Baby Sitters : Man, Wife Go Free in Infant Death

A former Anaheim Hills man who faced a murder charge in the death of a 13-month-old boy was acquitted Monday by an Orange County Superior Court judge. And, despite earlier claims that she had killed the child, the man’s wife was also acquitted of charges in the case.

Michael Garritson, 35, and his wife, Linda Garritson, 31, left the courtroom crying, their arms around each other. Beside his acquittal on second-degree murder charges, both were found not guilty of conspiracy to obstruct justice and cover up a murder.

Sympathy Offered Parents

In the bizarre case, Linda Garritson was acquitted of an accessory-to-murder charge.

As he handed down the verdicts, Judge Robert R. Fitzgerald tried to console the child’s parents, Rich and Leslie Cleveland.

“I know if it were my child I would want to kill whoever caused my baby’s death,” Fitzgerald said. But he added that he was convinced it was Linda Garritson--not her husband--who had killed the child.

Prosecutors, however, had decided not to pursue a murder charge against her because they did not believe she was guilty of murder. Also, the statute of limitations had run out on any of the lesser charges they might have brought against her, such as criminal negligence.

As she left the courtroom Monday, Linda Garritson tried to say something to the distraught Cleveland couple. But Rich Cleveland waved her away. “Just go,” he said.

The Garritsons were baby-sitting Scotty Cleveland on Feb. 20, 1979, when the child suffered a fatal head injury.

Michael Garritson was arrested and charged with murder in the death two years ago, after his wife told Anaheim police that he had killed the child while she was nursing their own newborn baby in another room.

But she recanted those charges during his trial last year. In emotional testimony, she told jurors her husband was out jogging when she accidentally swung the child’s head into a stairstep.

The Garritsons’ attorneys later said she lied to the police at first because she was angry at her husband for having an affair and wanted to get back at him by having him sent to jail.

However, prosecutors were skeptical, asking why she waited nearly a year to tell authorities what really happened.

The not-guilty verdicts were handed down by Fitzgerald in a non-jury trial. It was the third trial in the case for Michael Garritson.

Garritson’s first trial ended in a mistrial, following a mix-up in the evidence. At his second trial, 11 jurors voted to convict him of murder. But a mistrial was declared when Sylvia Ensminger, a juror from Laguna Beach, steadfastly voted not guilty.

Ensminger said at the time there was tremendous pressure put on her by the other jurors to change her vote.

“I don’t feel bad about what I did (forcing the mistrial),” she said at the time. “I don’t think he did it, so I couldn’t vote to convict him.”

In the most recent trial, both sides agreed to submit the case to Fitzgerald based primarily on previous testimony. Fitzgerald listened attentively to the closing arguments, and when he finally spoke, his first words conveyed sympathy to the Clevelands.

Fitzgerald said that the purpose of the court system is a search for the truth but that “often we fail in that quest.”

He noted that Linda Garritson began lying the day of the baby’s death, saying she reminded him of the old line: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”

No Credibility

The judge said the woman had told so many lies that her testimony at her husband’s earlier trial had no credibility. Nevertheless, the judge said, he believes that the child was in her care when he died.

If Assistant Dist. Atty. Edgar A. Freeman was upset about the judge’s ruling, he did not show it.

“I believe in the system,” Freeman said. “We put on our evidence, the defense has its say, and the court decides.”

The Garritsons, now living with the wife’s parents in Fullerton, are expecting their eighth child and have remained together.

At the end of his mistrial a year ago, Michael Garritson angrily said of his wife: “She ought to feel guilty as hell about what she’s done to me.”

But Monday, the couple couldn’t stop crying in each other’s arms.

“This is not a case where you walk away feeling victorious,” said Michael Garritson’s attorney, Alan M. May. “The Clevelands have lost a child. That hasn’t changed.”