Man Facing Up to 15 Years in Killing of Baby in 1995

Jeannie Moreland remembers the night she barricaded herself in her room to escape an abusive boyfriend. She remembers him kicking the door with such force that it burst open, striking her in the forehead and leaving a scar that remains today, almost 13 years later.

Disoriented from the impact and a beating that preceded it, Moreland said, she heard her 16-month-old daughter crying in another room. When she came to, she said, her boyfriend was standing over her, the lifeless child in his arms.

"She was a perfectly healthy baby who all of a sudden was gone one night," Moreland said in an interview last week.

On Wednesday, in a Charles County courtroom, the former boyfriend, Theodore J. Seman Jr., is expected to be sentenced to as many as 15 years in prison in the death of the baby, Nina Leann McDonald. Last month, Seman, 35, pleaded guilty to a charge of second-degree murder under the Alford doctrine, meaning he did not admit responsibility but acknowledged that the state had enough evidence against him to secure a conviction, said David Simpson, his attorney.

The expected outcome is "bittersweet" for Moreland.

"Fifteen years for an entire life doesn't even begin to scratch the surface, especially when he walked around for 13 years as if she never existed," said Moreland, 35. "I still feel dragged down by the whole thing, because obviously it's never going to go away. It's something that I will never forget."

Investigators said they pegged Seman as a suspect in the Sept. 23, 1995, death from the start, even after an autopsy report concluded that Nina died under "suspicious circumstances" but did not rule her death a homicide. In 2001, that report was amended to indicate a homicide, with the cause of death "asphyxia."

Even so, Seman remained free until last year, when police charged him with first-degree murder and child abuse.

Kristen Timko, a spokeswoman for the county sheriff's office, said the case took a long time because police had to re-interview witnesses and have new medical experts review the evidence after the autopsy report was modified. There wasn't any one new piece of information that made charges possible, she said.

"With their expert analysis and conclusions in the witness statements, we were able to eventually piece together what happened," she said. "This one took a long time, but we weren't about to give up on it."

The detective in the case and State's Attorney Leonard C. Collins Jr. said they would not comment until after Seman is sentenced.

Seman's account, according to his statement to police, is that he and Moreland were sleeping when she woke him and asked him to check on the baby. He went into Nina's room and grabbed her feet as part of a game of "piggly wiggly." When he stopped, Seman told police, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes.