Ramsey County attorney won't overturn 6 murder convictions tied to embattled ex-medical examiner
The Ramsey County Attorney's Office on Tuesday said it has reviewed six cases involving the county's former medical examiner Michael McGee, whose autopsy work in murder cases has been under scrutiny for years.
McGee served in his role for 34 years — between 1985 and 2019 — and assisted in cases for more than a dozen Minnesota counties and some in Wisconsin.
Over the last two years, an expert committee of three medical examiners from around the country poured over evidence in over 200 of McGee's cases, upholding guilty verdicts in six of them, though they took issue with some of McGee's findings.
In the six cases, Ramsey County Attorney John Choi criticized McGee's characterization of events, but said his conclusions did not impact any of the convictions. Choi said McGee would use terminology that could have swayed a jury and sometimes provided an inaccurate window for a time of death.
"Our determination that no change would occur in any of these six cases does not mean that Dr. McGee's work was flawless," Choi said. "While the criticisms were valid, they did not go to the aspects of the case that were key to determining the defendant's guilt."
Three of the cases involved murders of young children: The 1996 conviction of Michael Wayne French, the 2007 conviction of Said Gouleed and the 2001 conviction of Kyle Kelbel. An independent medical examiner panel concluded that it might have worded the causes of death differently, but agreed with the substance of McGee's conclusions.
The independent panel also examined the 2002 case against Kou Moua, who was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder in a gang-related shooting. The panel took issue with McGee's analysis of how the shots were fired, but ultimately said it did not impact the outcome of the trial.
Choi's office also looked at the 2009 case of Michael Sontoya, who was convicted of first-degree murder while committing a sexual assault, and second-degree murder while committing a felony. Sontoya claimed that he and the victim had consensual sex, but Choi said the review upheld that the victim's injuries were not consistent with consensual sexual activity.
Choi said the panel also questioned McGee's timeline for the cause of death in the 1998 case against American Laverne Morris, who was indicted for first-degree murder while committing sexual assault. However, Choi said the evidence pointing to a nonconsensual sexual assault was so strong that McGee's error did not impact the outcome of the trial.
The county is also reviewing a seventh case, but because it involves a more recent plea negotiation and privacy concerns, Choi said he'll release more information once the "adversarial process" plays out.
In 2021, a federal judge lambasted McGee's work on the Alfonso Rodriguez case. Rodriguez was convicted in the 2003 murder of college student Dru Sjodin, but the judge said McGee had been "guessing" on the witness stand and his testimony was "unreliable, misleading and inaccurate." Rodriguez's death sentence was overturned as a result of the judge's findings.
Ramsey County Attorney John Choi launched a review of 215 of McGee's autopsies in 2021, and said his office would do a "deep dive" into seven of them, which cost the county $380,000.
