Helena man pleads guilty to assaulting infant in district court

Michael Charles Haggerty, 30, pleaded guilty Thursday afternoon in Lewis and Clark County District Court to a felony charge of assault on a minor after he had been accused of sexually assaulting a 1-year-old child.

The plea was entered before Judge Kathy Seeley at the Lewis and Clark County Courthouse in Helena, moving the case from accusation toward sentencing without a trial. Haggerty’s admission resolves the criminal charge at the district court level, but the court file did not include a sentencing date in the material provided.

The case is among the most serious heard in Lewis and Clark County because it centers on an infant who could not protect himself or herself. In a county courthouse setting where child-assault cases often turn on close review of evidence, the guilty plea ends one path through the process and leaves sentencing as the next major step.

Seeley serves on Montana’s 1st Judicial District Court, which covers Broadwater and Lewis & Clark counties, and she has handled other assault-on-a-minor matters in Helena. In a separate case, she dismissed the prosecution of former Helena music teacher Carson Christman Yahvah after finding insufficient evidence had been presented to prove assault on a minor. The contrast underscores how sharply these cases can turn on the record developed before the court.

Haggerty’s plea also brings the case into a later stage of the criminal process in the county’s main courthouse, where the focus now shifts from whether he committed the offense to what punishment the court will impose. For Lewis and Clark County, the case places child protection, courtroom scrutiny and the consequences of felony conduct in the same proceeding before a local judge.