Behind prison walls, they called him "Baby Killer."
It was a torturous nickname for Michael Griffin, who was serving a life sentence for the death of his infant daughter — a crime he adamantly denies. He said she fell from a baby swing inside their home in Flint, Michigan, and died the next day from a failed surgery. But the police, he said, were hell-bent on blaming him for her death, accusing him of abusing her, and trying to bully a confession out of him.
"'Tell us what you did or the doctors won't help your daughter,'" Griffin recalled the police telling him during a three-hour-long interrogation as his daughter clung to life. He described it as a futile back-and-forth:
"I'm telling you the truth."
"No, you're not."
"She fell out of her swing."
"No, she didn't."
"They kept telling me I was lying," recalled Griffin, who at 19 would get charged, convicted at trial and sent to prison, where the "Baby Killer" taunts would tear his guts out for years, triggering fights with those who dared utter it.
"I had to keep telling myself, 'I didn't do it,' Even if the truth never came out," Griffin said in a recent, exclusive interview with the Free Press.
But the truth did eventually come out, Griffin said. In 2023 he was exonerated with the help of the Michigan Innocence Clinic and attorney Mike Morse. Two years into his freedom, he is now suing to hold those accountable for, as he puts it, framing him for a crime that he never committed, and robbing him of 14 years of his life.
'I kept telling myself — I know they did me wrong'
In a wrongful prosecution lawsuit unfolding in U.S. District Court, Griffin alleges that his daughter's death was caused by a failed surgical procedure, and that police, doctors and forensic officials conspired to transform a "tragic household accident into a fabricated homicide." Specifically, the suit alleges, investigators and medical personnel built a false narrative of child abuse, coerced a confession through fear and deceit, then falsified police and medical reports and altered autopsy findings to match their story.
"When I was locked up, I kept telling myself, 'I know they did me wrong,' " Griffin said. "But I didn't think it could be proven."
Griffin's lawsuit is against the city of Flint, Genesee County, two Flint police officers, three doctors, three officials with the medical examiner's office and the Hurley Medical Center where his daughter was taken for treatment. Through multiple lawyers and agency officials, all declined comment for this article.
Among the lawsuit's allegations:
There was no physical evidence of blunt force trauma, yet the police and doctors pushed this theory, and a medical examiner listed it as cause of death on the autopsy report, which also noted the existence of a prior head injury, a bruise on the baby's face and the occurrence of an unsuccessful craniotomy. Yet, "without any evidence" that the injuries were caused by the dad as opposed to the failed craniotomy, the medical examiner determined that cause of death was "Blunt Force Injury of the Head" and the manner of death was "homicide."
In the middle of Griffin's trial, the autopsy report was changed after a doctor testified that no evidence existed to support a finding of "Blunt Force Trauma." A medical examiner then sent the prosecution an "updated" autopsy report, changing the cause of death to "Abusive Head Injury." A doctor testified that this phrase is used when there is no way to determine how injuries occur, and "admitted" that it was used "to reflect that the doctors did not know what happened to Naviah."
A doctor had discovered a prior head injury in the baby, yet the jury was never informed about how the baby's fall could have reinjured that previous injury. As it turned out, a CT scan showed a new brain bleed had developed, which triggered the need for the surgery that ultimately failed.
The police report stated that Griffin's interrogation was videotaped. The prosecutor also said the same at trial, yet the videotape has never been produced. Griffin's lawyers filed a Freedom of Information Act request for it, but the city of Flint said the video doesn't exist.
Griffin was arrested without a warrant.
A medical examiner testified that she performed an autopsy on the child at 9 a.m., but the baby was still in surgery at that time, and was not pronounced dead until 1:10 p.m.
An investigator with the medical examiner's office lied in his written report — and later to jurors — when he claimed that the mom told him that she believed her daughter had been abused by the father. The mom testified that this never happened.
"There were desperate measures taken here to ensure that Michael would be blamed for the death of his daughter," said attorney Adam Akeel, who is representing Griffin in the lawsuit. He noted the prosecution "showed a shaken-baby video to the jury" when there was no evidence supporting this theory.
"It's them pushing this false narrative to pin it on the dad," Akeel said, "when they all admit that they had no facts to support that it was caused by him."
