Dad pleads no contest to scalding 1-year-old son (Saginaw, Michigan)

Yet another moron who shouldn't have been allowed around children.

Dad is identified as ELLIOT J. ROBINSON.

http://www.mlive.com/news/bay-city/index.ssf/2015/08/saginaw_dad_accused_of_scaldin.html

Saginaw father accused of scalding toddler son's hands pleads no contest to felony

By Cole Waterman on August 12, 2015 at 6:30 AM, updated August 12, 2015 at 2:00 PM

BAY CITY, MI — A year and a half after he burned his 1-year-old son's hands with scalding water, a Saginaw father accepted a plea deal days before his trial would have begun.

Elliot J. Robinson, 30, on Thursday, Aug. 6, appeared before Bay County Circuit Judge Harry P. Gill and pleaded no contest to one count of second-degree child abuse. The charge is a 10-year felony, but as Robinson pleaded as a habitual offender, his maximum possible sentence is doubled to 20 years.

A no contest plea is not an admission of guilt but is treated as such for the purposes of sentencing. Gill had to rely on investigators' reports to enter a conviction on the record.

In exchange for his plea, the prosecution agreed to dismiss a count of first-degree child abuse, which is punishable by up to life imprisonment.

Robinson's trial was to begin Tuesday, Aug. 11.

The charges stem from an incident that occurred Dec. 11, 2013, at the Bay City home of the mother of Robinson's son. Robinson was there with his three children while their mother was away.

Bay City Public Safety Detective Brian Berthiaume testified in the July 2014 preliminary examination that he interviewed Robinson after police were notified of the incident by the Department of Human Services. According to Berthiaume, Robinson told him he was doing dishes in the kitchen while his 1-year-old son was in a bathtub. Another child came to him and said the younger boy was out of the tub, so Robinson went into the bathroom, Berthiaume said.

Robinson saw the boy standing in the bathroom with feces on one hand and was trying to pick up more from the floor, the detective said.

"Mr. Elliot Robinson Sr. said he had slapped (the boy's) hand in a disciplinary manner and he began to cry," Berthiaume testified. "He had turned the water on, the hot water. Then he had lifted up the boy and placed him on the knee. He braced his knee up against the sink. He grabbed his arms just below his elbow and wrist and put his hands in the water to wash the poop off his hands."

Robinson said he held the boy's hands in the water for upwards of 10 seconds, Berthiaume testified.

"(The boy) was crying prior to him putting him in the water," Berthiaume said. "As he was washing his hands, the boy began crying louder. At that time, he pulled his hands out of the water and he said the boy's skin on his hands began to peel off like a glove."

In that same court hearing, Dr. Bethany Mohr, a pediatrician at the University of Michigan hospital in Ann Arbor, testified she reviewed medical records regarding wounds on the hands of Robinson's son, as well as reports from Children's Protective Services and police agencies pertaining to Robinson. She said Robinson's son suffered second- and third-degree burns to his hands and that there were clear lines of demarcation with the child's burns, meaning there was no splash-style scalding above his wrists.

"In my opinion, his injuries are the results of physical abuse," Mohr testified. She estimated the boy's hands were in the water for 2 to 15 seconds.

Gill is to sentence Robinson at 1:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 19.