Unraveling the Case Against Melissa

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Affiliates Pet Injuries and Additional Coverage and Subject to Policy Terms. Hello Melissa.
It's been, boy, more than a decade since I first met you. When we first met, did you ever think you'd still be here this long? No.
Why am I still in here? I just don't understand. You may remember in 2009, Melissa Kalyuszynski was working at a Lincolnshire daycare.
She was given 31 years in prison for the death of a 16-month-old who was in her care. Since then, she and her supporters have been fighting back, calling this a wrongful conviction.
It hurts. She doesn't belong there.
She's the kind of person that would take her shirt off her back and help other people. This is my baby.
This is my youngest. I just want her home.
I used to work at the mini-Suby daycare. I think it was definitely more than a job to her.
The kids were her number one priority. I feel like the kids brightened her day.
Do you believe that Melissa Kalyuszinski had anything to do with Ben Kingen's death? Zero. She had nothing to do with it.
I am Melissa Kalyuszinski's current attorney. She loved Ben.
Ben loved her. What she told the police was that she threw him to the floor.
You threw him on the floor? Yeah. Show us how hard you threw him on the ground.
What, like that? Did you hurt that baby? No, I did not. I would never do that.
You've got her isolated in a small room with these two men for hours. I've never put my hands back there.
She's trying so hard to be the good girl, the compliant girl. I want to help you guys so much.
She's not equipped to deal with a situation like that. We're not going anywhere until we get the facts here.
The only way for me to get out was to make a confession, a false confession. Is there any evidence that corroborates the confession that Melissa made? Zero.
We would never take someone to trial with just a confession. This child had a fractured skull.
There was extensive injuries to this child internally. It's clear that she killed Benjamin.
Do you believe there was a skull fracture? No. There is no fracture.
The evidence had been manipulated. If I take these sliders here, you can manipulate this photo.
So somebody went in and they altered the contrast to make it look like that on screen. Somebody took x-rays that were completely clear and turned them into unreadable images.
Yes. I can't think of an innocent explanation.
So you're saying that either the prosecutor's office or the coroner's office, but somebody representing the state did this? Yes, yes. A former daycare worker convicted of killing a toddler tries again today to be released from prison.
Their case was before the Prisoner Review Board in an effort to get clemency. People have to know the truth.
I have to keep pushing, fighting, no matter how much it hurts.

I want people to know I'm innocent.

Erin Moriarty reports, unraveling the case against Melissa.

Melissa Kalyuszynski has served 16 years of a 31-year prison sentence

for the death of Benjamin Kingen,

a 16-month-old whom she cared for

at an Illinois daycare center.

She has long insisted she is innocent.

This is not where I belong.

I'm going to continue to fight no matter what because I did not do this.

We've been covering this case for more than a decade.

And over the years, Melissa's appeals have failed.

But she and her attorney, Kathleen Zellner, are not backing down.

Now they're taking their fight out of the court system and straight to the governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, and his prisoner review board.

We're asking them to declare that she's actually innocent and release her. We are also saying commuter sentence.
The story began on January 14, 2009. Melissa, then 22 years old, was working as a teacher's assistant at the Minnie Subi Daycare in Lincolnshire, an affluent suburb of Chicago.
Ben Kingan attended daycare there, along with his twin sister and their two older siblings. I came to work and I saw Ben.
He was fine, normal, happy, playful. Late that afternoon, after the kids were fed a snack and cleaned up, Melissa says she put Ben down on the carpet and he crawled into his bouncy seat on the floor.
He's sitting in his bouncy chair playing with his blanket and he was starting to kind of fall asleep, which was normal. The teacher working with Melissa stepped out of the room briefly,

leaving Melissa alone with the children.

That's when Melissa says she noticed something wrong with Ben.

He didn't look right.

I took his little hand, and I touched his hand, and I'm like, Ben, Ben.

He did not wake up at all. I saw orange foam coming out of his nose and I'm sorry.
Melissa called for help. Her older sister, Crystal Kalyuszinski, also worked at the daycare at the time.
I hear on the intercom, someone help me, help me, help me. I ran in, then started CPR immediately.
Was that life for you, Krystal? I dream about it a lot. Like I see it in my, you know, my head.
911 was called. I have a child who was, who's foaming, who's not breathing.
Paramedics responded. Ben was taken to the hospital.
He was pronounced dead an hour later. Me and my sister fell to the floor and we're just bawling.
What happened to him and how? I don't understand.