How Griffin went from grieving parent to murder suspect in 24 hours
According to court records, trial testimony, interviews with lawyers and Griffin, these are the events that unfolded in the fall of 2009, when Griffin's daughter wound up in the Emergency Room at Hurley Medical Center in Flint with a bruise under her eye:
On Sept. 30, 2009, Griffin was home with his daughter while the baby's mom walked to a corner market to buy snacks at about 5 p.m. Both parents were just 19, living in a two-story apartment in Flint with baby Naviah, whose dad had placed her in a motorized infant swing upstairs while her mom went out. He secured her with the attached tray that latched across her lap. He did not use the seat belt. He then went downstairs and played video games, when eventually, he heard a loud thump. He said he thought it might be the neighbors.
But when he went upstairs, he said he found the baby face down on the hardwood floor.
"I panicked and picked her up," Griffin recalled. "I remember this clear as day — as soon as I picked her up, her head went limp on my shoulder. She wasn't crying."
Griffin said he set her on the bed when he heard a knock at the door. It was Naviah's mom. He ran downstairs with the baby and opened the door. Before he could say what had happened, the mom grabbed the baby, who had stopped breathing, ran out the front door and yelled for help. An apartment security guard performed CPR on the baby and resuscitated her before the ambulance arrived and transported her to Hurley Medical Center.
When she got to the hospital, she had a bruise under her right eye and no other external injuries. But the parents would learn overnight that her brain had swollen, and that she would need surgery. A CT scan had revealed a "tiny" and "thin" bleed on the left side of Naviah's brain, and a cystic hygroma — or benign tumor — was discovered on the right side of her brain. This meant that a prior injury had occurred and healed, but was "dangerously susceptible to reinjury," the lawsuit states.
After discovering the existence of the cystic hygroma, hospital officials contacted Child Protective Services and the Flint police, who would interrogate both parents at the police station. Mom went first, telling police that she and Griffin had a good relationship, that he treats her and the baby well and had never abused either of them; and that she had no reason to believe that he would harm their child.
Mom also informed the officers that Naviah had a tendency to kick up the latched tray and pull herself up and out of her swing, and that she had previously done so on multiple occasions.
The police, though, allegedly criticized the mom for trusting the dad, telling her the doctors did not believe Griffin's story about the swing fall, and neither did they.
Fifteen years later, Naviah's mom — who said she initially "didn't want to believe" that Griffin could have hurt their child — says after years of researching the case and rethinking the details, the medical testimony and Griffin's story, she doesn't believe Griffin is telling the truth. And though she testified for the prosecution at his trial — at times providing favorable testimony for the dad — she said she believes Griffin did something that caused her child's death, and is hiding something.
Mom: 'Something happened at that house … that he's not taking accountability for'
For 36-year-old Alecia Patton, Naviah's mother, the pain, sadness and trauma of losing a child has never gone away. Though grateful for the experience to become a mom again — she now has a 10-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter — she still grieves Naviah everyday, she said. And the memory of what happened that tragic day still haunts her, in part, because she believes Griffin is hiding something.
"Something happened at the house that caused her to go to the hospital that he's not taking accountability for," Patton said in a recent interview with the Free Press.
That hospital visit was especially traumatic for Patton, who also lost her father that day. He had come to the hospital to be with her after learning about Naviah, when he died suddenly of a health issue inside his car in the parking lot, just 10 minutes after Naviah died.
"He didn't want her to be alone — that's what I tell myself to keep going," Patton said.
With back-to-back tragedies to contend with, Patton would get hit with another major event in just a matter of days. Her baby's father would be charged with murder.
"I didn't want to believe it," said Patton, who recalled going through a mix of emotions: Anger. Confusion. Sadness. But as time passed, she said, and she had a chance to research the case and process the medical information, she came to a conclusion:
"I was faced with reality — that he's the reason behind her being deceased," said Patton, who cut off all ties with Griffin shortly after her daughter's death.
Patton said she didn't believe Griffin's "she fell out of the swing" explanation: "It just didn't make sense. It never did make sense."
Patton, who is now a certified nursing assistant, said she also doesn't believe that her daughter died from a failed surgery, maintaining that it was Griffin who caused her daughter to be in the hospital in the first place.
"If, whatever happened at the house hadn't happened, then the doctors would not have had to try to get the fluid off her brain," Patton said. "I asked them to do what they could do to try to save her, and they did the best they could do."
'I want to know the truth ... She didn't deserve what happened to her'
It's been more than 10 years since Patton has spoken to Griffin. Their last conversation was a prison phone call.
"I asked him to tell me the truth of what happened," recalled Patton, who said Griffin told her that if she came in person to see him in prison, "he would tell me what happened."
But that prison visit never occurred. Patton said her application to visit him was denied, and she didn't pursue the matter further.
Still, she said, she has never stopped wondering what happened.
"I want to know the truth," she said. "Something happened. … I'm the mother. And I don't know what happened to my first-born child. It's not fair. She didn't deserve what happened to her."
When Griffin was exonerated, Patton said she was blindsided.
"I went into a dark hole. … I wasn't expecting it," Patton said, later adding: "Everybody is saying he deserves a second chance. I feel like, 'leave well enough alone.' "
As for second chances, Patton said: "I'm not God. I can't say what nobody deserves. … But I would be more comfortable if he were in prison. Justice was served before he got out."
As for Griffin's lawsuit, she said: "He's going for money, and all I want is the truth."
Dad says police bullied him with threats to get a false confession
Griffin maintains he has been truthful from the start, and that he was railroaded by police when they first took him in for questioning while his daughter fought for her life. According to Griffin, trial transcripts, and court records, here's what happened:
At the start of the interrogation, the officers closed the door, according to official reports. Then they reportedly told Griffin that both they and the doctors believed he had intentionally abused his daughter and caused her injuries, either with blunt force or shaking her. Griffin protested, but the officers wouldn't let up, allegedly telling him that unless he confessed to harming her, the doctors wouldn't be able to treat her, that they would terminate his parental rights, and that she could die.
Griffin told the officers that a couple of weeks earlier, Naviah had fallen on the metal post of the swing and there was a bruise and suggested that this could have happened again, records show. But the officers would not relent. They wanted more, telling him his daughter will die "because he wasn't man enough to tell the truth," and that they suspected he lost his temper with the mom and took it out on the baby.
Griffin continued to deny hurting his child, but the intense questioning continued, according to reports, with police telling him "they were starting to believe he was a monster," that doctors will remove his daughter's brain should she die and determine she could have been saved had her dad been truthful about hurting her.
After accusing Griffin of not wanting to help his daughter, reports show, they told him he could leave — but threatened that he would likely not be able to see Navia again for at least 18 months, and that parental termination proceedings were imminent.
Desperate and afraid, Griffin caved.
"Given the coercive pressure being placed on (Griffin) ... and in a desperate attempt to satisfy the officers' relentless demands, (Griffin) stated that he sometimes taps Naviah on the back of the head, but he never does it hard and he plays with her that way," the lawsuit states, adding the dad also told the officers that he "sometimes throws her up and down, but also just to play with her and that he has never and would never hurt her."
At 1:10 p.m., on Oct. 1, seven hours after his interrogation, his daughter was pronounced dead following an unsuccessful craniotomy.
Five days later, Griffin was arrested and charged with felony murder and first-degree child abuse. At trial, he took the stand in his own defense and broke down crying when they showed him a photo of his deceased daughter. But he was unable to convince a jury that he was innocent.
Mom testifies at trial
During trial, jurors also heard from Patton, whose testimony largely focused on her relationship with Griffin, his parenting skills, and the events that transpired after she came home and found her daughter limp in Griffin's arms. She was never asked at trial whether she believed Griffin's explanation for how their daughter got hurt.
During her testimony, Patton said that she never had any concerns about Griffin appropriately caring for their daughter, that she never saw him lose his patience with her, that he was her primary caretaker while she attended a work program, and that the two did not have disagreements about how he cared for her.
She also pushed back on the prosecution's claims that she nodded her head yes when a medical examiner investigator asked her whether she believed Griffin had abused their daughter. She testified that she did not remember that.
"Did he love her?" the defense asked her on cross-examination.
"Yes," she answered.
Patton also testified that the baby once rolled off the sofa while in the dad's care. She took the baby to the hospital out of caution, she said, but there were no injuries. She also testified that he once broke a window in their home after arguing, but that the dispute was not about the baby.
According to Patton's testimony, here is what happened on the tragic day in question, when she returned home from a walk to a corner store and found her daughter limp in her father's arms:
"I grabbed her from him," she told the jury. "I thought she was gone."
She then ran out of the house, yelled for help. An apartment security guard resuscitated her daughter then grabbed a phone from the dad and called 911. An ambulance arrived and drove the mom and baby to the hospital. Dad was in a car behind them, with his mom.
