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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, The most Shocking
Speaker 4: Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about him. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
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Speaker 4: host journalist and author Dan Zupanski, Good Evening.
Speaker 7: Doctor Michael Baden has been involved in some of the
Speaker 7: most high profile civil rights and police brutality cases in
Speaker 7: US history, from the government's nineteen seventy six reinvestigation of
Speaker 7: the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. To the twenty
Speaker 7: fourteen death of Michael Brown, whoy spark the initial Ferguson
Speaker 7: protests that grew into the Black Lives Matter movement. The
Speaker 7: playbook hasn't changed since nineteen seventy nine, when doctor Baden
Speaker 7: was demoted from his job as New York City's chief
Speaker 7: medical Examiner after ruling that the death of a black
Speaker 7: man in police custody was a homicide. So in twenty twenty,
Speaker 7: when the Floyd family, weary of the same system that
Speaker 7: oversaw Michael Brown's death, needed a second opinion, doctor Baden
Speaker 7: is who they call in these pages, doctor Baden chronicles
Speaker 7: his six decades on the front lines of the fight
Speaker 7: for accountability within the legal system, including the long history
Speaker 7: of medical examiners using a controversial syndrome called excited delirium,
Speaker 7: a term that shows up in the pathology coort for
Speaker 7: George Floyd to explain away the deaths of black and
Speaker 7: people of colored restrained by police. In the process, he
Speaker 7: brings to light the political issues that go on in
Speaker 7: the wake of often unrecorded fatal police encounters and the
Speaker 7: standoff between law enforcement and those they are sworn to protect.
Speaker 7: Full of behind the scenes drama and surprising revelations, American
Speaker 7: Autopsy is an invigorating and enraging read that is both
Speaker 7: timely and crucial for this turning point in our nation's history.
Speaker 7: The book they were featuring this evening is American Autopsy,
Speaker 7: One medical examiners decades long fight for racial justice in
Speaker 7: a broken legal system. With my special guest, forensic pathologist
Speaker 7: and former Chief Medical Examiner of New York City and author,
Speaker 7: doctor Michael Baden. Welcome to the program, and thank you
Speaker 7: so much for this interview, Doctor Michael Baiden. Dan, thank
Speaker 7: you so much for this interview. Let's start off initially
Speaker 7: right away, because a lot we have so much to
Speaker 7: cover in this extraordinary book that has really chronicles your
Speaker 7: career and the evolution of your career and your entry
Speaker 7: into this fight for civil rights. Let's talk about your start.
Speaker 7: You say you were in night eighteen sixty. You were
Speaker 7: working at Bellevue Hospital in New York City in the
Speaker 7: emergency department, and you had a wife, Judy Anne, and
Speaker 7: a daughter, Trisa, which was one years old. And you
Speaker 7: had two jobs at that time, an intern in internal
Speaker 7: medicine three nights a week, and also an assistant medical
Speaker 7: examiner and a tour doctor. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 7: about your start as a forensic pathologist and why you
Speaker 7: chose this career.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I graduated from City College in New York went to
Speaker 3: NYU Medical School with the idea of becoming an internal
Speaker 3: medicine doctor treating living patients. While at NYU Medical School,
Speaker 3: which was connected to Bellevue Hospital, the medical Examiner's office
Speaker 3: was located in the basement of Bellevue, and I went
Speaker 3: there to see a patient that I had seen as
Speaker 3: a medical student who died of a drug overdose, and
Speaker 3: went to see the autopsy that was performed by the
Speaker 3: medical examiner and became very interested immediately in autopsy procedures,
Speaker 3: in the anatomy of the body, in the amazing way
Speaker 3: in which cells talk to each other, trillions of cells
Speaker 3: that all know where to be to make us a person,
Speaker 3: and anatomy appeal to me very much, so I began
Speaker 3: working going as a medical student to see and participate
Speaker 3: in autopsies in the medical Examiner's office. Now, unlike the
Speaker 3: hospital where people are treated mostly for natural diseases cancer,
Speaker 3: heart disease, the medical examiner investigates deaths that are unnatural
Speaker 3: accidents suicide, homicide, drug overdoses. Part of the autopsy information
Speaker 3: that's gathered by the Medical Examiner's office, which I found
Speaker 3: intriguing and fascinating and was very attracted to. So I
Speaker 3: started working as a volunteer in the medical Examiner's office.
Speaker 3: They told me how to do autopsies as I when
Speaker 3: I got my license to practice medicine and graduation from
Speaker 3: a medical school, I became an employee paid employee of
Speaker 3: the Medical Examiner's office, going to scenes of death. The
Speaker 3: autopsy starts at the death scene, as you can see
Speaker 3: in many television programs, where the first thing that happens
Speaker 3: when somebody dies unnaturally is a examination of the circumstances
Speaker 3: of death, where how the person died, how the person
Speaker 3: was found before the body ever gets to the medical
Speaker 3: examiner's office to be autopsied. And I began as a
Speaker 3: tour doctor. In evenings, at nights, I'd be an intern
Speaker 3: resident at Bellevue in the daytime, proceeding with my interest
Speaker 3: in internal medicine, and in the evening I'd go to
Speaker 3: scenes of death and weekends holidays participate in the work
Speaker 3: in the morgue itself. So that's how I got started,
Speaker 3: and it was just fascinating to me to see how
Speaker 3: many different ways people can die, then how much can
Speaker 3: be learned at the autopsy table as to what causes
Speaker 3: death and how to prevent death. And I felt that
Speaker 3: with time that I'd be more useful to society if
Speaker 3: I became one of the very few forensic pathologists that
Speaker 3: were being developed instead of the thousands of internal medicine
Speaker 3: people that are quite good. And that got me toward
Speaker 3: changing from internal medicine to pathology.
Speaker 5: We go ahead.
Speaker 7: You write ahead about nineteen sixty four, and you were
Speaker 7: chief resident in pathology at Bellevue Hospital, but this chief
Speaker 7: psychiatrist there, Weinstein, he called you, and so people recognized
Speaker 7: how ambitious you were. And so this was about the
Speaker 7: Career girls murders. What did you learn there your first experience,
Speaker 7: I guess in seeing how the medical examiner also worked
Speaker 7: with police and the prosecution in cases. So what did
Speaker 7: this doctor Weinstein expose you to?
