Court clears way for new hearing in baby's 2001 death

By Ed White
Associated Press

DETROIT (AP) — The Michigan appeals court has reopened the case of a Battle Creek woman who lined up experts to offer new opinions on the death of her daughter in 2001.

Tonia Miller, 37, has been in prison since 2003 when she was convicted of second-degree murder.

Defense experts believe Miller’s 11-week-old daughter died from pneumonia, not head trauma referred to as shaken baby syndrome.

The appeals court ordered an evidentiary hearing in Calhoun County and assigned the case to a different judge. It’s possible Miller could get a new trial.

Miller said she shook Alicia Duff when the baby gasped for air and stopped breathing while being fed from a bottle. She denied shaking her violently or with an intent to hurt the child.

“The parties agree that the underlying physical evidence — the medical and autopsy records — remains the same. The scientific understanding of those records has allegedly changed. ... The issue is whether scientific understanding and knowledge (after) her trial call into question the reliability of the jury’s verdict,” the appeals court said in a 3-0 opinion last Thursday.

Miller is represented by the Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigan law school. The director, David Moran, said Miller’s trial lawyer challenged the timing of the injury but not the prosecutor’s theory that Alicia had died from abuse.

The current prosecutor, David Gilbert, stands behind Miller’s conviction.

“If it was something as simple as pneumonia, I would suspect they would have found it long ago,” he said in 2018.

Miller was sentenced to at least 20 years in prison, which means her earliest release on parole could occur in 2023.