At the hospital, the mom testified, Griffin would tell her the baby fell from the swing, and that he found her on the floor when he went upstairs to change her diaper. She said they waited for about two hours in the hospital waiting room, but got no answers about the condition of their child. At that point, she said, two police officers showed up and took her to the police station for questioning.
Patton did not testify about the interrogation, but said she went back to the hospital after questioning, and eventually learned that her daughter would need surgery. Five hours later, the doctors would give her the gut-wrenching news: her daughter didn't make it.
Meanwhile, the police would begin building a case against Griffin, using the "illegally elicited" statements he made during his interrogation against him, his lawsuit states. Those same statements would later be used to persuade a jury to convict him. The prosecution also used the statements to convince the court of appeals to uphold his conviction.
It wasn't until the Michigan Innocence Clinic and prominent plaintiff attorney Mike Morse intervened that he was exonerated.
'His court-appointed attorney was a disaster'
In securing Griffin's freedom, the Michigan Innocence Clinic and Morse argued that Griffin had an ineffective lawyer, noting the prosecution brought in seven doctors to testify against Griffin, while his public defender brought in none.
"There are lots of causes of wrongful convictions, but most of these cases have one thing in common: Bad or overworked lawyers, or public defenders. And this is one of the main reasons Mr. Griffin was wrongfully convicted," Morse said during a 2023 news conference when Griffin was released. "His court-appointed attorney was a disaster. He called no expert witnesses, despite the fact that the state called seven."
According to Griffin, it was Morse who ultimately secured his release by finding and bringing in doctors who explained to the court how the baby's death likely occurred. Morse, who had never before handled a criminal case and took this one pro bono, also argued that the scientific consensus around short fall and other head injuries had evolved since 2010, evidence that was not readily available when Griffin was convicted.
Using these arguments, Morse convinced Genesee County Circuit Court Judge Elizabeth Kelly to vacate Griffin's convictions in March 2023, release him on bond, and order a new trial.
But there was no retrial. After reevaluating the case, the Genesee County Prosecutor's Office opted not to retry it, dropped all charges and dismissed the case on Sept. 13, 2023.
When asked to explain this decision, Assistant Prosecutor John Pothbury declined comment, citing pending litigation.
On its website, the Mike Morse Law Firm commended the prosecutor's office, stating: "Throughout this entire process, the Genesee County Prosecutor's Office has been extremely professional and respectful to Mr. Griffin and his legal counsel. It is abundantly clear that Genesee County Prosecutor Mr. David Leyton and his staff care about doing their job the right way and only prosecuting cases when they have a good faith basis for believing the available evidence will support a conviction. "
A fresh start, a wife, and a new baby
Since his release, Griffin, who now runs a cleaning business, has embraced his freedom with new hope and purpose. He is a father again, and a husband. He married a woman he met years ago while he was in prison. The two now have a 1-year-old boy named Nash.
"He looks just like his sister," said Griffin, noting his son makes him smile again.
And a lot of the anger is gone.
"I ended up letting it go," Griffin said. " I had to let go of all the emotions."
Following his exoneration, Griffin received $435,000 from the state for the years he spent in prison. The payout was supposed to be $696,000, or $50,000 for every year he was in prison. But he said he didn't get the entire amount because authorities said his daughter had been hurt before, and so they decided against giving him the full amount.
It didn't make sense to Griffin, who has long maintained he never harmed his daughter. But he said he's moving on from that, too, shifting his focus to his lawsuit, and working to hold all those accountable for the nightmare he was put through.
Losing a child was hard enough, he said. But then being blamed for her death was another matter.
"I wish nobody would ever go through this," said Griffin, noting he couldn't watch baby commercials for a long time. "I dealt with a lot of pain."
And now he wants the civil justice system to hold the police, doctors, medical examiners and others responsible for it.
"The whole time I was locked up I knew something crazy had happened," Griffin said. "I just kept saying, 'I didn't do it.' I believed the hospitals did something, the cops covered stuff up."
It took more than a year for Griffin to pursue a lawsuit. He said he "had an epiphany."
"I woke up my wife ... I said, 'If I'm sitting here, who is responsible for killing my daughter?' " Griffin recalled, noting he has never received an apology for his ordeal. "Nothing was ever said. Not an 'I'm sorry.' They locked me up for it and said 'I've done it.' "
"But now that I'm out," he added, he's intent on answering this question: "Who did it?"
Contact Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press:Flint dad Michael Griffin exonerated in daughter's death sues