Speaker 3: I was his chief pathologist, resident at Bellevue at the
Speaker 3: time and working part time in the Medical Examiner's office.
Speaker 3: And there was a murder that captured the attention of
Speaker 3: the public called the Career Girl's murder, where two young
Speaker 3: girls who worked in New York City and had parents
Speaker 3: of significance were found dead and a black man, a
Speaker 3: young black man, was arrested. After a year long Searts
Speaker 3: was arrested, claimed his innocence and the police said, well
Speaker 3: he confessed at that time and still now. When there
Speaker 3: are psychiatric issues that come up, one of which is
Speaker 3: a person is going to trial psychiatrically fit to go
Speaker 3: to trial and could participate in his defense, the patient
Speaker 3: would be brought to Bellevue Hospital Psychiatric Prison Service. Doctor
Speaker 3: Weinstein was in charge of that. He called me over
Speaker 3: in this case when they were investigating the death of
Speaker 3: the career girls and said, I want to show you something,
Speaker 3: and he showed me a confession and said to me,
Speaker 3: this is a typical planted confession where all the information
Speaker 3: is given to the individual just answers yes or no.
Speaker 3: And the police considered that an admission and true was true.
Speaker 3: This individual that his alleged confession about which they based
Speaker 3: the restaurant contained questions like wasn't it seven o'clock at
Speaker 3: night that you entered their apartment?
Speaker 5: Yes? Was one of the girls undressed? Yes?
Speaker 3: And that was about thirty pages of yes's. And he said,
Speaker 3: this is typically a planted confession and is not an
Speaker 3: actual confession. And I suddenly had the understanding that not
Speaker 3: everything that is done by police is proper, because I,
Speaker 3: like all other medical examiners in the country, learn first
Speaker 3: about medical examiner work, working very closely with police, and
Speaker 3: accept them as really guardians of society. And here there
Speaker 3: were police were obviously arresting somebody and claiming somebody murdered
Speaker 3: these two people on the basis of his confession, which
Speaker 3: really wasn't a confession. It turned out a few months
Speaker 3: later that the real perpetrator confessed and was caught and
Speaker 3: had evidence of the death and wound up being convicted.
Speaker 3: And the black young man, Whitmore, was stayed in jail
Speaker 3: for a long time even after that, before he was
Speaker 3: finally released.
Speaker 5: Right, it was my.
Speaker 3: First impression really that hey, there's something wrong here in
Speaker 3: how justice has served. And that began my concerns about
Speaker 3: the criminal justice system as involves medical examiners.
Speaker 7: Right, you say two cases emerged that made you question everything,
Speaker 7: especially a term and a diagnosis called psychosis with exhaustion.
Speaker 7: This is a summer of sixty seven. You were thirty
Speaker 7: three years old, working full time at the medical Examiner's office.
Speaker 7: Tell us about Eric Johnson and Rikers Island.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I started then when I finished my training at Bellevue,
Speaker 3: became a full time medical examiner for the City of
Speaker 3: New York. And one of the early deaths that occurred
Speaker 3: was a prisoner at Rikers Island. You know, somebody who's
Speaker 3: been jailed there awaiting trial, who apparently got in a
Speaker 3: struggle with guards at Rikers and wound up being sprayed
Speaker 3: with tear gas and died during the altercation with police.
Speaker 3: And when the blackmail came to the medical Examiner's office
Speaker 3: and had marks on his neck and had particular hemorrhages
Speaker 3: hemorrhages in the eyes that are happened when there is
Speaker 3: death from neck compression, choking pressure on the neck and
Speaker 3: caused little hemorrhages in the eyes. And this person died
Speaker 3: while there was tear gas. Nobody saw the death. The
Speaker 3: three guards who were in with him and did the
Speaker 3: tear guessing had guess vests on before they did that,
Speaker 3: and it seemed to me that he died from choking,
Speaker 3: being choked to death during the struggle that was covered
Speaker 3: up by the tear gas fumes. And when the case
Speaker 3: was done and the chief medical examiner, after the mayor
Speaker 3: had called you a couple of times, determined that he
Speaker 3: had died of being overly exerting himself in the struggle,
Speaker 3: listed on the death certificate as psychosis with exhaustion.
Speaker 5: The idea being that the.
Speaker 3: Individual got so excited struggling with the police that he
Speaker 3: died of internal biochemical reaction of some sort, and it
Speaker 3: was really natural death, not a homicide, which it would
Speaker 3: be you are choke to death during the tear gassing.
Speaker 3: This psychosis with exhaustion has now turned into another term,
Speaker 3: excited delirium, and that was my introduction to the close
Speaker 3: bond between medical examiners and police. When civilians, unarmed people
Speaker 3: died during altercations with police, and the reason they die
Speaker 3: is because they can't breathe. With Eric Johnson, the person
Speaker 3: died there was impression of the neck which caused marks
Speaker 3: on the outskin hemorrhage underneath the skin, marks in the
Speaker 3: eyes as a result of that. When police subdue somebody
Speaker 3: who is not obeying commands, like usually they are persons
Speaker 3: who have psychiatric disorder, not taking their medication or heart
Speaker 3: on drugs of abuse, so the police called in because
Speaker 3: they're misbehaving. The first thing police will often do is
Speaker 3: say put your hands behind your back so we can
Speaker 3: put handcuffs on. If the individual doesn't obey those orders,
Speaker 3: then they take them down to put him on the
Speaker 3: ground and handcuff him from behind while he's prone on
Speaker 3: the ground, face down on the ground, while pressing on
Speaker 3: his back to be able to get his wrists together
Speaker 3: for the handcuffs. Often there's enough pressure on the back
Speaker 3: prone back to prevent the diaphragms from moving up and down,
Speaker 3: which the diaphragms order. We breathe about fifteen eighteen times
Speaker 3: a minute because our diaphragms are going up and down.
