Chillicothe man cleared of aggravated battery to a child
Jurors took about 30 minutes April 7 to find a Chillicothe man not guilty of shaking his then-5-month-old son so violently that he suffered symptoms of shaken baby syndrome.
Ronnie E. Wilson, 33, whose last known address was 227 E. Elm St., had faced up to 30 years in prison if he had been convicted of aggravated battery to a child.
Wilson, who has been in the Peoria County Jail since December 2008, was expected to be released last week, said his attorney, Christopher McCall.
During the two-day trial, both sides said no one really knew what happened on Nov. 28, 2008. Wilson was alone with the infant at the time prosecutors allege he violently shook the child.
Wilson, who did not testify, had denied that to police. He said he had put a bottle in the child’s mouth, put the child on the couch and walked off. He told police he came back and found the child on the floor and unresponsive.
McCall pounded home that theme to jurors, saying his client was concerned enough to insist the child go to the hospital, even though an officer who responded to the scene felt it wasn’t an emergency. The attorney also said Wilson stayed with his son while he was in the pediatric intensive care unit, a sign he was concerned only for the child, not himself.
But prosecutor David Gast pointed to testimony from medical staffers who said the child’s injuries — a damaged liver and injuries consistent with being violently shaken — could not have been caused by the chain of events that Wilson described.
