Minnesota Supreme Court overturns Stearns County man's 2016 murder conviction
MINNEAPOLIS — The Minnesota Supreme Court overturned a man's 2016 murder conviction for the death of his infant son on Wednesday.
Robert Kaiser was convicted of two counts of felony second-degree murder after his 2-month-old son, William, died from a traumatic brain injury in September 2014. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
According to court documents, two expert witnesses testifying for the State of Minnesota presented false evidence at Kaiser's trial. The Supreme Court ruled that the jury may have reached a different conclusion without the false testimony.
Due to the lack of bruising, lacerations or other signs of abuse, the State theorized that Kaiser had violently shaken his child, ultimately causing his death. It was also claimed that the abuse must have occurred while the child was in Kaiser's care.
A doctor who examined the child's eyes while he was ill, explained during the trial the link between macular schisis, which the child suffered, and abusive head trauma.
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"When I see something like a macular schisis cavity, it's — in seeing a lot of kids' eyes, there really isn't any other type of cause of that, that I've seen in my career," Dr. Jeffery Lynch said.
In closing, the State argued that "[a] macular schisis cavity is almost diagnostic of abusive injury."
Another expert witness, Dr. Carl Schmidt said that he "didn't think" that macular schisis had been described in other cases outside of abusive head trauma.
Kaiser filed a direct appeal and the court affirmed his conviction. He then petitioned for postconviction relief and requested a new trial "on the grounds of newly discovered evidence, false evidence, and ineffective assistance of counsel."
Court documents say during a nine-day evidentiary hearing on Kaiser's petition, Lynch testified again, saying that a macular schisis on its own is not diagnostic of abusive head trauma, contradicting part of the State's argument in the case against Kaiser.
Also during the evidentiary hearing, it was presented that cerebral venous thrombosis appeared on the child's brain scans. CVT is a non-traumatic condition that can lead to seizures and brain injuries.
A district court found that Kaiser's trial counsel "unreasonably failed to investigate evidence of WIlliam's cerebral venous thrombosis that would have contested a critical part of the prosecution's argument." The court also said that trial testimony from Lynch and Schmidt went "beyond mere opinion and stated a false medical fact."
Though not mentioned by the Supreme Court in its ruling, the medical examiner, Dr. Michael McGee who testified as to William's cause of death in Kaiser's trial has since come under scrutiny for questionable testimony in a number of cases.
The Northern Innocence Project began investigating Kaiser's case in 2020 and helped in the process of overturning his conviction.
Kaiser was released on bail in May 2022 after the Stearns County District Court vacated his original conviction.