Speaker 3: Every time they go down, they suck in air into
Speaker 3: the lungs, and every time they go up they push
Speaker 3: air out, and that happens. That's part of our life,
Speaker 3: breathing necessary to stay alive with prone pressure that prevents
Speaker 3: the breathing. But the medical examiners, myself included, initially couldn't
Speaker 3: believe that the police would cause deaths of individuals from
Speaker 3: the way they subdue them, and that's where the concept
Speaker 3: of excited delirium was developed. That the person died not
Speaker 3: from pressure interference with breathing, but with adrenal glands making
Speaker 3: too much adrenaline was the main theory behind excited delirium,
Speaker 3: which is widely used by medical examiners, unfortunately as junk science,
Speaker 3: but it takes the police off the hook, and that
Speaker 3: was to me a further develop plopment further reincarnation of
Speaker 3: psychosis with exhaustion is that the police did not have
Speaker 3: anything to do with the death. That also came up
Speaker 3: with George Floyd, and my concern as I learned about
Speaker 3: this and experienced these kinds of deaths, was that the
Speaker 3: medical examiners were becoming a serious part of the problem
Speaker 3: of how deaths caused by police officers are being whitewashed
Speaker 3: by various diagnoses that are called natural. If a diagnosis
Speaker 3: a natural excited delirium or psychosis.
Speaker 5: With exhaustion, that's the end of the investigation.
Speaker 3: There's no investigator into anybody police doing anything wrong.
Speaker 5: And that's how.
Speaker 3: As I saw more and more of how deaths during
Speaker 3: police restraints developed and caused so much division division in
Speaker 3: our society. That the division being that most of the
Speaker 3: police are white, and a high proportion of people who
Speaker 3: die under these circumstances are black or brown and lead
Speaker 3: to the kind of social unrest that the death of
Speaker 3: Michael Brown, the death of George Floyd Tyree Nichols developed
Speaker 3: in this showed. In this country the division has been there,
Speaker 3: but it's now become more apparent, more obvious, and more
Speaker 3: divisive as social media connects people more than it used
Speaker 3: to be. That a death in Brooklyn State in Brooklyn,
Speaker 3: now a death in Brooklyn can immediately be seen all
Speaker 3: over the United States. So and I think the divisions
Speaker 3: that we're seeing, the racial divisions, have always been there
Speaker 3: in our country, but have manifest themselves more obviously in
Speaker 3: the past kind of fifteen years, since each death became
Speaker 3: more apparent to the community at large.
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Speaker 7: Now, let's talk about Attica briefly, because it's it. We
Speaker 7: could go and delve into that story quite a while.
Speaker 7: But Attica, New York Prisoners has seized control of the
Speaker 7: prison and taken hostages September ninth, nineteen seventy one. Now,
Speaker 7: a few days later, you write that the state police
Speaker 7: stormed the prison and on the September thirteen, there was
Speaker 7: a raid with forty three people dead, ten hostages and
Speaker 7: thirty three prisoners. You were there to do autopsies on
Speaker 7: the victims. Tell us what the contentious out delegation or
Speaker 7: assertion was regarding these hostages and the prisoners.
Speaker 3: All the statements initially when the attica was retaken by
Speaker 3: the state police with the deaths of forty three individuals
Speaker 3: was that the inmates had caused the deaths, the inmates
Speaker 3: had killed the prisoners, and the prisoners said, and the
Speaker 3: families of the prisoners was no, that's not true, that
Speaker 3: it was the guards that killed the other guards. That
Speaker 3: ten guards were not killed by inmates, which caused the
Speaker 3: police to be shooting up and shooting a lot of
Speaker 3: the inmates. The inmates deaths were attributed to various police
Speaker 3: agencies that were involved.
Speaker 5: The deaths of the.
Speaker 3: Ten guards were attributed to the inmates killed the guards,
Speaker 3: and that's why the police had to kill so many inmates.
Speaker 3: And there was a dispute, and I was asked to
Speaker 3: come up and to do a second autopsy and all
Speaker 3: of the deaths, especially of the ten guards. And my
Speaker 3: conclusion was after autopsying the ten guards was that they
Speaker 3: all died from friendly fire, that the inmates hadn't killed
Speaker 3: any of the guards, and it also opened my eyes
Speaker 3: to see the huge numbers of inmates who were black
Speaker 3: and brown. That is the concept that was learned was
Speaker 3: taught to us by police as we learned about being
Speaker 3: forensic pathologists and dealing with police all types of deaths,
Speaker 3: but especially homicidal deaths, was that somehow there's a racist
Speaker 3: bias built into structurally, I think, into police work. That
Speaker 3: black people are more likely to be criminal, that black
Speaker 3: people are stronger, and that's why police have to use
Speaker 3: successive force to subdue black and brown people has built
Speaker 3: into the police structure, and that is adopted by medical
Speaker 3: examiners we learn from and that then became my concern
Speaker 3: is that much of the problem which is recognized, the
Speaker 3: division in a racial division in our country, is recognized
Speaker 3: to be partly due to activities of police and also prosecutors,
Speaker 3: but not to realize that medical examiners, that me that
Speaker 3: my profession is also part of the problem because we
Speaker 3: tend to misdiagnose deaths that are caused by police and
Speaker 3: correction officers, by law enforcement, and then there's no further
Speaker 3: investigation as to how the deaths occurred and what can
Speaker 3: be done to correct the problems so that there are
Speaker 3: less racial deaths that occur that by themselves are horrible
Speaker 3: but also stimulate a big divide now society.
Speaker 7: You talk about that Attica changed your career, and after
Speaker 7: you returned to New York, the calls came in from
Speaker 7: all over the country and then case came up involving
Speaker 7: a person named Arthur Miller, and as we talked about
Speaker 7: in the introduction, you were demoted and there was talk
Speaker 7: of and you were convinced to sue the city.
Speaker 3: By nineteen seventy eight seventy nine, I had become chief
Speaker 3: medical Examiner in New York City and one of the
Speaker 3: first deaths that I got involved with was Arthur Miller,
Speaker 3: who was a black businessman in Brooklyn and was involved
Speaker 3: with an incident in which police took him to the ground,
Speaker 3: put him in the police car. He said, I can't breathe,
Speaker 3: I can't breathe. Then by the time the car got
Speaker 3: to the precinct house, he was dead, and I ruled
Speaker 3: that that was death closed by the police and it
Speaker 3: was a homicide, and the medical examiner who was in
Speaker 3: Brooklyn was concerned because usually they would call that death
Speaker 3: blame on excessive reaction to the police on the part
Speaker 3: of the neurological reaction hormonal reaction that caused the death.
Speaker 3: There was a natural death due to the fact that
Speaker 3: this person didn't obey what the police told him to do.
Speaker 3: In that ground. I was then demoted the deputy chief
Speaker 3: medical examiner from chief. But what was interesting about it.
Speaker 3: Shortly after my demotion, I got a call from a
Speaker 3: young black lawyer, Johnny Cochrane, who was in California, who
Speaker 3: was wanted an exhumation of a young man who died
Speaker 3: in the Los Angeles area and was buried in Tennessee
Speaker 3: and called a suicide. And he thought that the young
Speaker 3: men had been killed by police by being strangled while
Speaker 3: in the county jail and asked if I would perform
Speaker 3: an exhumation on the body. And that's how I got
Speaker 3: involved with Johnny Cochrane and a number of the leading
Speaker 3: people in the civil rights movement. And the reason Cochrane
Speaker 3: called me was because he felt that I was a
Speaker 3: medical examiner who stood up to the mayor and who
Speaker 3: stood up to in the death of Arthur Miller in
Speaker 3: particular and that got me involved in that. After that,
Speaker 3: with many other civil rights cases.
Speaker 7: You contended that the medical Examiner's office, with this lawsuit
Speaker 7: you wanted. You contended that you should have independence and
Speaker 7: not be able to be fired by the mayor.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, when I was demoted from Chief Medical Examiner
Speaker 3: to deputy Chief Medical examine I brought a lawsuit that
Speaker 3: couldn't devote me just because they didn't like my diagnosis
Speaker 3: was correct that that was a homicide and that was
Speaker 3: contrary to the civil service laws which I was appointed
Speaker 3: by civil service after an examination, the highest civil service position.
Speaker 5: In the City of New York.
Speaker 3: And I sued and the court, the federal court ruled
Speaker 3: in my favor ordered me reinstated because the mayor couldn't
Speaker 3: demote me without giving inadequate reason, which he didn't have.
Speaker 3: He said, I was very good forensic mythologist. He didn't
Speaker 3: like my decisions in some of my decisions, and so
Speaker 3: in the federal court I was reinstated. But then the
Speaker 3: city appealed, and on the appeal the circuit court said, well,
Speaker 3: the chief medical Examiner is too close to the mayor
Speaker 3: and shouldn't be protected by civil service and there should
Speaker 3: be somebody at the mayor could appoint and fire at will,
Speaker 3: which you can't do in civil service. And so took
Speaker 3: the job of chief medical Examiner in New York City,
Speaker 3: a medical examiner out of civil service, and therefore the
Speaker 3: mayor could fire me for any wish he wanted, and
Speaker 3: that unfortunately happened to the next person he appointed as
Speaker 3: chief medical examiner in New York City who was eventually
Speaker 3: fired by the mayor because he didn't like what he said.
Speaker 3: And it is part of the reason around the country
Speaker 3: that most medical examers are subject to being punished being
Speaker 3: fired if they make diagnoses, especially when it comes to
Speaker 3: police death during police activity, that the mayor doesn't like
Speaker 3: it or isn't politically benefit to the mayor.
Speaker 7: You talk about another case disturbing case, Ron Settles, that
Speaker 7: Johnny cochran was involved. Can you tell us just the
Speaker 7: particulars of that case and why you wrote about it
Speaker 7: and referenced it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when Johnny Cockeran called me to do the exhumation
Speaker 3: that was the death of Ron Settles, turned out I hadn't.
Speaker 3: Ron Settles was a leading college football player in Los
Speaker 3: Angeles and was about to get a good professional career
Speaker 3: when he was stopped by police because he was in
Speaker 3: a very flashy, expensive car. This was Signal Hill area
Speaker 3: of Los Angeles and it didn't look right that black
Speaker 3: kid could be in a fancy car, and the course
Speaker 3: of stopping settles. He was arrested, brought into the station
Speaker 3: house and wound up hanging in a cell. Initially the
Speaker 3: diagnosis was that it was a suicidal hanging. Doctor Johnny
Speaker 3: Cochrane was hired by the families and never committed suicide.
Speaker 3: He was just his career and football was starting and
Speaker 3: asked about assuming the body in Tennessee. And the reason
Speaker 3: he called me was because he didn't trust medical examiners.
Speaker 3: But since he read about my being demoted because in
Speaker 3: New York City because he said police caused the death,
Speaker 3: contacted me.
Speaker 5: We resumed the body.
Speaker 3: We found evidence that from the hemorrhages in the neck
Speaker 3: that this was not a suicidal hanging, but was a
Speaker 3: net compression. The different areas of the neck that I
Speaker 3: damaged with hanging. The ligature is up right underneath the
Speaker 3: jaw bone, above the larynx, above the Adams apple. In strangulation.
Speaker 3: With manual strangulation, it's just below just above the Adams
Speaker 3: apple and causes fractures, multiple fractures of the Adams apple,
Speaker 3: which is a thyroid cartilage.
Speaker 5: And the hanging.
Speaker 3: Most hagings don't cause any fractures because they're above the larynx, right,
Speaker 3: So that's what i'd said, And then the family settled
Speaker 3: the case then with signal Hill. But that's what happened
Speaker 3: with Ron Settles. Just somebody who was clearly abused by police.
Speaker 3: Initially suicide. That ends the investigation. Family hired their own
Speaker 3: independent expert who was able to get more information that
Speaker 3: showed what the police did it was towards his death.
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Speaker 7: the smartest way to hire. Now, you were involved in
Speaker 7: the formation of a new body and this position you
Speaker 7: said had the potential to open a new chapter in
Speaker 7: your life. And this is the New York State Police
Speaker 7: Forensic Science unit. You were working with Robert Horn from
Speaker 7: your Attica experience and he ran the crime lab. Tell
Speaker 7: us a little bit more about this position you said
Speaker 7: they had the potential to open up a new chapter
Speaker 7: in your life.
