Elgin toddler scalding nets 7-year prison term
Michael L. Robinson didn't take the witness stand in his September trial in which he was convicted of scalding a 3-year-old Elgin boy's hands and ankle in May 2006 so severely that it required a 10-day hospitalization.
At a sentencing hearing Wednesday, the 28-year-old Riverdale man didn't say he was sorry, but rambled for seven minutes about how the case was “made up” and that he was not responsible for the crime, which carried a maximum penalty of 45 years in prison.
Robinson was watching his girlfriend's son at her Elgin apartment in the 200 block of Standish Court and is accused of holding the boy upside down under hot water from the kitchen sink.
“If I would have held his leg and wrist, I would have been burned also. That's what I feel. That's the reality of the case,” said Robinson, stressing that he was not immediately arrested after the incident. “Why did it take a whole year? (The victim) just remembered everything a year later, in full detail?”
Kane County Judge Timothy Sheldon didn't buy Robinson's story.
“Your argument contradicts logic. It contradicts common sense,” Sheldon said before imposing a seven-year prison term, of which Robinson must serve 85 percent. “You say the child should have articulated better. He was 3 at the time.”
Sheldon cited testimony from emergency room physicians and medical experts who shared the opinion that the second-degree burns were from child abuse and not self inflicted.
Sheldon also noted the boy's mother was at work in Hoffman Estates at the time, Robinson was the caretaker and the boy identified Robinson during the trial as the attacker.
Kane County Assistant State's Attorney Lori Schmidt pushed for a 20-year sentence for Robinson, saying the boy, who will turn 8 next week, has to live with the scars for the rest of his life and people always ask the boy how he got burned.
Schmidt also noted Robinson's long record of traffic violations and that he is behind on $200-a-month child support payments to the mother of one of his three children.
David Kliment, the county's public defender, argued that Robinson should serve the minimum six-year sentence and said any term beyond that would be “excessive.” Kliment also noted that Robinson had never faced a felony charge until this case.
The trial was originally set for October 2009 but Robinson failed to appear in court. He was found in Chicago in July 2010 and arrested.