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You are now listening to True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have written about him. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zupanski, Good Evening.
Doctor Michael Baden has been involved in some of the most high profile civil rights and police brutality cases in US history, from the government's nineteen seventy six reinvestigation of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. To the twenty fourteen death of Michael Brown, whoy spark the initial Ferguson
protests that grew into the Black Lives Matter movement. The playbook hasn't changed since nineteen seventy nine, when doctor Baden was demoted from his job as New York City's chief medical Examiner after ruling that the death of a black
man in police custody was a homicide. So in twenty twenty, when the Floyd family, weary of the same system that oversaw Michael Brown's death, needed a second opinion, doctor Baden is who they call in these pages, doctor Baden chronicles his six decades on the front lines of the fight for accountability within the legal system, including the long history of medical examiners using a controversial syndrome called excited delirium, a term that shows up in the pathology coort for
George Floyd to explain away the deaths of black and people of colored restrained by police. In the process, he brings to light the political issues that go on in the wake of often unrecorded fatal police encounters and the standoff between law enforcement and those they are sworn to protect. Full of behind the scenes drama and surprising revelations, American Autopsy is an invigorating and enraging read that is both timely and crucial for this turning point in our nation's history.
The book they were featuring this evening is American Autopsy, One medical examiners decades long fight for racial justice in a broken legal system. With my special guest, forensic pathologist and former Chief Medical Examiner of New York City and author, doctor Michael Baden. Welcome to the program, and thank you so much for this interview, Doctor Michael Baiden. Dan, thank
you so much for this interview. Let's start off initially right away, because a lot we have so much to cover in this extraordinary book that has really chronicles your career and the evolution of your career and your entry into this fight for civil rights. Let's talk about your start. You say you were in night eighteen sixty. You were working at Bellevue Hospital in New York City in the emergency department, and you had a wife, Judy Anne, and
a daughter, Trisa, which was one years old. And you had two jobs at that time, an intern in internal medicine three nights a week, and also an assistant medical examiner and a tour doctor. Tell us a little bit about your start as a forensic pathologist and why you chose this career.
Yeah.
I graduated from City College in New York went to NYU Medical School with the idea of becoming an internal
medicine doctor treating living patients. While at NYU Medical School, which was connected to Bellevue Hospital, the medical Examiner's office was located in the basement of Bellevue, and I went there to see a patient that I had seen as a medical student who died of a drug overdose, and went to see the autopsy that was performed by the medical examiner and became very interested immediately in autopsy procedures, in the anatomy of the body, in the amazing way
in which cells talk to each other, trillions of cells that all know where to be to make us a person, and anatomy appeal to me very much, so I began working going as a medical student to see and participate in autopsies in the medical Examiner's office. Now, unlike the hospital where people are treated mostly for natural diseases cancer, heart disease, the medical examiner investigates deaths that are unnatural
accidents suicide, homicide, drug overdoses. Part of the autopsy information that's gathered by the Medical Examiner's office, which I found intriguing and fascinating and was very attracted to. So I started working as a volunteer in the medical Examiner's office. They told me how to do autopsies as I when I got my license to practice medicine and graduation from a medical school, I became an employee paid employee of
the Medical Examiner's office, going to scenes of death. The autopsy starts at the death scene, as you can see in many television programs, where the first thing that happens when somebody dies unnaturally is a examination of the circumstances of death, where how the person died, how the person was found before the body ever gets to the medical examiner's office to be autopsied. And I began as a
tour doctor. In evenings, at nights, I'd be an intern resident at Bellevue in the daytime, proceeding with my interest in internal medicine, and in the evening I'd go to scenes of death and weekends holidays participate in the work in the morgue itself. So that's how I got started, and it was just fascinating to me to see how many different ways people can die, then how much can be learned at the autopsy table as to what causes
death and how to prevent death. And I felt that with time that I'd be more useful to society if I became one of the very few forensic pathologists that were being developed instead of the thousands of internal medicine people that are quite good. And that got me toward changing from internal medicine to pathology.
We go ahead.
You write ahead about nineteen sixty four, and you were chief resident in pathology at Bellevue Hospital, but this chief psychiatrist there, Weinstein, he called you, and so people recognized how ambitious you were. And so this was about the Career girls murders. What did you learn there your first experience, I guess in seeing how the medical examiner also worked with police and the prosecution in cases. So what did this doctor Weinstein expose you to?
I was his chief pathologist, resident at Bellevue at the time and working part time in the Medical Examiner's office. And there was a murder that captured the attention of the public called the Career Girl's murder, where two young girls who worked in New York City and had parents of significance were found dead and a black man, a young black man, was arrested. After a year long Searts was arrested, claimed his innocence and the police said, well
he confessed at that time and still now. When there are psychiatric issues that come up, one of which is a person is going to trial psychiatrically fit to go to trial and could participate in his defense, the patient would be brought to Bellevue Hospital Psychiatric Prison Service. Doctor
Weinstein was in charge of that. He called me over in this case when they were investigating the death of the career girls and said, I want to show you something, and he showed me a confession and said to me, this is a typical planted confession where all the information is given to the individual just answers yes or no. And the police considered that an admission and true was true.
This individual that his alleged confession about which they based the restaurant contained questions like wasn't it seven o'clock at night that you entered their apartment?
Yes? Was one of the girls undressed? Yes?
And that was about thirty pages of yes's. And he said, this is typically a planted confession and is not an actual confession. And I suddenly had the understanding that not everything that is done by police is proper, because I, like all other medical examiners in the country, learn first about medical examiner work, working very closely with police, and
accept them as really guardians of society. And here there were police were obviously arresting somebody and claiming somebody murdered these two people on the basis of his confession, which really wasn't a confession. It turned out a few months later that the real perpetrator confessed and was caught and had evidence of the death and wound up being convicted. And the black young man, Whitmore, was stayed in jail for a long time even after that, before he was finally released.
Right, it was my.
First impression really that hey, there's something wrong here in how justice has served. And that began my concerns about the criminal justice system as involves medical examiners.
Right, you say two cases emerged that made you question everything, especially a term and a diagnosis called psychosis with exhaustion. This is a summer of sixty seven. You were thirty three years old, working full time at the medical Examiner's office. Tell us about Eric Johnson and Rikers Island.
Yeah, I started then when I finished my training at Bellevue, became a full time medical examiner for the City of New York. And one of the early deaths that occurred was a prisoner at Rikers Island. You know, somebody who's been jailed there awaiting trial, who apparently got in a struggle with guards at Rikers and wound up being sprayed with tear gas and died during the altercation with police.
And when the blackmail came to the medical Examiner's office and had marks on his neck and had particular hemorrhages hemorrhages in the eyes that are happened when there is death from neck compression, choking pressure on the neck and caused little hemorrhages in the eyes. And this person died
while there was tear gas. Nobody saw the death. The three guards who were in with him and did the tear guessing had guess vests on before they did that, and it seemed to me that he died from choking, being choked to death during the struggle that was covered
up by the tear gas fumes. And when the case was done and the chief medical examiner, after the mayor had called you a couple of times, determined that he had died of being overly exerting himself in the struggle, listed on the death certificate as psychosis with exhaustion.
The idea being that the.
Individual got so excited struggling with the police that he died of internal biochemical reaction of some sort, and it was really natural death, not a homicide, which it would be you are choke to death during the tear gassing. This psychosis with exhaustion has now turned into another term, excited delirium, and that was my introduction to the close bond between medical examiners and police. When civilians, unarmed people died during altercations with police, and the reason they die
is because they can't breathe. With Eric Johnson, the person died there was impression of the neck which caused marks on the outskin hemorrhage underneath the skin, marks in the eyes as a result of that. When police subdue somebody who is not obeying commands, like usually they are persons who have psychiatric disorder, not taking their medication or heart on drugs of abuse, so the police called in because
they're misbehaving. The first thing police will often do is say put your hands behind your back so we can put handcuffs on. If the individual doesn't obey those orders, then they take them down to put him on the ground and handcuff him from behind while he's prone on the ground, face down on the ground, while pressing on his back to be able to get his wrists together for the handcuffs. Often there's enough pressure on the back prone back to prevent the diaphragms from moving up and down,
which the diaphragms order. We breathe about fifteen eighteen times a minute because our diaphragms are going up and down. Every time they go down, they suck in air into the lungs, and every time they go up they push air out, and that happens. That's part of our life, breathing necessary to stay alive with prone pressure that prevents
the breathing. But the medical examiners, myself included, initially couldn't believe that the police would cause deaths of individuals from the way they subdue them, and that's where the concept
of excited delirium was developed. That the person died not from pressure interference with breathing, but with adrenal glands making too much adrenaline was the main theory behind excited delirium, which is widely used by medical examiners, unfortunately as junk science, but it takes the police off the hook, and that was to me a further develop plopment further reincarnation of psychosis with exhaustion is that the police did not have
anything to do with the death. That also came up with George Floyd, and my concern as I learned about this and experienced these kinds of deaths, was that the medical examiners were becoming a serious part of the problem of how deaths caused by police officers are being whitewashed by various diagnoses that are called natural. If a diagnosis a natural excited delirium or psychosis.