Speaker 3: After I was demoted from Chief Medical Examiner in New
Speaker 3: York City and was then reinstated by the federal court
Speaker 3: and then that was overturned. By that time, I had
Speaker 3: twenty five years experience with the Medical Examiner's office, and
Speaker 3: I was New York City and I was called by
Speaker 3: the New York State Police and they indicated that problem
Speaker 3: in New York State for the state Police was that
Speaker 3: there's sixty two counties most corner camp about forty five
Speaker 3: coroner counties, and the medical examiners and coroners didn't always
Speaker 3: do proper autopsies around the state and that interfered with
Speaker 3: the ability to state police to investigate deaths that were
Speaker 3: in their jurisdiction. And they were setting up a new unit,
Speaker 3: a forensic science unit for the New York State Police,
Speaker 3: and asked if I could come and head that up,
Speaker 3: and which I did. I transferred. I transferred from New
Speaker 3: York City to New York State and headed up with
Speaker 3: a forensic dentist, doctor Lolvine. We set up this forensic
Speaker 3: science unit that was available to any county in New
Speaker 3: York State, in New York State if a forensicthology of
Speaker 3: forensic any forensic issues occurred, and that was invigorating. That
Speaker 3: gave me a lot more different areas to be involved
Speaker 3: in to see all of the different counties and states
Speaker 3: and the cities in New York, which is amazing. I
Speaker 3: was born in the Bronx, grew up in Brooklyn, and
Speaker 3: lived in Manhattan, and that was my whole life before
Speaker 3: I got involved with the State Police and then moved
Speaker 3: up to Albany for a while and went around the
Speaker 3: state lecturing forensic sciences to the various police departments, part
Speaker 3: of the educational process, and investigating debts, all kinds of
Speaker 3: different deaths that I didn't have in Sea in New
Speaker 3: York City.
Speaker 5: We didn't see deaths.
Speaker 3: In the woods, you know, forest woods and animal activity,
Speaker 3: and that's upstate New York that compared to the downstate
Speaker 3: New York. And I was able to spend the next
Speaker 3: twenty five years working with the State Police helping set
Speaker 3: up a new forensic science investigative of resources.
Speaker 7: You write about an exciting event for you, and it's
Speaker 7: very vivid description about you were involved with Medgar Evers internment. Yeah,
Speaker 7: June third, nineteen ninety one. So just tell us a
Speaker 7: little bit about what you call a deeply disturbing case
Speaker 7: and your involvement in some of your observations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, while working now with the State Police New York
Speaker 3: State Police. Back around nineteen ninety eighty one ninety two,
Speaker 3: I got a call from the disc attorney in Jackson,
Speaker 3: Mississippi that they were investigating an old civil rights murder.
Speaker 3: Megah Evers was as civil rights leader in nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: three when he was assassinated. He was shot in the back,
Speaker 3: just a few months before President Kennedy was killed. And
Speaker 3: at that time there were two trials in nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: three nineteen sixty four that had hung juries. And in
Speaker 3: this the call that came from the district attorney was
Speaker 3: that they now had evidence to be able to convict
Speaker 3: the person who did the shooting who was brought to trial,
Speaker 3: but both trials there was no because it was a
Speaker 3: hung jury, so that it was still a death that
Speaker 3: could be prosecuted. Right if he was found not guilty,
Speaker 3: that was the end of it. But he hadn't been
Speaker 3: found not guilty. And this is now about twenty eight
Speaker 3: years later. And asked, want to know, is there anything
Speaker 3: we could do to determine at this later date what
Speaker 3: the cause of death is one of the issues in
Speaker 3: the first trial and bring the case to trial. And
Speaker 3: I said, as I usually saying, those questions that for
Speaker 3: a medical examiner, burial is just long term storage, and
Speaker 3: we can exhume the body. Can't tell in advance how
Speaker 3: well the body's been preserved, but there's often additional evidence
Speaker 3: that might have been overlooked during the initial trial back
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty three. This is now in nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: four that we're talking about.
Speaker 5: And we did.
Speaker 3: We exhumed the body, and they called me because I
Speaker 3: was the head of the parentsic Unity of the New
Speaker 3: York State Police and as a court to see could
Speaker 3: we help them, and yes, we could help him help them,
Speaker 3: and we exhumed the body and the body was in
Speaker 3: perfect condition. Amazing, he had been buried and was an
Speaker 3: excellent condition. Is so we're able to reconstitute the bullet
Speaker 3: tract and go to trial and give enough evidence that
Speaker 3: in this the third trial, the perpetrator was convicted and
Speaker 3: sentenced to life in prison after it was about thirty
Speaker 3: years after the shooting had occurred.
Speaker 7: You saw a lot of cases where people died in custody,
Speaker 7: but you also saw cases where there was just a
Speaker 7: call from a family member concerned about a loved one,
Speaker 7: and then the issue of or the excuse of positional asphyxia.
Speaker 7: So you did examine cases where you were learning of
Speaker 7: all these again reasons for people dying in custody.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is oftentimes. We've remember fifty years I spent
Speaker 3: working with police, and they're excellent police out there, but
Speaker 3: when it comes to a death during police activity, there's
Speaker 3: a reluctance of medical examiners to put the blame on
Speaker 3: the police officer. That's why excited delirium came in existence,
Speaker 3: and psychosis with exhaustion before that that it's somehow it's
Speaker 3: not the policeman's full it's the fault of the bad
Speaker 3: guy that didn't obey police orders. And that's why I
Speaker 3: got more involved in excited delirium and tried to give
Speaker 3: lectures and try to have that eliminated as a cause
Speaker 3: of death, because many of the deaths during police encounters
Speaker 3: were blamed on excited delirium due to the individual making
Speaker 3: too much adrenaline and causing his own death a natural death,
Speaker 3: whereas in truth they were dying because they couldn't breathe.
Speaker 3: They couldn't breathe, and there were certain mythology about it.
Speaker 3: The police felt that if the person says I can't breathe.
Speaker 3: That means he's breathing because he's talking and a person
Speaker 3: who can't inhale can talk, but he can't breathe. But
Speaker 3: that isn't part of what the police are trained in.
