7 autopsies performed by embattled ex-Ramsey County medical examiner to get second look
ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Ramsey County Attorney's Office says it's honing in on seven autopsies performed by former county medical examiner Michael McGee amid a yearslong investigation.
County Attorney John Choi launched a review in 2021 of 215 autopsies performed by McGee during his tenure between 1985 and 2019, the year he resigned.
Choi made the move following the decision to overturn the death sentence of prolific sex offender Alfonso Rodriguez in the 2003 murder of Dru Sjodin due to McGee's involvement in the trial.
North Dakota appellate court Judge Ralph Erickson accused McGee of "guessing" on the witness stand and delivering "unreliable, misleading and inaccurate" testimony. Rodriguez's murder sentence still stands.
Several punishments from cases involving McGee's reports and testimony have already been changed or thrown out entirely.
Investigation enters final phase
Choi tasked the nonprofit Prosecutors' Center for Excellence to head the inquiry. In a joint press conference on Wednesday morning, Choi and Kristine Hamann, the center's founder and executive director, announced the creation of a panel comprised of three "esteemed medical examiners" from outside of Minnesota.
The trio, which they say has no connection to McGee, will do a "deep dive" into his conclusions in those seven cases.
Hamann said in the first two phases of the investigation, a team of attorneys from across the nation examined whether McGee's testimonies or reports on the cause and manner of death may have been "erroneous or misstated, and contributed to a defendant's conviction."
"These cases were, I would guess, some of the most serious cases that have occurred here in Ramsey County over the past 20, 30, 40 years," Hamann said.
Investigators scoured through trial and grand jury transcripts, medical examiner files, crime scene photos, police reports and complaints, appellate decisions and more.
They concluded that in the majority of the cases, the cause and manner of death weren't an issue. And in dozens of cases, McGee was found to have had little involvement.
Hamann stressed her group hasn't made any conclusions on the remaining cases.
"They need to have further review by medical experts to understand the significance and the impact that (McGee) had on those seven cases," Hamann said.
Members of the Great North Innocence Project were also on hand. The group has been involved in past cases connected to McGee.
"They talk about where there's smoke, there's fire. This is a case where we're beyond the smoke phase," said Jim Mayer with the Great North Innocence Project. "We've seen the fire. That's why we're all standing here. The question now is how far the fire has spread."
Choi and Hamann gave no specific timeline for phase three's completion.
Cases so far where defendants were exonerated, granted reduced penalities
McGee's worked on cases for 34 years in more than a dozen Minnesota counties and some in Wisconsin.
In an interview last year with WCCO's Esme Murphy, Choi said his office's scrutiny of McGee's work began in 2011 with the exoneration of Michael Hanson, a Douglas County man convicted of second-degree murder in the 2004 death of his infant daughter.
"There was a judge in Douglas County who had come to the conclusion that, in an infant death case, (McGee's) conclusions were false or misleading," Choi said. "So because of that we did a very narrow review around infant death cases and we found a number of things. We found that Dr. McGee hadn't been connected to the latest research on that topic, and he wasn't participating in the Association of Medical Examiners."
In 2016, McGee testified in the trial of another Minnesota man who was eventually convicted of murdering his infant. In March 2024, Robert Kaiser's conviction was overturned by the Minnesota Supreme Court after new evidence came to light about a serious brain condition that was originally overlooked in the child. McGee wasn't specifically noted in that ruling.
In 1998, Thomas Rhodes was convicted of murdering his wife, Jane Rhodes, largely from McGee's testimony. Jane Rhodes drowned in Spicer's Green Lake after falling overboard during a late-night boat ride with her husband.
McGee stated in his testimony during the trial that he believed Thomas Rhodes had grabbed her neck, shoved her off the boat, and then drove over her several times.
In January 2023, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison vacated Thomas Rhodes' two murder convictions, converting them into a single second-degree manslaughter conviction, leading to his release from prison.
Ellison's decision rested on new evidence that suggested an accidental fall was unlikely the cause of Jane Rhodes' death.
Days after his release from the Moose Lake correctional facility, Thomas Rhodes sued McGee.
"In the cases that we have worked on, Dr. McGee destroyed lives," said Sara Jones, executive director of the Great North Innocence Project, which worked to free Rhodes starting in 2013. "Ultimately we had 10 pathologists or medical examiners say that Dr. McGee made a mistake, and it cost Tom 25 years in prison for something he didn't do."
Jones says the significance of taking a second look at seven cases cannot be understated.
"This kind of systemic problem or an individual case takes people away from their loved ones. It takes them out of the community being productive citizens. It just puts a hold on their entire life," she said.