With exhaustion, that's the end of the investigation.
There's no investigator into anybody police doing anything wrong.
And that's how.
As I saw more and more of how deaths during police restraints developed and caused so much division division in our society. That the division being that most of the police are white, and a high proportion of people who die under these circumstances are black or brown and lead to the kind of social unrest that the death of Michael Brown, the death of George Floyd Tyree Nichols developed
in this showed. In this country the division has been there, but it's now become more apparent, more obvious, and more divisive as social media connects people more than it used to be. That a death in Brooklyn State in Brooklyn, now a death in Brooklyn can immediately be seen all
over the United States. So and I think the divisions that we're seeing, the racial divisions, have always been there in our country, but have manifest themselves more obviously in the past kind of fifteen years, since each death became more apparent to the community at large.
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Now, let's talk about Attica briefly, because it's it. We could go and delve into that story quite a while. But Attica, New York Prisoners has seized control of the prison and taken hostages September ninth, nineteen seventy one. Now, a few days later, you write that the state police stormed the prison and on the September thirteen, there was a raid with forty three people dead, ten hostages and thirty three prisoners. You were there to do autopsies on
the victims. Tell us what the contentious out delegation or assertion was regarding these hostages and the prisoners.
All the statements initially when the attica was retaken by the state police with the deaths of forty three individuals was that the inmates had caused the deaths, the inmates had killed the prisoners, and the prisoners said, and the families of the prisoners was no, that's not true, that it was the guards that killed the other guards. That ten guards were not killed by inmates, which caused the police to be shooting up and shooting a lot of
the inmates. The inmates deaths were attributed to various police agencies that were involved.
The deaths of the.
Ten guards were attributed to the inmates killed the guards, and that's why the police had to kill so many inmates. And there was a dispute, and I was asked to come up and to do a second autopsy and all of the deaths, especially of the ten guards. And my conclusion was after autopsying the ten guards was that they all died from friendly fire, that the inmates hadn't killed any of the guards, and it also opened my eyes to see the huge numbers of inmates who were black
and brown. That is the concept that was learned was taught to us by police as we learned about being forensic pathologists and dealing with police all types of deaths, but especially homicidal deaths, was that somehow there's a racist
bias built into structurally, I think, into police work. That black people are more likely to be criminal, that black people are stronger, and that's why police have to use successive force to subdue black and brown people has built into the police structure, and that is adopted by medical examiners we learn from and that then became my concern is that much of the problem which is recognized, the division in a racial division in our country, is recognized
to be partly due to activities of police and also prosecutors, but not to realize that medical examiners, that me that my profession is also part of the problem because we tend to misdiagnose deaths that are caused by police and correction officers, by law enforcement, and then there's no further investigation as to how the deaths occurred and what can be done to correct the problems so that there are less racial deaths that occur that by themselves are horrible
but also stimulate a big divide now society.
You talk about that Attica changed your career, and after you returned to New York, the calls came in from all over the country and then case came up involving a person named Arthur Miller, and as we talked about in the introduction, you were demoted and there was talk of and you were convinced to sue the city.
By nineteen seventy eight seventy nine, I had become chief medical Examiner in New York City and one of the first deaths that I got involved with was Arthur Miller, who was a black businessman in Brooklyn and was involved with an incident in which police took him to the ground, put him in the police car. He said, I can't breathe,
I can't breathe. Then by the time the car got to the precinct house, he was dead, and I ruled that that was death closed by the police and it was a homicide, and the medical examiner who was in Brooklyn was concerned because usually they would call that death blame on excessive reaction to the police on the part of the neurological reaction hormonal reaction that caused the death. There was a natural death due to the fact that this person didn't obey what the police told him to do.
In that ground. I was then demoted the deputy chief medical examiner from chief. But what was interesting about it. Shortly after my demotion, I got a call from a young black lawyer, Johnny Cochrane, who was in California, who was wanted an exhumation of a young man who died in the Los Angeles area and was buried in Tennessee and called a suicide. And he thought that the young men had been killed by police by being strangled while in the county jail and asked if I would perform
an exhumation on the body. And that's how I got involved with Johnny Cochrane and a number of the leading people in the civil rights movement. And the reason Cochrane called me was because he felt that I was a medical examiner who stood up to the mayor and who stood up to in the death of Arthur Miller in particular and that got me involved in that. After that, with many other civil rights cases.
You contended that the medical Examiner's office, with this lawsuit you wanted. You contended that you should have independence and not be able to be fired by the mayor.
Yeah. Well, when I was demoted from Chief Medical Examiner to deputy Chief Medical examine I brought a lawsuit that couldn't devote me just because they didn't like my diagnosis was correct that that was a homicide and that was contrary to the civil service laws which I was appointed by civil service after an examination, the highest civil service position.
In the City of New York.
And I sued and the court, the federal court ruled in my favor ordered me reinstated because the mayor couldn't demote me without giving inadequate reason, which he didn't have. He said, I was very good forensic mythologist. He didn't like my decisions in some of my decisions, and so
in the federal court I was reinstated. But then the city appealed, and on the appeal the circuit court said, well, the chief medical Examiner is too close to the mayor and shouldn't be protected by civil service and there should be somebody at the mayor could appoint and fire at will,
which you can't do in civil service. And so took the job of chief medical Examiner in New York City, a medical examiner out of civil service, and therefore the mayor could fire me for any wish he wanted, and that unfortunately happened to the next person he appointed as chief medical examiner in New York City who was eventually fired by the mayor because he didn't like what he said.
And it is part of the reason around the country that most medical examers are subject to being punished being fired if they make diagnoses, especially when it comes to police death during police activity, that the mayor doesn't like it or isn't politically benefit to the mayor.
You talk about another case disturbing case, Ron Settles, that Johnny cochran was involved. Can you tell us just the particulars of that case and why you wrote about it and referenced it.
Yeah, when Johnny Cockeran called me to do the exhumation that was the death of Ron Settles, turned out I hadn't. Ron Settles was a leading college football player in Los Angeles and was about to get a good professional career when he was stopped by police because he was in a very flashy, expensive car. This was Signal Hill area of Los Angeles and it didn't look right that black kid could be in a fancy car, and the course of stopping settles. He was arrested, brought into the station
house and wound up hanging in a cell. Initially the diagnosis was that it was a suicidal hanging. Doctor Johnny Cochrane was hired by the families and never committed suicide. He was just his career and football was starting and asked about assuming the body in Tennessee. And the reason he called me was because he didn't trust medical examiners. But since he read about my being demoted because in New York City because he said police caused the death, contacted me.
We resumed the body.
We found evidence that from the hemorrhages in the neck that this was not a suicidal hanging, but was a net compression. The different areas of the neck that I damaged with hanging. The ligature is up right underneath the jaw bone, above the larynx, above the Adams apple. In strangulation. With manual strangulation, it's just below just above the Adams apple and causes fractures, multiple fractures of the Adams apple, which is a thyroid cartilage.
And the hanging.
Most hagings don't cause any fractures because they're above the larynx, right, So that's what i'd said, And then the family settled the case then with signal Hill. But that's what happened with Ron Settles. Just somebody who was clearly abused by police. Initially suicide. That ends the investigation. Family hired their own independent expert who was able to get more information that showed what the police did it was towards his death.
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your Attica experience and he ran the crime lab. Tell us a little bit more about this position you said they had the potential to open up a new chapter in your life.
After I was demoted from Chief Medical Examiner in New York City and was then reinstated by the federal court
and then that was overturned. By that time, I had twenty five years experience with the Medical Examiner's office, and I was New York City and I was called by the New York State Police and they indicated that problem in New York State for the state Police was that there's sixty two counties most corner camp about forty five coroner counties, and the medical examiners and coroners didn't always do proper autopsies around the state and that interfered with
the ability to state police to investigate deaths that were in their jurisdiction. And they were setting up a new unit, a forensic science unit for the New York State Police, and asked if I could come and head that up, and which I did. I transferred. I transferred from New York City to New York State and headed up with a forensic dentist, doctor Lolvine. We set up this forensic science unit that was available to any county in New York State, in New York State if a forensicthology of
forensic any forensic issues occurred, and that was invigorating. That gave me a lot more different areas to be involved in to see all of the different counties and states
and the cities in New York, which is amazing. I was born in the Bronx, grew up in Brooklyn, and lived in Manhattan, and that was my whole life before I got involved with the State Police and then moved up to Albany for a while and went around the state lecturing forensic sciences to the various police departments, part of the educational process, and investigating debts, all kinds of different deaths that I didn't have in Sea in New York City.
We didn't see deaths.
In the woods, you know, forest woods and animal activity, and that's upstate New York that compared to the downstate New York. And I was able to spend the next twenty five years working with the State Police helping set up a new forensic science investigative of resources.
You write about an exciting event for you, and it's very vivid description about you were involved with Medgar Evers internment. Yeah, June third, nineteen ninety one. So just tell us a little bit about what you call a deeply disturbing case and your involvement in some of your observations.
Yeah, while working now with the State Police New York State Police. Back around nineteen ninety eighty one ninety two, I got a call from the disc attorney in Jackson, Mississippi that they were investigating an old civil rights murder. Megah Evers was as civil rights leader in nineteen sixty three when he was assassinated. He was shot in the back, just a few months before President Kennedy was killed. And at that time there were two trials in nineteen sixty
three nineteen sixty four that had hung juries. And in this the call that came from the district attorney was that they now had evidence to be able to convict the person who did the shooting who was brought to trial, but both trials there was no because it was a hung jury, so that it was still a death that could be prosecuted. Right if he was found not guilty, that was the end of it. But he hadn't been found not guilty. And this is now about twenty eight
years later. And asked, want to know, is there anything we could do to determine at this later date what the cause of death is one of the issues in the first trial and bring the case to trial. And I said, as I usually saying, those questions that for a medical examiner, burial is just long term storage, and we can exhume the body. Can't tell in advance how well the body's been preserved, but there's often additional evidence that might have been overlooked during the initial trial back
in nineteen sixty three. This is now in nineteen ninety four that we're talking about.
And we did.
We exhumed the body, and they called me because I was the head of the parentsic Unity of the New York State Police and as a court to see could we help them, and yes, we could help him help them, and we exhumed the body and the body was in perfect condition. Amazing, he had been buried and was an
excellent condition. Is so we're able to reconstitute the bullet tract and go to trial and give enough evidence that in this the third trial, the perpetrator was convicted and sentenced to life in prison after it was about thirty years after the shooting had occurred.
You saw a lot of cases where people died in custody, but you also saw cases where there was just a call from a family member concerned about a loved one, and then the issue of or the excuse of positional asphyxia. So you did examine cases where you were learning of all these again reasons for people dying in custody.
Yeah, that is oftentimes. We've remember fifty years I spent working with police, and they're excellent police out there, but when it comes to a death during police activity, there's a reluctance of medical examiners to put the blame on the police officer. That's why excited delirium came in existence, and psychosis with exhaustion before that that it's somehow it's not the policeman's full it's the fault of the bad
guy that didn't obey police orders. And that's why I got more involved in excited delirium and tried to give lectures and try to have that eliminated as a cause of death, because many of the deaths during police encounters were blamed on excited delirium due to the individual making too much adrenaline and causing his own death a natural death, whereas in truth they were dying because they couldn't breathe. They couldn't breathe, and there were certain mythology about it.
The police felt that if the person says I can't breathe. That means he's breathing because he's talking and a person who can't inhale can talk, but he can't breathe. But that isn't part of what the police are trained in. They also feel that the person gets increased superhuman strength
from this adrenaline rush, which isn't true. And that's an example of why police use excessive force sometimes because they decedent the victim is using excessive force, and they are these myths that are used to excuse and cover up really deaths caused by police and that the medical examiners, unfortunately are often part of that whitewash if they use terms like excited delirium, which is junk science, or terms
like sickle cell trade. Eight percent of black people in the United States have sickled trait, which is a perfectly benigh condition causes no harm. But at eight percent of people Black people died during the encounters can be used to be the cause of death when that also isn't true. So that's because of death leading to natural condition ends the investigation.
And that's unfortunate.
Because we whore doctors get involved with the racial division that the negative racial divisions that can occur in this country.
You became friends with attorney Johnny Cochrane, and Johnny Cochrane tried to convince you to become more involved in civil rights cases. Tell us about why he thought you should be more involved, and a little bit about this what he wanted to impart to you about it.
Well, I've met Johnny Cochran a few cases in which black people died, Ron Settle's case, for example, and he was just an amazing person. He's deceased now, but he was right, articulate, just a beautiful, nice human being. And there weren't too many medical examiners that he trusted because he felt and I got to understand why that's too much biased, not only in the police, but also in medical examiners. And that's why he would call upon me from time to time, including we both were involved.
In the O. J.
Simpson case, which we spent a lot of time together, and he was in that case. It was Johnny Cochrane's ability to relate to a jury, which is so important in criminal cases. Is not just what they learned in lawyers learn in law school, but whether or not the jurors like not only the defendant but also the defendant's lawyers. He appealed to jurors, and then he was the reason why I think Oj Simpson, I'm not guilty in the criminal case.
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You fast forward somewhat to summer of twenty fourteen in New York City and police officers approach Eric Garner, forty three year old illegally selling single cigarettes in a very poor neighborhood. You write three weeks later, Michael Brown, eighteen year old and his friend in the Saint Louis County suburb of Ferguson, Missouri. This officer stops the two teens and tells them to use the sidewalk, and some words
are exchange. You write that neither Garner nor Brown survived their police encounters, and their violent desk triggered national demonstrations against police brutality, as well as a debate about policing in the community of color and racial discrimination in criminal justice systems. And you write about the importance of smartphones emerging and helping society actually see these crimes, but also help out medical examiners like yourself.
Yeah, it was interesting and was the use of the smartphone nineteen and twenty oh seven. When the smartphone comes in that you can take videos that there's suddenly one can communicate so easily.
In the smartphones.
Yes, so that deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner at in struggles with police, which before the smartphone would have been just local. Even Ron Settles and Arthur Miller deaths, they were localized. Arthur Miller was localized to Brooklyn, Ron Settles was localized to Los Angeles. They didn't get countrywide attention until the smartphones came in where people could video things, as both of those cases were videoed and sent around
the country immediately. And I think what happened the Michael Brown was the issue with whether or not the police officer should have shot him. He shot him I think seven times, whether it was nex stary to shoot him, but the cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds. With Eric Garner died of a chokehold around his neck. A sleeper hole. It was meant to compress the carotid arteries so the person goes to sleep by cutting down the
amount of oxygen going to the brain. But if you leave that hold on too long, the brain starts cells start dying. So he had pressure on his back from pressure while the police were subduing him, and pressure on his neck like George Floyd had. Later on years later
and it was filmed. One of the neighbors filmed the encounter with police and it showed that Eric Garner did not fight with police, didn't reach out to hurt anybody, but he was grabbed around the neck and back, taking to the ground and was unconscious and lifeless within forty eight seconds. I say forty eight seconds because you can see that on the video that was taken by the neighbor had a video and you can see the number seconds, and it shows how quickly death can occur if breathing
an oxygen going to the brain is interfered with. It's like the George Floyd concern that was so important in civil rights matters became a concern because the way of fifteen year old girl took a video showing how ruthless it appeared on her video. The officer was the officer in Minneapolis who had his knon Floyd's neck while pressure was put on the back by another officer and caused his death in a few minutes while both of them you can hear on the videos sound and both of
them were saying, I can't breathe. I can't breathe, yes, and both of them the officer said, well, you can't breathe. That means you're breathing, which is totally wrong. And so that suddenly this grouping of cases that received a lot of publicity because of these smartphones and the news media, and that raised a lot of issues as to the racial divide in the country. And I must say that it was racial divide was always there. It's just that
it was localized, even with OJ Simpson. And that prised me a lot too that in the nineteen nineties, the OJ Simpson was nineteen ninety four. At the end of the trial, the way the white community was devastated and the black community was very happy, even to me has been around for a while. The division between white and black as citizens was tremendous and it's continuing. And that's and more of these deaths are coming to a note because of the cell phones.
Benjamin Crump called you and you mentioned how important he was in your career. He called you, Omichael Brown, and you were asked to do the second autopsy. You say that the demonstrations after this case united black and white. You saw both black and white walking in tandem together to protest police brutality, and those spread to one hundred
and forty other cities in other communities worldwide. And also you were called in in the George Floyd case, and you opened the book with George Floyd, and you end the book with quite a bit about George Floyd and what was learned. And also you comment what if there was no smartphone recording that event, because immediately to demonstrate
everything that you write about in this book. And then we've spoken in this interview, the first autopsy for George Floyd listed this as natural causes, and you were brought in for the second autopsy amidst all these incredible demonstrations in Minneapolis and throughout the world as a result of the verdict or the diagnosis i should say, by the medical examiner. Tell us about your experience doing the second autopsy for George Floyd and Michael Brown.
Yeah, it's interesting because we mentioned O. J. Simpson in nineteen ninety four.
O J.
Simpson verdict and there's a clear division whites on one side, blacks on the other side. By the time we get to George Floyd, and before George Michael Brown and Eric Garner, there's a lot of white and black people together in demonstrations, and with George Floyd, the huge demonstrations were mostly white people with the brown and black people participating not only in this country but in other countries around Europe, and
all that were responded. And I think that the division, the number of deaths that were occurring on the coming to public scrutiny has made much of the community, the overall community realized that there is a definite racial by in how deaths occur in police encounters, and especially with George Floyd. What happened with George Floyd was that young
girl was taking the photographs. It was on television and when at the end of the autopsy, the disc attorney of somebody from the disc attorney's office gave a statement to the press that the autopsy, the medical examiner autopsy shows that the restraints pressures that were performed by the police had nothing to do with the death, that the police restraints not in any way cause a contribute to
the death. That's when Benjamin Crumb called me because the family was outraged, so you can see on television that the police officers is crushing the neck and the other officers are pressing on the back, and asked me to come down to do the second autopsy, which together with another forensic patholo just doctor Wilson, and we both did the second autopsy and concluded that clearly the death was caused by preventing George Floyd from breathing that way the
restraint was done that he couldn't there was no oxygen going to his brain because the carotid arteries were compressed by the knee pressure and the back pressure was causing
preventing the diaphragms from moving up and down properly. So no oxygen causes brain death and cardiac death, and that the restraints caused the death, not that as initial a statement by the prosecutor and medical examiner was that they had nothing to do with it and that they'd have to wait a few months before arriving at a conclusion as to the cause of death.
And we went that.
Crump had us make our opinions known to the press afterwards, and after the press came out and said that we had decided, we had determined that the death was caused by the restraint. The medical examin then that evening agreed and said that was the restraint with Floyd. But it was the usual thing death during police restraint was say the police had nothing to do with it, and we'll have an answer for you in about four months when everything dies down that will confirm our preliminary opinion.
You're right.
In the epilogue March eight, twenty twenty one, first day of Derek Shavin's murder trial, and six weeks later, the jury finds him guilty of second degree unintentional murder, third degree murder, and second degree murder, and he was sentenced to twenty two and a half years in prison. What did you see in this case that gave you some glimmer of hope and optimism, and also that was much different than the case's proceeding.
Well, it was the first time that a police officer had not only been convicted but sentenced to such a long term in jail that I was aware of at all. That usually in these deaths, there'll be internal investigations by the police department that will determine that everybody acted according to proper procedure and there'd be no criminal charges. Now, sometimes, as with Ron settles, go to a civil lawsuit, and sometimes the families will prevail in a civil lawsuit, but
rarely is there any punishment police officers. There was no punishment to the officers in the first case that I was involved with and the two girls who were killed in nineteen sixty three career girl murders. That was the arrest on the basis of a planted confession. He eventually got out and was found not guilty, but the officers were not punished then, and the officers are not punished
very much even with Eric Garner case. Eric Garner case that showed the officers causing the death of Eric Garner, but first the city was looking into criminal charges against the officer involved, and then the federal government was involved in it. But they waited so long that the after five years the statue of limitations ran out and there was no criminal punishment for anybody in the Eric Garner's
case or in Michael Brown's case. But I think that it shows that the public is more aware of the unfairness in the civil justice system at times, and that there has to be strategies developed to improve the what happens when there's a conflict between police and often with persons more often than not, who are mentally dysfunctioning. The dysfunctioning because they're not taking their psychotic medications there or they're high on cocaine or some new drug of abuse.