Speaker 3: They also feel that the person gets increased superhuman strength
Speaker 3: from this adrenaline rush, which isn't true. And that's an
Speaker 3: example of why police use excessive force sometimes because they
Speaker 3: decedent the victim is using excessive force, and they are
Speaker 3: these myths that are used to excuse and cover up
Speaker 3: really deaths caused by police and that the medical examiners,
Speaker 3: unfortunately are often part of that whitewash if they use
Speaker 3: terms like excited delirium, which is junk science, or terms
Speaker 3: like sickle cell trade. Eight percent of black people in
Speaker 3: the United States have sickled trait, which is a perfectly
Speaker 3: benigh condition causes no harm. But at eight percent of
Speaker 3: people Black people died during the encounters can be used
Speaker 3: to be the cause of death when that also isn't true.
Speaker 3: So that's because of death leading to natural condition ends
Speaker 3: the investigation.
Speaker 5: And that's unfortunate.
Speaker 3: Because we whore doctors get involved with the racial division
Speaker 3: that the negative racial divisions that can occur in this country.
Speaker 7: You became friends with attorney Johnny Cochrane, and Johnny Cochrane
Speaker 7: tried to convince you to become more involved in civil
Speaker 7: rights cases. Tell us about why he thought you should
Speaker 7: be more involved, and a little bit about this what
Speaker 7: he wanted to impart to you about it.
Speaker 3: Well, I've met Johnny Cochran a few cases in which
Speaker 3: black people died, Ron Settle's case, for example, and he
Speaker 3: was just an amazing person. He's deceased now, but he
Speaker 3: was right, articulate, just a beautiful, nice human being. And
Speaker 3: there weren't too many medical examiners that he trusted because
Speaker 3: he felt and I got to understand why that's too
Speaker 3: much biased, not only in the police, but also in
Speaker 3: medical examiners. And that's why he would call upon me
Speaker 3: from time to time, including we both were involved.
Speaker 5: In the O. J.
Speaker 3: Simpson case, which we spent a lot of time together,
Speaker 3: and he was in that case. It was Johnny Cochrane's
Speaker 3: ability to relate to a jury, which is so important
Speaker 3: in criminal cases. Is not just what they learned in
Speaker 3: lawyers learn in law school, but whether or not the
Speaker 3: jurors like not only the defendant but also the defendant's lawyers.
Speaker 3: He appealed to jurors, and then he was the reason
Speaker 3: why I think Oj Simpson, I'm not guilty in the
Speaker 3: criminal case.
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Speaker 7: You fast forward somewhat to summer of twenty fourteen in
Speaker 7: New York City and police officers approach Eric Garner, forty
Speaker 7: three year old illegally selling single cigarettes in a very
Speaker 7: poor neighborhood. You write three weeks later, Michael Brown, eighteen
Speaker 7: year old and his friend in the Saint Louis County
Speaker 7: suburb of Ferguson, Missouri. This officer stops the two teens
Speaker 7: and tells them to use the sidewalk, and some words
Speaker 7: are exchange. You write that neither Garner nor Brown survived
Speaker 7: their police encounters, and their violent desk triggered national demonstrations
Speaker 7: against police brutality, as well as a debate about policing
Speaker 7: in the community of color and racial discrimination in criminal
Speaker 7: justice systems. And you write about the importance of smartphones
Speaker 7: emerging and helping society actually see these crimes, but also
Speaker 7: help out medical examiners like yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was interesting and was the use of the
Speaker 3: smartphone nineteen and twenty oh seven. When the smartphone comes
Speaker 3: in that you can take videos that there's suddenly one
Speaker 3: can communicate so easily.
Speaker 5: In the smartphones.
Speaker 3: Yes, so that deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner
Speaker 3: at in struggles with police, which before the smartphone would
Speaker 3: have been just local. Even Ron Settles and Arthur Miller deaths,
Speaker 3: they were localized. Arthur Miller was localized to Brooklyn, Ron
Speaker 3: Settles was localized to Los Angeles. They didn't get countrywide
Speaker 3: attention until the smartphones came in where people could video things,
Speaker 3: as both of those cases were videoed and sent around
Speaker 3: the country immediately. And I think what happened the Michael
Speaker 3: Brown was the issue with whether or not the police
Speaker 3: officer should have shot him. He shot him I think
Speaker 3: seven times, whether it was nex stary to shoot him,
Speaker 3: but the cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds. With
Speaker 3: Eric Garner died of a chokehold around his neck. A
Speaker 3: sleeper hole. It was meant to compress the carotid arteries
Speaker 3: so the person goes to sleep by cutting down the
Speaker 3: amount of oxygen going to the brain. But if you
Speaker 3: leave that hold on too long, the brain starts cells
Speaker 3: start dying. So he had pressure on his back from
Speaker 3: pressure while the police were subduing him, and pressure on
Speaker 3: his neck like George Floyd had. Later on years later
Speaker 3: and it was filmed. One of the neighbors filmed the
Speaker 3: encounter with police and it showed that Eric Garner did
Speaker 3: not fight with police, didn't reach out to hurt anybody,
Speaker 3: but he was grabbed around the neck and back, taking
Speaker 3: to the ground and was unconscious and lifeless within forty
Speaker 3: eight seconds. I say forty eight seconds because you can
Speaker 3: see that on the video that was taken by the
Speaker 3: neighbor had a video and you can see the number seconds,
Speaker 3: and it shows how quickly death can occur if breathing
Speaker 3: an oxygen going to the brain is interfered with. It's
Speaker 3: like the George Floyd concern that was so important in
Speaker 3: civil rights matters became a concern because the way of
Speaker 3: fifteen year old girl took a video showing how ruthless
Speaker 3: it appeared on her video. The officer was the officer
Speaker 3: in Minneapolis who had his knon Floyd's neck while pressure
Speaker 3: was put on the back by another officer and caused
Speaker 3: his death in a few minutes while both of them
Speaker 3: you can hear on the videos sound and both of
Speaker 3: them were saying, I can't breathe. I can't breathe, yes,
Speaker 3: and both of them the officer said, well, you can't breathe.
