When medical examiners step inside the yellow crime-scene tape, they bring expertise held by just a handful of people in the state. But do they do so as impartial sleuths who simply "follow the evidence," to borrow a phrase, or as public employees with their own loyalties and biases?
Or are they both?
The question is at the heart of an unusual dispute stemming from a Dakota County deputy medical examiner's work with a defense attorney in a Washington County murder trial last year. Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom took exception to a representative of a public office potentially calling prosecution evidence into question during a criminal trial, and his sharp e-mail exchange with medical examiner Dr. Lindsey Thomas led to accusations of coercion when the deputy medical examiner withdrew from the trial.
Thomas and some other Minnesota forensic pathologists say they have an obligation to lend their expertise to either side in a criminal trial, because their loyalty is to the truth, not to one side or the other.
But Backstrom argued that the practice of county-employed coroners testifying for the defense could jeopardize future cases and that it hurts the credibility of medical examiners, and by extension, county attorneys.
"If you wish to be a defense expert, you should not be a public official representing Dakota County as our coroner," Backstrom wrote in one of his e-mails to Thomas.
Jim Franklin, executive director of the Minnesota Sheriffs' Association, agreed with Backstrom.
"One moment you're working for the Dakota County government structure. The next minute you're working for a private entity as an expert witness of a defense case in another particular county," Franklin said. "Where do you turn your county medical examiner experience on or off? Where's the light switch to do that?"