Justice Rhodes tragedy worsened by prosecution

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Jan. 19—Thomas Rhodes is free today. The Mankato man lost more than 20 years of his life to an overly aggressive prosecution in the 1996 death of his wife, who drowned during a nighttime boat ride on Green Lake in Kandiyohi County.
He was released last week at the behest of the attorney general office’s conviction review unit, which in partnership with the Great North Innocence Project determined that his 1998 trial, at which he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, was riddled with “erroneous and incomplete” evidence.
The findings, to be clear, do not clear Rhodes. They suggest that the appropriate charge and verdict would have been second-degree manslaughter, a charge to which he pled Friday before his release. The sentence for that, 48 months, is about a fifth of the time he has already served. The murder conviction has been vacated.
The tragedy of Jane Rhodes’s death was compounded by prosecutorial missteps that included concealing beneficial evidence from the defense and testimony by a medical examiner that overstated his findings and conclusions. Jane Rhodes lost her life; Thomas Rhodes lost much of his. The first is not mitigated by the latter.
While Rhodes is the first Minnesotan to have his conviction overturned by the work of the conviction review unit, it seems unlikely to be the last. The work and testimony of the medical examiner involved, Dr. Michael McGee of Ramsey County, has been under question and scrutiny for more than a decade. A murder conviction in Douglas County based on his testimony was overturned in 2011, and last September the federal death penalty in the notorious Dru Sjodin killing was tossed out because McGee’s testimony was “unreliable, misleading and inaccurate.” (A new sentencing hearing is scheduled.)
McGee has figured in the trials of many outstate homicides because few outstate counties maintain their own medical examiner. Several instead contract with Ramsey County for such technical assistance.
Blue Earth, Le Sueur, Nicollet and Waseca counties are among those listed on the Ramsey County website as relying on their medical examiner’s office. The local counties might do well to reconsider that relationship, considering McGee’s worsening reputation.
Certainly wrongdoers deserve punishment in the name of justice. Just as certainly prosecutorial restraint is necessary. There is little justice to be found in the Rhodes saga.
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