An investigation was launched.

According to this police report, during an autopsy,

the pathologist, Dr. Yupul Choi, told a detective that he observed a skull fracture,

extensive bleeding inside Ben's head,

and that the injury was caused by another person using strong force within hours prior to Ben's death. And yet, Ben had no cuts or obvious wounds on the outside of his body, no serious bruises.
The pathologist listed the autopsy as pending further studies. Police brought in the daycare workers who had been with the toddler on the day of his death, determined to find out what happened to Ben.
After Melissa was read her rights, detectives began pressing her for answers. I have a good idea that you've seen what happened or you were involved with what happened because you were the only one in the room at the onset of this.
Melissa denied over and over again, more than 60 times, doing anything to Ben. I never put my hands on there.
I did not drop them. But the detectives didn't stop.
You're there. It's not like there were 50 people in that room with you.
All these years later, Melissa still remembers what it was like being in that room. They weren't listening to anything I said.
After nine hours under pressure and without an attorney, Melissa changed her story. She said she thought if she told the investigators

what they wanted to hear,

they would let her go home.

We're not going anywhere until we get the facts here.

The only way for me to get out

was to make a confession, a false confession.

I wasn't thinking at all.

You weren't thinking of the consequences of doing something like that? No. All I could think about was just going home.
He starts acting up and you get mad at him and you throw him on the floor. You throw him on the floor? Yeah.
Really hard. When Melissa was taken to another station for booking, she repeated the same story to another investigator.
After spending 14 hours with police, Melissa Kalyuszynski was arrested for the murder of Benjamin Kingen, even though she almost immediately took back the story she told police.

No, I'm innocent.

Melissa's parents, Paul and Cheryl Kalyuszynski, still remember receiving the news. And I said, what? Did you think possibly she had hurt this baby? Nope.
Nope. She is the kind of person that would never,

never put her hand on someone else's child.

But Melissa had told investigators that she did.

And after that, the manner of death on Ben's death certificate was listed as homicide.

Law enforcement announced they had solved the case.

Ms. Kalczynski admitted to police that

Thank you. was listed as homicide.
Law enforcement announced they had solved the case. Ms.
Kalczynski admitted to police that she had taken the infant boy and thrown him on the ground. They made her look like a bad person.
And she's not that type of a person. Melissa's family would make it their mission to clear her name.
My parents sold everything that they had. I put all my effort into getting her free.
They had no idea how much of a fight they were in for. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday.
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Visit volvocars.com slash us to learn more. He was a very healthy baby.
Just a happy, happy little boy. In November 2011, nearly three years after the death of Ben Kingen, Melissa Kalyuszinski went on trial for murder.
The state argued that Ben was a perfectly healthy toddler leading up to his death. Matthew Demartini and Stephen Scheller prosecuted the case.
How would you describe what the parents have gone through? When somebody takes your child from you, I don't think there's any word to describe what they have gone through. Dr.
Choi, the pathologist who conducted the autopsy, testified about that skull fracture he said he had seen and how he believed the child's injury was recent and consistent with having been thrown to the floor by someone. But Melissa's trial attorney, Paul DeLuca, told the jury about a head injury Ben had previously received.
It was noticed at the daycare three months earlier. Melissa was not even working there at the daycare center.
After Ben's death, multiple people, including daycare teacher Nancy Callenger, told investigators about it. But prosecutor Stephen Scheller argued that the earlier injury was insignificant.
The pediatrician actually examined Benjamin's head. It felt around, said there was no issues, that mom should just keep an eye on him.
Ben never had an issue after that. That's not what defense experts said.
They noted that after the injury, there were possible signs of head trauma. Medical records showed that in the days after the injury, Ben was lethargic and had a persistent fever.
And another daycare employee, Holly, who asked that we identify her by her first name only, testified for the defense about the last time she saw Ben, two days before his death. Melissa walked into the room and she was holding Ben and she said like he's not feeling well and it was almost immediately after she said that that he threw up like everywhere.
The next day, one day before he died, Ben was kept home from daycare. Prosecutor Matthew Demartini argued it was a stomach bug or a winter cold.
He was given Pedialyte and put to bed. He woke up the next day and he was fine.
But the defense maintained that Ben's prior injury was so serious that any new impact could have had major consequences. And Ben did have a habit of throwing his head back.
He would be sitting on the ground and he would just kind of launch his body backwards and hit his head. You know, I guess you'd call it like he was a headbanger.
Nancy Callinger recalled that Ben had done that twice, on the day of his death. Prosecutors insisted that Melissa had hurt Ben.
This child did not explode or implode on his own. And they pointed to her confession.
She became frustrated holding Ben. She threw him to the floor.
Prosecutors told the jury that the fall was so severe it caused that skull fracture. At trial, they mentioned a skull fracture more than 30 times.
But was there one? Well, most of the experts who testified from both sides agreed there appeared to be a fracture in autopsy photos. One defense expert said she couldn't say for sure.
And according to Melissa's attorney, Paul DeLuca,

