angry with her. That was a long time to verbally harass her and keep her from eating or going to the bathroom. She may have been too intimidated to even ask. I suspect that her handicap makes her want to please people, and the loss of the child, and being accused for hours was just too much. I hope she will be cleared. This is sad.
I also believe in her innocence and hope she gets released sooner rather than later. Melissa’s appeals to date have been denied and exonerations of this kind can – as Ryan Ferguson and Damien Echols both know – take a tragically long time.
It seems the police can get a false confession once they’ve bullied someone for a certain length of time, denied them food and water, and done their best to make someone urinate on themselves for lack of a bathroom……..once they get someone demoralized and they whip out the “This can all end, and you can go home IF YOU TELL US…..x, y, z”. So often it seems that the officers involved are just wanting to close a case, truth be damned. Then the prosecutors just want a “win”, truth be damned. How can they truly consider their case closed when they have the wrong person/answers? How can a lawyer consider it a “win” when they participate in things like this? Too many times innocent people think they don’t need a lawyer, and they would be wrong on that.
It must be terrible to be in that situation. I think getting a confession out of a real murderer is rare. You have to catch them with evidence and lies? They often are sure the interrogation isn’t going to be an issue for them. Most of them think they are smarter than the police asking the questions, and have rehearsed the question/answer? We have watched Alot of video of guilty people looking pretty smug lol but it does of course happen both ways.
Def a horrible way to mess up what may be in fact a guilty suspect and case
Yes, my take on this is that why should the innocent need a lawyer. Aren’t the authorities aware of ‘false confessions’ and have systems in place to avoid such miscarriages of justice?
False confessions are common, I believe. I made a false confession myself as a teen, to a theft. (I posted something about this several years ago on this blog.) A police officer and several adults in my life were pressuring me intensely and finally I made a confession that was filled with hedge words like “if I did it” and so on. Basically I decided that I must have done it and then forgotten or had amnesia or something. I wasn’t arrested but I was sent away from home to live elsewhere.
Flash forward two years and the “stolen” items were found in the “victim’s” dresser. They had been “misplaced”. I was living hundreds of miles away so the culprit obviously wasn’t me. I’m including this part of the story so that it’s obvious that my confession was entirely false.
None of us are as tough as we think we are. We all are at least somewhat vulnerable to false confessions, brainwashing, and manipulation. The only way to guard against it is to be aware that we are vulnerable to it.
I’m so glad you shared that and I hope you keep sharing it. It really does help people better understand, to get it direct and honest from someone who has been in the situation. I’m sorry for the hurt you went through.
Thanks for the kind replies. It was a long time ago but it does still sting a bit. However, leaving home turned out to be the best thing for me. It was good for me to get away from that mess.
I have such sympathy for people who make false confessions. I’m convinced it happens all the time.
Thank you for sharing your story. You are right people think they are stronger than they are. It really doesn’t take that much to break a person who is open to suggestion, but few realize it. I am so glad the truth was exposed in your situation. I’m sorry you had to go through that. I hope you have found a way to heal.
I want to thank you for telling your story, too. That fact that you were not believed initially, badgered until you made a false confession and then sent to live away from home had to be terribly painful. I had no idea that the number of false confessions were so high! Many thanks to you, & Eyes, for explaining why/how it can happen.
Individuals can only do so much. That is why society and the justice system should be aware of false confessions so that they aren’t sought for and aren’t accepted.
Being wrongly accused has to test her faith to the limit. I hope justice will be done.
The detectives In this case sure walk a fine line. It’s not a fair interview. They double team her and she has no one there to advise her of her rights. Remember folks, lawyer up and if you’re not under arrest you don’t have to go to the police station or answer any questions.
After reading just this part of the paragrah (which obviously is not enough) I had thought you were going to say she is lying, because she is “hedging:
“Ben was … and then he KIND OF FALLS back asleep”
After a statement like this Eyes, usually i understand you to say “Well, he either fell back asleep or he didn’t, you don’t KIND OF fall back asleep”
But, alas …
You have to look at the source. The girl had a very low verbal comprehension. That would explain it.
Thanks … I also knew I was looking at 1/100th of the total picture, not to mention out of context as well 🙂 … still learning lol
Looks like Bill Cosby made a video today for his remaining fans.
IT’s all about the science to me … do children die many hours or days after a head injury? And, whether or not the parents had ever been accused or had any issues at all in the past. IF the defense told me “the child was known to be a head banger” and therefore was responsible for his own death – as they are claiming now – to try to explain the head injury that day which aggrevated an old injury, which she denied entirely, that’d be it for me. Guilty.
High pressure by police in a small room to drain the person mentally and physically to get a confession is what we use to prosecute when they are out of options to get the rel killers. The public wants a closure for the victim and a teenager is an easy target.