CLEVELAND, Ohio — A Progressive Snapshot device in a 28-year-old Parma Heights man's car helped clear him in the suffocation death of his 7-month-old daughter.

Michael Beard, facing 15 years to life in prison, was acquitted Monday of murder, felonious assault and child endangering charges by a Cuyahoga County jury that deliberated for just one hour after hearing four days of testimony.

Prosecutors had maintained that Beard suffocated baby Lynniah Beard at 4:45 a.m. May 8, 2011, at her West 122nd Street home, where Lynniah's mother was sleeping.

But defense attorney Michael Cheselka presented evidence from the Progressive Casualty Insurance Company's Snapshot device in Beard's car that showed Beard had turned off the car at 4:44 a.m. and turned it back on three minutes later.

In those three minutes, Beard discovered that Lynniah wasn't breathing in her infant swing, awakened her mother and returned to the car to rush his daughter to the hospital, Cheselka said in an interview today.

Beard, a state-trained nursing aide, had routinely visited Lynniah and her mother after he got off working the graveyard shift.

Prosecutors presented a theory that Beard had tried to awaken Lynniah's mother to have sex that morning and, when she didn't rouse, he covered Lynniah's nose to make her cry, Cheselka said.

A pathologist with the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office testified that Lynniah could have slowly suffocated as she slumped down in her swing in her sleep.

Cheselka said police first became suspicious of Beard when he, in a panic at the hospital, said he found Lynniah in a car seat, not the swing.

"It grew from there, a mistake under duress," Cheselka said. "During testimony, several people testifying for the prosecution accidentally said car seat instead of swing. It happens.

"I told the jury they had to put an end to this," Cheselka said. "They reaffirmed my faith that jurors take their jobs seriously and do the right thing."

The jurors, six men and six women, could not be reached for comment.

This was the first time that the Snapshot device had been used in a criminal trial, Cheselka said. The Progressive attorney involved in the case did not return a call seeking comment.