the x-rays the prosecution had provided before the trial were unreadable.

Before trial, I said, do we have any better images?

And it was no. The state's final witness, pathologist Dr.
Manny Montez,

gave the most vivid and damaging testimony at trial.

He said he examined the body and felt the fracture with his bare hands. Dr.
Montez said he put his finger in the skull and threw the fracture. I mean, it was devastating.
The jury deliberated for seven hours before convicting Melissa Kalyuszinski of aggravated battery of a child and first-degree murder. My heart sunk.
I know I didn't do this. Melissa's family remained determined to prove her innocence.
I didn't accept the verdict. I knew it was wrong.
And in 2012, a year after the conviction, Dr. Thomas Rudd, the then newly elected Lake County coroner, agreed to review the autopsy evidence at the urging of Melissa's trial attorney.
I saw a membrane, and I thought, my God. What do you mean when you say you saw a membrane? You see a scab, similar to what forms on your skin, except it's in the brain.
This is a slide of a part of this infant's brain.

Correct.

By definition, if you have a membrane, you have an old injury.

At Melissa's trial, Dr. Choi had told the jury he observed no sign of an old injury.

But according to Dr. Rudd, Dr.
Choi had simply missed it.

He called in Dr. Nancy Jones, a well-regarded pathologist, for a second opinion.
And she agreed with Dr. Rudd and noted that the old injury had been healing for about two or three months, a time frame consistent with that bump on Ben's head that was noticed at daycare.
How they let that go is beyond me. Like the defense experts at trial, Drs.
Jones and Rudd believe that the old injury was further exacerbated by Ben's headbanging. The added fluid of the recent injury pushes that brain down and shuts down the breathing system.
That is the cause of the child's death.

It was the old injury. The old injury was massive.

Dr. Rudd phoned the now-retired Dr.
Choi,

who signed a sworn affidavit conceding that he had missed that Ben had suffered an old injury.

But he crossed out the word significant,

and when asked if he would have changed his testimony at trial, Dr. Choi said no.
There's no indication that anything in there is significant. But Dr.
Rudd suspected that Dr. Choi may have also been wrong about another major issue in the case, that alleged skull fracture.
What should have been done was that whole section should have been cut out to look under the microscope to see if in fact it is a skull fracture. And they didn't.
Dr. Rudd believed what Dr.
Choi and the other medical experts thought was a skull fracture may have instead been a normal part of Ben's growing skull, but he couldn't prove it. Then in 2015, Melissa's father said he received an anonymous call that there was a set of x-rays at the coroner's office that had never been turned over to the defense.
When Dr. Rudd's staff searched the computer archives,

they came across these startling images

that were never shown at trial.

I was dumbfounded.

There's definitely no skull fracture in this child at all. In 2015, four years after Melissa Kaluzynski's conviction, and shortly after those clear x-rays of Ben Kingan were found, Dr.
Rudd changed the manner of death on Ben's death certificate from homicide to undetermined. By this point, defense attorney Kathleen Zellner had taken on Melissa's case.
I don't know of a case in America where someone's serving a 31-year prison sentence for a death that was undetermined. Zellner, who has built a career on getting the wrongfully convicted out of prison, was intent on getting Melissa's conviction overturned.
And in 2016, Melissa was granted an evidentiary hearing to present what Zellner argued was new evidence before Judge Daniel Shanes, the same judge who presided over Melissa's trial. The new evidence was that the images that had been given to Paul DeLuca had been darkened.
Remember, the state gave Melissa's trial attorney, Paul DeLuca, a disc containing these dark, unreadable x-rays before trial. At the evidentiary hearing, Dr.
Rudd testified about finding the clear x-rays, x-rays that he and other defense experts said showed no skull fracture, x-rays that Zellner argued would have changed the outcome of Melissa's trial. The skull fracture was the pivotal point in the state's case to convince the jury it was a homicide.
But at the evidentiary hearing, prosecutors argued that this wasn't new evidence in the case. They said the disc provided to DeLuca had software that could enhance the x-rays, and that he simply didn't do enough to brighten them.
DeLuca says he couldn't even open the software. I call in a secretary, call in somebody else in the office.
No one could get any better images. Zellner, with the help of an imaging expert, argued that it didn't matter what DeLuca did, that the x-rays that he had been given had been modified and were inferior to the ones on the coroner's office computer.
She also called a witness whom she believed raised more questions about the prosecution's case, Paul Foreman, the deputy coroner during Ben Kingen's autopsies. Foreman disputed the testimony of one of the most important witnesses at Melissa's trial, Dr.
Manny Montez. Remember, Dr.
Montez was the state's final witness who testified that he felt a fracture in Ben Kingen's skull. But Foreman, who said he was there when Montez came to the coroner's office, testified that Montez never physically examined Ben's body or actually touched the child's skull.
Could he have somehow gone in and looked at Ben's body, examined the body without you knowing? No, I was with him from the moment he came in the door to the moment he left. The state tried to discredit Foreman by questioning his memory as well as his mental health.
Foreman told us he had been treated for bipolar disorder and depression. Well, it was a personal attack.
But Foreman wasn't the only defense witness who raised questions about Dr. Montez's testimony.
Dr. Robert Zimmerman, a renowned pediatric neuroradiologist who examined the readable x-rays, testified that if that skull fracture had existed, it would be clearly visible.
It wasn't there on the x-ray, so I don't think he could have actually seen it. But prosecutors stood by their trial witnesses, Dr.
Montez and Dr. Choi, who said they saw and felt a skull fracture.
We reached out to both doctors for this broadcast, but they did not respond to our request for comment. When the evidentiary hearing ended, Judge Shaines ruled against Melissa.
She was dealt a devastating setback today in court. That's when a judge ruled she would not get a new trial.
In his ruling, Judge Shaines stated that he didn't find Paul Foreman's testimony regarding Dr. Montez credible.
And he agreed with the state that Paul DeLuca could have brightened the x-rays and made them readable. It was another letdown for Melissa and her family.
You clearly made a mistake. I just don't understand.
Zellner appealed the ruling, but again, a disappointment. And then, four years later, in 2022, there was a development that few saw coming.
Eric Reinhart, a new state's attorney in Lake County, the county where Melissa was convicted, had taken office. Zellner says he wanted more information on the discrepancy over the x-rays.
So he recommended she retain the digital forensics company Garrett Discovery. We paid for him, but he recommended him.
Andrew Garrett is the CEO of Garrett Discovery. Brian Bowman is a digital forensics expert who works for him.

They concluded the x-rays were manipulated by someone using a software tool used to view x-rays.

How did Paul DeLuca, the defense attorney, end up with these very dark pictures?

I can show you. So if I take these sliders here

and I drag them all the way down

or all the way up,

you can manipulate this photo.

So somebody went in

and they altered the contrast

to make it look like that on screen

and then exported that file.

On the coroner's computer.

