Ellenville Man Found not Guilty in Shaken Baby Murder Case 

(adopted from Times Herald-Record March 11, 2008)

By Oliver Mackson

KINGSTON - An Ulster County Court jury yesterday cleared 26-year-old Christopher Pitkin of charges that he caused the death of a 10-month-old boy in Ellenville in 2006.

The jury deliberated for several hours yesterday, returning its verdict shortly before 4 p.m. Jurors concluded that the Ulster County District Attorney's Office failed to prove charges of murder, manslaughter and reckless assault of a child. Pitkin told authorities that Antonio Torres fell out of bed and hit his head while Pitkin was on the phone.

Prosecutors contended that the boy's injuries were too severe to be caused by such a fall.

But Pitkin's lawyer, Ben Ostrer, brought a medical expert to court whose testimony contradicted the opinions of prosecution experts and said that a short fall could cause "catastrophic" injuries to a 10-month-old child.

"I argued to the jury that they told me, in third grade, not to lean back in my chair for a reason," Ostrer said after the verdict. "According to the jurors I spoke to, the doctors who testified for the prosecution failed to investigate other causes for the symptoms that the child was exhibiting. The Ellenville police and the EMTs, heroically, tried to save a life that was already gone."

Pitkin called 911 on Dec. 11 from his girlfriend's home in Ellenville. He'd picked up Antonio from day care earlier that day. He told a dispatcher that the boy wasn't breathing, and that he was turning blue. Antonio lingered for three days on life support at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla before he died.

District Attorney D. Holley Carnright said, "We put everything we had before the jury. We felt this was more than a shaken-baby case - our experts said, unequivocally, that the injuries were not sustained as the result of a fall."

Pitkin had been held in the county jail since December 2006, when he was first charged with harming Antonio.

omackson@th-record.com