A Brighton father is out of jail tonight and finally getting to see his daughter.
A jury convicted Joshua Burns of 2nd degree child abuse, but the Burns family has maintained his innocence.
Today, Burns got to hold his daughter today for the first time in 613 days. He’s been keeping count throughout this whole ordeal, and now that he’s free, the Burns family says they will continue to fight for justice for all families facing claims of abuse like this.
It was a tearful midnight reunion outside the Livingston County Jail, with Josh Burns getting to hug his wife Brenda after spending 9 months behind bars.
A jury convicted Burns of second degree child abuse, after his 2 month old daughter Naomi had be hospitalized back in 2014.
A doctor at University of Michigan said that bleeding found between Naomi’s brain and skull was caused by abuse.
Josh admits that Naomi slipped off his knee, but says he caught her before she hit anything. Both the Burns and medical experts say the injuries were caused by birth trauma and a severe illness.
Friends and co-workers have rallied around the Burns family – along with other families like them, who say they’ve had their kids taken from them due to an improper medical diagnosis of abuse.
Naomi is now nearly 2 years old – and today her dad finally got to spend time with her.
The Burns family is working with social workers on reunification and Josh will have supervised visits with Naomi until they can live together again as a family.
Meanwhile, lawyers from the U of M Innocence Clinic are now representing Burns in his appeal.
"We’re trusting in the justice system that this will all be set right and the truth will prevail," Josh says.
Burns says he learned a powerful lesson from one of the letters he received while he was locked up. It was from a man who spent 25 years in a Texas prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
"He said to me, ‘Bitterness is like a cup of poison you drink and you hope it hurts those who hurt you, but really you’re the one drinking that cup'," Burns says. "The truth overshadows darkness and just trusting in God that all of this will come out in the end.”