And I think that tried to develop some strategies to improve the conditions, one of which which is they should be a national database on all deaths in police encounters and be able to determine how many are preventable, how many are caused by excessive use of ports by police, for example. And they have to be trained to know that if somebody says I can't breathe, they should stop the pressure. Whatever the pressure is, stop it because invariably
they're no longer a danger to anybody. They're trying to put handcuffs on a person and they're surrounded by police, two, three, four or five police, they're no danger to anybody. Instead of continuing the pressure, they should be thought that they should stop and just take a break for a bid. And I think that from the time of George Floyd
till now is three years. During those three years according to the very poor statistics we have the more than five thousand deaths during police encounters, very few of them get into the public arena, and because the only day that is The Washington Post has been able to collect about a thousand deaths a year of death during police encounters, and the State of Washington Medical School has investigated death certificates and finds that more than half the death certificates
the cause of death is whitewashed in deaths and encounters, that more than half the deaths are given causes of death such as sided delirium, such as sickle cell trade, such as undetermined that whitewashed the fact that they occurred
during the police encounter. Putting it together, they'd be about two thousand deaths a year about involving caused by police during encounters of persons who don't have weapons the persons who don't have weapons, and I think that we have to work at cutting down that number, and it requires at least to get a national database and see where the problems are.
Also recommend that they should ban prone back pressure, choke hold and spit hoods, as well as restraint chairs, all of which you write compair breathing and can cause death. You're rite that medical examiners should be independent of police and prosecutors, and there should be a limit qualified immunity. We didn't really go into discussing that, and another very important thing that we just barely touched on, the US should follow the lead of other nations that have banned
grand jury secrecy. You write in this book about how many of the charges the prosecutor presents to the grand jury the information and if he's selective or omits anything, then who knows what the grand jury how the story was conveyed to them. And it seems that it's not conveyed very very well in terms of this prosecution because there's no charges laid or there's no successful conviction.
Yeah, that was shown in Kentucky with a couple of years yars ago, Briona, a woman was Taylor shot in her house, shot in bed by police clearly who made an entry into the house because they thought there was somebody bed there, shot her, killed her clearly improperly, they had improper orders, they did things improperly, went to the
grand jury. The grand jury found that they are not guilty of anything, and that was then presented to the public that see that they didn't do anything, and one of the grand jurors, because they're not supposed to say anything, so outraged by it. He said, Yeah, the reason we didn't find any of the police guilty is because the disc attorney, the Attorney General, the state didn't offer us
that opportunity. All they asked us about was are they guilty of shooting into the wrong department and bullet went into the adjacent department. Yeah, there was somebody guilty of shooting into the wrong apartment. But they weren't even given the opportunity to evaluate whether or not any of the police officers who did the shooting should be found guilty of anything because the disc attorney didn't present it to them,
which was unknown. The public thought that the reason that they were found not guilty was because they found that they what they did was reasonable.
They didn't find it reasonable.
They didn't have so And I think that an awful lot happens in the grand jury, especially in these kind of cases that should not be hidden from public view. And England, I think stop the secret grand juries. Almost one hundred years ago they start. We inherited it in colonial days from England. England has found that it served no useful purpose and that it hides it can hide a lot of mis behavior by prosecutors who were out there to protect police that they work with every day.
Absolutely, I want to thank you so much, doctor Michael Baden for coming on and talking about your extraordinary American Autopsy One Medical Examiners decades long fight for racial justice in a broken legal system. It's truly extraordinary story chronicling your incredible career as a forensics pathologist and also a fighter for civil rights and for justice. And I want to applaud you on this extraordinary book, American Autopsy One Medical Examiners decades long fight for racial justice in a
broken legal system. I want to thank you very much for this interview, doctor Michael Baden, Dan, thank you for having me. Thank you, and you have a great evening. You twoe bye, good night, good night,