On the coroner's computer. Bowman agrees there was little DeLuca could do.
The defense counsel could have adjusted some of the contrast on the JPEGs that they were given. But they couldn't make the images bigger.
And they wouldn't be able to go in and zoom in to the depth and have the clarity of the image that the original is. But if Ben Kingan's x-rays were manipulated, who did it? In their report, Garrett and Bowman pointed to the state.
You put in here, the state adjusted the settings of the images that resulted in black, washed-out images. You're saying that either the prosecutor's office or the coroner's office, but somebody representing the state, did this? Yes, yes.
This is not a kiosk computer sitting in a lobby. This is in their custody and control.
You have to be in the coroner's office to get access to this. What do you make of Garrett Discovery's findings? Chat now with the 48 Hours team on Facebook and X.
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In late 2022, when Lake County State's Attorney Eric Reinhart met with the forensic experts, experts he recommended and learned of their findings, attorneys Kathleen Zellner and Paul DeLuca were also there. Eric was just indignant.
He was saying whoever had done this manipulation should be held accountable. I believed after the meeting that he believed in Melissa's innocence, and he was going to try to rectify this.
I thought he was going to do something about it. But nothing happened, say Zellner and DeLuca.
And as the months stretched on, Zellner decided to also look more closely at Melissa's confession. That's the only evidence against her.
There's nothing that tips this as being a homicide. Absolutely nothing.
Zellner asked Dr. Saul Kasson, a psychology professor and leading expert on false confessions, to review the case.
Dr. Kasson had first analyzed the interrogation back in 2016, when he was a CBS News consultant.
He told us then and now that it appears police went into that room determined to get a confession. The reason that we were called in in this incident is because Ben's skull was fractured.
What we need to know right now is if this was done by accident or did somebody intentionally hurt him. Yeah, I would never put my hands on him.
Her denials were emphatic. I never put my hand on the chest.
And they plowed over all of them. You know what? Medical evidence, it just doesn't lie.
Yeah. Remember, a detective reported that during the autopsy, the pathologist, Dr.
Choi, told him that Ben had a skull fracture and that the injury was recent and was caused by another person using strong force. They did an autopsy on Ben.
Yeah. We're talking a skull fracture.
There's sometimes accidents happening. I mean, they're unavoidable.
They launch into an accident scenario. I did not drop him.
Did you lose your patience and hit him? No. Did you push him into a wall? After nearly six hours with investigators, you didn't come to work that day with the intent of hurting anybody.
Melissa told them it was an accident. Did you drop the baby? Yes.
I wasn't paying attention. It slipped out of my pants.
But that didn't satisfy the detectives, who had left the room periodically to phone Dr. Choi.
That story you're giving us is a load of . There's no way, no way that that would have caused that traumatic of an injury.
All you need to do is tell us the truth and we're done. They're not saying nothing will happen to you, but it's implied.
After nine hours in that room, the investigators were finally getting Melissa to tell a story that could account for a skull fracture. You were angry.
I was angry and aggravated. Show us how angry you were and show us what happened and let's just get this over with and move on.
Okay. So I got angry? Yeah.
And I went boom. I'm going to tell you something right now.
This is very specific. This is going to leave a specific mark.
Like a fracture. Then they gave Melissa a scenario of why she got angry.
We think in this situation, the other babies are screaming, crying. And what she did.
He starts acting up, and you get mad at him, and you throw him on the floor. You throw him on the floor? Yeah.
She needs to get out of there. She can't take it anymore.
I'm so sorry. Okay, we understand.
The detectives who interrogated Melissa did not respond to our request for comment. Dr.
Kasson raises concerns about how long Melissa was in that room, approximately 10 hours, and how particularly vulnerable she was. About two and a half years before Ben Kingen's death, Melissa had reported she was raped.
She was enclosed in a small space, pinned down, and sexually assaulted. Now she's pinned into the corner of her room.
I can only imagine that while this would be normally stressful for the average person, it would be even more stressful for somebody with that history. The defense recently had Melissa evaluated by a psychologist and psychiatrist.
They diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder. They also assessed her as having borderline intellectual functioning.
She scored at a 4.8 grade level in sentence comprehension, which could help explain why she believed she could go home even after she had confessed to murder. I'm just kind of curious how long, much more.
Not much longer. We're on the phone right now.
We're trying to get this done as quickly as possible. Because I just want to go spend time with my parents and my puppy.
She had no idea what was happening. The confession in my mind is worthless.
There are multiple reasons why she might have given this confession. This isn't just a vulnerable suspect.
It isn't just interrogation tactics that are highly deceptive. It's both.
The jury at Melissa's trial heard about her low IQ, but the judge would not allow a false confession expert to testify. Zellner believes that testimony might have changed the verdict.
If Melissa Kalyuszinski had not walked into that room as she had insisted on attorney, would she be imprisoned? No, absolutely not. They had absolutely nothing.
There's no eyewitness. There was no video.
The reason Melissa Kalyuszynski got charged is she confessed. But if Melissa didn't harm Ben Kingen, what happened to the toddler? It raises more questions about that earlier injury, the one that was discovered at the daycare months before his death.
Several employees there remembered a co-worker. Brenda didn't testify at Melissa's trial, and the defense was never able to track her down.