Speaker 3: That means you're breathing, which is totally wrong. And so
Speaker 3: that suddenly this grouping of cases that received a lot
Speaker 3: of publicity because of these smartphones and the news media,
Speaker 3: and that raised a lot of issues as to the
Speaker 3: racial divide in the country. And I must say that
Speaker 3: it was racial divide was always there. It's just that
Speaker 3: it was localized, even with OJ Simpson. And that prised
Speaker 3: me a lot too that in the nineteen nineties, the
Speaker 3: OJ Simpson was nineteen ninety four. At the end of
Speaker 3: the trial, the way the white community was devastated and
Speaker 3: the black community was very happy, even to me has
Speaker 3: been around for a while. The division between white and
Speaker 3: black as citizens was tremendous and it's continuing. And that's
Speaker 3: and more of these deaths are coming to a note
Speaker 3: because of the cell phones.
Speaker 7: Benjamin Crump called you and you mentioned how important he
Speaker 7: was in your career. He called you, Omichael Brown, and
Speaker 7: you were asked to do the second autopsy. You say
Speaker 7: that the demonstrations after this case united black and white.
Speaker 7: You saw both black and white walking in tandem together
Speaker 7: to protest police brutality, and those spread to one hundred
Speaker 7: and forty other cities in other communities worldwide. And also
Speaker 7: you were called in in the George Floyd case, and
Speaker 7: you opened the book with George Floyd, and you end
Speaker 7: the book with quite a bit about George Floyd and
Speaker 7: what was learned. And also you comment what if there
Speaker 7: was no smartphone recording that event, because immediately to demonstrate
Speaker 7: everything that you write about in this book. And then
Speaker 7: we've spoken in this interview, the first autopsy for George
Speaker 7: Floyd listed this as natural causes, and you were brought
Speaker 7: in for the second autopsy amidst all these incredible demonstrations
Speaker 7: in Minneapolis and throughout the world as a result of
Speaker 7: the verdict or the diagnosis i should say, by the
Speaker 7: medical examiner. Tell us about your experience doing the second
Speaker 7: autopsy for George Floyd and Michael Brown.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting because we mentioned O. J. Simpson in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 6: O J.
Speaker 3: Simpson verdict and there's a clear division whites on one side,
Speaker 3: blacks on the other side. By the time we get
Speaker 3: to George Floyd, and before George Michael Brown and Eric Garner,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of white and black people together in demonstrations,
Speaker 3: and with George Floyd, the huge demonstrations were mostly white
Speaker 3: people with the brown and black people participating not only
Speaker 3: in this country but in other countries around Europe, and
Speaker 3: all that were responded. And I think that the division,
Speaker 3: the number of deaths that were occurring on the coming
Speaker 3: to public scrutiny has made much of the community, the
Speaker 3: overall community realized that there is a definite racial by
Speaker 3: in how deaths occur in police encounters, and especially with
Speaker 3: George Floyd. What happened with George Floyd was that young
Speaker 3: girl was taking the photographs. It was on television and
Speaker 3: when at the end of the autopsy, the disc attorney
Speaker 3: of somebody from the disc attorney's office gave a statement
Speaker 3: to the press that the autopsy, the medical examiner autopsy
Speaker 3: shows that the restraints pressures that were performed by the
Speaker 3: police had nothing to do with the death, that the
Speaker 3: police restraints not in any way cause a contribute to
Speaker 3: the death. That's when Benjamin Crumb called me because the
Speaker 3: family was outraged, so you can see on television that
Speaker 3: the police officers is crushing the neck and the other
Speaker 3: officers are pressing on the back, and asked me to
Speaker 3: come down to do the second autopsy, which together with
Speaker 3: another forensic patholo just doctor Wilson, and we both did
Speaker 3: the second autopsy and concluded that clearly the death was
Speaker 3: caused by preventing George Floyd from breathing that way the
Speaker 3: restraint was done that he couldn't there was no oxygen
Speaker 3: going to his brain because the carotid arteries were compressed
Speaker 3: by the knee pressure and the back pressure was causing
Speaker 3: preventing the diaphragms from moving up and down properly. So
Speaker 3: no oxygen causes brain death and cardiac death, and that
Speaker 3: the restraints caused the death, not that as initial a
Speaker 3: statement by the prosecutor and medical examiner was that they
Speaker 3: had nothing to do with it and that they'd have
Speaker 3: to wait a few months before arriving at a conclusion
Speaker 3: as to the cause of death.
Speaker 5: And we went that.
Speaker 3: Crump had us make our opinions known to the press afterwards,
Speaker 3: and after the press came out and said that we
Speaker 3: had decided, we had determined that the death was caused
Speaker 3: by the restraint. The medical examin then that evening agreed
Speaker 3: and said that was the restraint with Floyd. But it
Speaker 3: was the usual thing death during police restraint was say
Speaker 3: the police had nothing to do with it, and we'll
Speaker 3: have an answer for you in about four months when
Speaker 3: everything dies down that will confirm our preliminary opinion.
Speaker 4: You're right.
Speaker 7: In the epilogue March eight, twenty twenty one, first day
Speaker 7: of Derek Shavin's murder trial, and six weeks later, the
Speaker 7: jury finds him guilty of second degree unintentional murder, third
Speaker 7: degree murder, and second degree murder, and he was sentenced
Speaker 7: to twenty two and a half years in prison. What
Speaker 7: did you see in this case that gave you some
Speaker 7: glimmer of hope and optimism, and also that was much
Speaker 7: different than the case's proceeding.
Speaker 3: Well, it was the first time that a police officer
Speaker 3: had not only been convicted but sentenced to such a
Speaker 3: long term in jail that I was aware of at all.
Speaker 3: That usually in these deaths, there'll be internal investigations by
Speaker 3: the police department that will determine that everybody acted according
Speaker 3: to proper procedure and there'd be no criminal charges. Now, sometimes,
Speaker 3: as with Ron settles, go to a civil lawsuit, and
Speaker 3: sometimes the families will prevail in a civil lawsuit, but
Speaker 3: rarely is there any punishment police officers. There was no
Speaker 3: punishment to the officers in the first case that I
Speaker 3: was involved with and the two girls who were killed
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty three career girl murders. That was the
Speaker 3: arrest on the basis of a planted confession. He eventually
Speaker 3: got out and was found not guilty, but the officers
Speaker 3: were not punished then, and the officers are not punished
Speaker 3: very much even with Eric Garner case. Eric Garner case
Speaker 3: that showed the officers causing the death of Eric Garner,
Speaker 3: but first the city was looking into criminal charges against
Speaker 3: the officer involved, and then the federal government was involved
Speaker 3: in it. But they waited so long that the after
Speaker 3: five years the statue of limitations ran out and there
Speaker 3: was no criminal punishment for anybody in the Eric Garner's
Speaker 3: case or in Michael Brown's case. But I think that
Speaker 3: it shows that the public is more aware of the
Speaker 3: unfairness in the civil justice system at times, and that
Speaker 3: there has to be strategies developed to improve the what
Speaker 3: happens when there's a conflict between police and often with
Speaker 3: persons more often than not, who are mentally dysfunctioning. The
Speaker 3: dysfunctioning because they're not taking their psychotic medications there or
Speaker 3: they're high on cocaine or some new drug of abuse.
