Defense-hired pathologist ‘never takes shortcuts’
Dr. Michael Baden, the famous New York pathologist tapped by Aaron Hernandez’s lawyer to conduct an independent autopsy of the former Patriot’s remains, “never takes shortcuts,” a longtime colleague said.
“Michael is very honest, he never fudges stuff,” said Dr. Lowell Levine, who served with Baden as codirector of the New York State Police Medico-Legal Investigations Unit. “Basically, he’s got a reputation for, ‘ This is the way it is, and I can prove what I’m saying, and that’s it.’ ”
Baden, the former longtime host of the HBO series “Autopsy,” is a former chief medical examiner of New York City, and has performed more than 20,000 autopsies around the world, according to his website.
No stranger to the limelight, Baden chaired the forensic pathology panel of the U.S. Congress Select Committee on Assassinations that re-investigated the deaths of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1970s. He recently examined the body of Ferguson, Mo., police shooting victim Michael Brown.
Baden was also tapped as an expert in cases involving Medgar Evers, John Belushi, Yankees manager Billy Martin, Marlon Brando’s son Christian, O.J. Simpson, Jayson Williams, Kobe Bryant, and Robert Blake.
Levine said Baden was girded for media exposure as a journalism student in college, and never lets that pressure affect his process.
“If an autopsy’s going to take him eight hours to do, he’ll do it,” Levine said. “He’s not interested in what’s next. He’ll have stuff piling up behind him, and people get frustrated, but he never cuts corners.”
Levine recalled Baden, after Medgar Evers’ remains were found to be exceptionally well-preserved 30 years after his death, halted the autopsy so the civil rights leader’s son, only 3 when his father was murdered, could visit with him.
“Michael looked at everybody and said, ‘OK, let’s let him spend some time with his father,’ ” Levine said. “And everybody went out of the autopsy room, and (Evers’ son) was left with the prosecutor who was doing the case, just the two of them with the remains. And we left them alone for about a half-hour. I thought that was really, really classy.”
Baden, who did not return a call for comment, also authored two fiction thrillers with his wife, and contributes analysis to Fox News.