But we did.

A number of people have said that Ben was hurt when he was with you. Melissa Kalyuszinski was interrogated for hours about the injury Ben Kingan received just before his death.

But what about the daycare worker who was reported to be with Ben a few months earlier when he got a lump on his head?

She didn't return our calls, but when we located her, she agreed to speak to us on the condition we obscure her face and identify her only by Brenda, her first name. On October 27, 2008, there was a report of an injury on Ben King.
And do you remember that? No, I don't. The way it's been described is from some people is that Ben was with you and you were putting him in the bed.
They heard a bump and then he had a bump on the back of his head. No.
Did that happen with you? No. But you did stop working the very next day? I did.
I was just kind of tired of being there. I don't recall a bump, and I don't recall ever bumping him.
So do you say it didn't happen, or you don't remember it happening? No, it didn't happen. Brenda has never been charged with harming Ben, intentionally or accidentally.
But attorney Kathleen Zellner is adamant that Ben sustained a serious injury that day. I think that his parents were misled by the daycare center about that incident.
And according to these police reports, it wouldn't be the first time that the daycare allegedly tried to cover up the seriousness of a child's injury. The daycare was shut down by state authorities shortly after Ben died.
In April 2024, more than 12 years after Melissa's conviction, with no success in the court system, Zellner filed this clemency petition, asking Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker to exonerate Melissa or release her for time served.
I believe this is her best chance for freedom. Before a scheduled hearing, Lake County State's Attorney Eric Reinhart spoke to an attorney representing Ben Kingan's family.
And then he wrote this letter to the Prisoner Review Board stating his office strongly opposes Melissa's clemency petition. Were you shocked by that? Totally.
I believe he thinks in his heart that she's innocent. Reinhart would not do an on-camera interview or speak to us on the record.
But in that letter to the board, he stated that there is no new evidence in the case and that Melissa's petition for clemency does not establish innocence. On July 9, 2024, Zellner went before the Prisoner Review Board to make her case for Melissa's freedom.
What we want to do today is focus on who is this person and how did she end up in the position that she's in, convicted of the first-degree murder of a child. But also they are making an impassioned plea for Ben Kingen's parents.
My name is Amy Kingan and I am here with my husband Andy. We are the parents of Angelina Kingan who was murdered when Melissa Kaliasinski threw them to the ground back for his skull.
Because of her actions, Andy and I are adamantly opposed to Melissa Kaliasinski's release. We continue to read about how there's no justice for Melissa, but where is the law of justice for Beth, and for Andy and myself, and our surviving children.
We hope that you as the prison review board, and the governor, will deny your petition for clonency. Amy and Andy Kingan declined our request for an interview.
Following Amy's statement, Zellner was then given the chance to respond. There is no question that the death of a child is probably the worst thing that could ever happen to a parent.
But the only way that a parent gets closer is with the truth. And the truth has not come out in this case.

I know that she is innocent. After the hearing, it was up to the Prisoner Review Board to make

a confidential recommendation to Governor Pritzker as to whether Melissa should be released.

If you had a chance to talk to Governor Pritzker yourself, what would you say? I would say just please look at my case. I didn't do this.
Holly, who worked at the daycare with Melissa, believes her, so much so that she wrote this letter to the governor. From the time Melissa was arrested for Benjamin's murder,

I have always thought she was innocent.

The evidence does not point to Melissa.

I can only imagine

how Ben's family's going to feel

knowing that I'm saying Melissa's innocent.

But an innocent person should not be in jail. When we first met the Kalyusinski family back in 2014, five years after Melissa's arrest, they still had her bedroom set up.
Today, that room is still set up just as it was. Paul and Cheryl Kalyudzinski haven't given up hope that their daughter will be home soon.
She's Daddy's little girl. We did have her seat again.
And we're just going to keep on until she comes home. The Prisoner Review Board made their confidential recommendation to Governor Pritzker in January 2025.
There is no deadline for the governor to act.