Speaker 3: And I think that tried to develop some strategies to
Speaker 3: improve the conditions, one of which which is they should
Speaker 3: be a national database on all deaths in police encounters
Speaker 3: and be able to determine how many are preventable, how
Speaker 3: many are caused by excessive use of ports by police,
Speaker 3: for example. And they have to be trained to know
Speaker 3: that if somebody says I can't breathe, they should stop
Speaker 3: the pressure. Whatever the pressure is, stop it because invariably
Speaker 3: they're no longer a danger to anybody. They're trying to
Speaker 3: put handcuffs on a person and they're surrounded by police, two, three,
Speaker 3: four or five police, they're no danger to anybody. Instead
Speaker 3: of continuing the pressure, they should be thought that they
Speaker 3: should stop and just take a break for a bid.
Speaker 3: And I think that from the time of George Floyd
Speaker 3: till now is three years. During those three years according
Speaker 3: to the very poor statistics we have the more than
Speaker 3: five thousand deaths during police encounters, very few of them
Speaker 3: get into the public arena, and because the only day
Speaker 3: that is The Washington Post has been able to collect
Speaker 3: about a thousand deaths a year of death during police encounters,
Speaker 3: and the State of Washington Medical School has investigated death
Speaker 3: certificates and finds that more than half the death certificates
Speaker 3: the cause of death is whitewashed in deaths and encounters,
Speaker 3: that more than half the deaths are given causes of
Speaker 3: death such as sided delirium, such as sickle cell trade,
Speaker 3: such as undetermined that whitewashed the fact that they occurred
Speaker 3: during the police encounter. Putting it together, they'd be about
Speaker 3: two thousand deaths a year about involving caused by police
Speaker 3: during encounters of persons who don't have weapons the persons
Speaker 3: who don't have weapons, and I think that we have
Speaker 3: to work at cutting down that number, and it requires
Speaker 3: at least to get a national database and see where
Speaker 3: the problems are.
Speaker 7: Also recommend that they should ban prone back pressure, choke
Speaker 7: hold and spit hoods, as well as restraint chairs, all
Speaker 7: of which you write compair breathing and can cause death.
Speaker 7: You're rite that medical examiners should be independent of police
Speaker 7: and prosecutors, and there should be a limit qualified immunity.
Speaker 7: We didn't really go into discussing that, and another very
Speaker 7: important thing that we just barely touched on, the US
Speaker 7: should follow the lead of other nations that have banned
Speaker 7: grand jury secrecy. You write in this book about how
Speaker 7: many of the charges the prosecutor presents to the grand
Speaker 7: jury the information and if he's selective or omits anything,
Speaker 7: then who knows what the grand jury how the story
Speaker 7: was conveyed to them. And it seems that it's not
Speaker 7: conveyed very very well in terms of this prosecution because
Speaker 7: there's no charges laid or there's no successful conviction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was shown in Kentucky with a couple of
Speaker 3: years yars ago, Briona, a woman was Taylor shot in
Speaker 3: her house, shot in bed by police clearly who made
Speaker 3: an entry into the house because they thought there was
Speaker 3: somebody bed there, shot her, killed her clearly improperly, they
Speaker 3: had improper orders, they did things improperly, went to the
Speaker 3: grand jury. The grand jury found that they are not
Speaker 3: guilty of anything, and that was then presented to the
Speaker 3: public that see that they didn't do anything, and one
Speaker 3: of the grand jurors, because they're not supposed to say anything,
Speaker 3: so outraged by it. He said, Yeah, the reason we
Speaker 3: didn't find any of the police guilty is because the
Speaker 3: disc attorney, the Attorney General, the state didn't offer us
Speaker 3: that opportunity. All they asked us about was are they
Speaker 3: guilty of shooting into the wrong department and bullet went
Speaker 3: into the adjacent department. Yeah, there was somebody guilty of
Speaker 3: shooting into the wrong apartment. But they weren't even given
Speaker 3: the opportunity to evaluate whether or not any of the
Speaker 3: police officers who did the shooting should be found guilty
Speaker 3: of anything because the disc attorney didn't present it to them,
Speaker 3: which was unknown. The public thought that the reason that
Speaker 3: they were found not guilty was because they found that
Speaker 3: they what they did was reasonable.
Speaker 5: They didn't find it reasonable.
Speaker 3: They didn't have so And I think that an awful
Speaker 3: lot happens in the grand jury, especially in these kind
Speaker 3: of cases that should not be hidden from public view.
Speaker 3: And England, I think stop the secret grand juries. Almost
Speaker 3: one hundred years ago they start. We inherited it in
Speaker 3: colonial days from England. England has found that it served
Speaker 3: no useful purpose and that it hides it can hide
Speaker 3: a lot of mis behavior by prosecutors who were out
Speaker 3: there to protect police that they work with every day.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, I want to thank you so much, doctor Michael
Speaker 7: Baden for coming on and talking about your extraordinary American
Speaker 7: Autopsy One Medical Examiners decades long fight for racial justice
Speaker 7: in a broken legal system. It's truly extraordinary story chronicling
Speaker 7: your incredible career as a forensics pathologist and also a
Speaker 7: fighter for civil rights and for justice. And I want
Speaker 7: to applaud you on this extraordinary book, American Autopsy One
Speaker 7: Medical Examiners decades long fight for racial justice in a
Speaker 7: broken legal system. I want to thank you very much
Speaker 7: for this interview, doctor Michael Baden, Dan, thank you for
Speaker 7: having me. Thank you, and you have a great evening.
Speaker 7: You twoe bye, good night, good night,