After more than 15 hours of deliberations over two days, a Lake County jury acquitted a one-time Munster babysitter Friday evening in a shaken baby case on a battery charge. Jurors were effectively deadlocked on a second neglect charge — resulting in a hung jury.
The verdicts mean for the meantime, Madyson Moyer, 30, of Munster, will go home.
“I’m very happy for my client,” her lawyer Adam Tavitas said after the verdict. “I know she didn’t do what she was charged with.”
A status hearing for the neglect charge is scheduled in April. A prosecutor’s office spokeswoman declined to comment if Moyer would be retried on that charge.
Deputy Prosecutors Jessica Arnold and Maureen Koonce said doctors estimated the 4-month-old boy’s injuries happened not long before he showed symptoms. They argued Moyer was the only adult there and the parents were largely out of the house since that morning.
Tavitas argued she didn’t hurt the boy; she called the mother, Janel Robilotta, right away. He told jurors a brain imaging expert from Advocate Christ Medical Center said the child could have had issues within 24 hours of a scan and up to 3-4 days, or a week.
Dyer Police responded June 23, 2020 to a call from the 1100 block of Dalemont Way for a child “possibly in full arrest.” The boy’s father Edward McCracken, Sr. called 911. The boy was “conscious,” but “very lethargic.” Moyer told DCS the boy was “fussy, but fine” that morning.
She went to finish feeding him a bottle around 6:45 p.m. When she picked him up, she noticed he was breathing differently, calling the parents, at dinner, to listen to him.
Doctors concluded he had brain bleeding and eye hemorrhages — signs of shaken baby syndrome.
Staff at Advocate said the boy had no prior injuries. The siblings were too small to cause that kind of damage, social worker Rebecca Chacon told them. The boy had signs of “abusive head trauma,” “cerebral compression,” and eye hemorrhages. He needed medication for seizures.
McCracken testified Tuesday the boy, now 5, was left with a permanent shunt in his head and legally blind in one eye.
Moyer was charged with battery resulting in serious bodily injury to a person less than 14 years old and neglect of a dependent resulting in serious bodily injury, both Level 3 felonies. Each charge carried a 3-16 year penalty.