Dr. Michael Baden is the former Chief Medical Examiner of New York City and is presently the chief forensic pathologist for the New York State Police. He received a B.S. from the City College of New York and an M.D. from New York University School of Medicine. He trained in internal medicine and pathology at Bellevue Hospital Medical Center where he was intern, resident and Chief Resident. He has been a medical examiner for forty-five years and has performed more than 20,000 medicolegal autopsies. He has held professorial teaching appointments at Albert Einstein Medical School, Albany Medical College, New York Law School and John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
He was Chairman of the Forensic Pathology Panel of the U.S. Congress Select Committee on Assassinations that re-investigated the deaths of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1970s. He was the forensic pathologist member of a team of U.S. forensic scientists asked by the Russian government to examine the newly found remains of Tsar Nicholas II, Alexandra and the Romanov family in Siberia in the 1990s. He has been an expert witness for prosecutors or defense attorneys in trials involving Medgar Evers, John Belushi, Yankee Manager Billy Martin, Marlon Brando’s son Christian, O.J. Simpson, Jayson Williams, Kobe Bryant, Robert Blake, Phil Spector and Las Vegas hotel owner Ted Binion. He has investigated deaths in Croatia, Serbia, Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Monaco, Colombia, Panama, England, Canada, Zimbabwe and other countries for attorneys and human rights groups. He has taught homicide courses for police, judges, attorneys, and physicians in most of the 50 states as well as in China, Taiwan, Kuwait, Australia, France, Italy and other countries. He has been on the board of directors of a number of drug abuse and alcohol abuse treatment programs where he attempts to apply what he has learned from the dead at the autopsy table to the betterment of the living.
Dr. Baden has also served as President of the Society of Medical Jurisprudence and Vice President of the American Academy of Forensic Science. He has been author or co-author of more than 80 professional articles and books on aspects of forensic medicine and two popular non-fiction books, Unnatural Death, Confessions of a Medical Examiner and Dead Reckoning, the New Science of Catching Killers. He is the host of the HBO Autopsy series, now in its twelfth year, which explains how the various forensic sciences assist in solving crimes. He is the forensic science contributor for Fox National News. He has also discussed forensic science issues on The View, Conan O’Brien, Charlie Rose, 60 Minutes, Good Morning America, CNN, Court TV, Forensic Files, Discovery Channel, CNBC, MSNBC and many radio shows.
Linda B. Kenney is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Rutgers School of Law and Rutgers University. Following graduation from law school, Ms. Kenney served a judicial clerkship with the Presiding Judge of the Appellate Division, Judge John F. Lynch. She then entered private practice with the law firm of Meyner and Landis in Newark. In 1980, Ms. Kenney was appointed Assistant Prosecutor for the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office where she served as a trial team leader and the lead attorney assigned to the Sex Crimes Investigative Unit. During her tenure with the Prosecutor's Office, she prepared and tried numerous criminal cases including those involving murder and the death penalty. Ms. Kenney was awarded an “AV” rating through Martindale-Hubbell, the highest rating that one can attain. This rating signifies “that her legal abilities are of the very highest standard and that her professional ethics and conduct are above question.” In fact, in an Opinion issued by the United States Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Ms. Kenney’s work was characterized as “exceptional, fine and outstanding.”
Ms. Kenney has been very active with professional and service activities and has served on the Brookdale Community College Board of Trustees and the Brookdale Community College Foundation. She also served on the District Fee Arbitration Committee and was appointed chairperson of that Committee by the Honorable Chief Justice Robert N. Wilentz. She has also been appointed a mediator for the Federal District Court of New Jersey. She has served as a Master for the C. Willard Heckel Inn of Court sponsored by Rutgers University and is an active member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. Additionally, Ms. Kenney has appeared as a legal guest commentator for MSNBC, CNN, Court TV, and CNBC. She has lectured in China to the Public Security University (Beijing), Croatia, and Kuwait.
In 1984, Ms. Kenney reentered private practice where she concentrated on litigation especially related to complex employment, civil rights, and criminal matters. Ms. Kenney has been involved in a number of high profile cases, including:
· the racial profiling case against New Jersey State Police, which settled for nearly $13 million and resulted in author/fellow attorney, Johnnie Cochran, describing her as “brilliant.”
· the pretrial hearings involving Michael Skakel, which resulted in an upper court ruling finding that certain statements of witnesses were protected under the privileged communication doctrine.
· legal action by the first female captain of a wide-body jet for Continental Airlines for pornography in the cockpit, which resulted in changes in airline procedures and monetary compensation for her client.
· the exhumations of the last victim of the Boston Strangler and the alleged Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, which found that DNA from the victim did not match that of the Boston Strangler.
· membership on three national and international forensic investigative committees, which included serving as the forensic legal specialist for the Mashantucket Pequot Indians to investigate the hanging of aboriginal inmates in Australia.
· participation in the team of forensic scientists attempting to locate, for Wayne Newton, the body of his ancestor Pocahontas in order to return her to the United States for the four-hundredth anniversary of her saving the life of Captain John Smith, which will occur in 2007.
· involvement in numerous cases before the New Jersey Supreme Court and federal courts, making new law with regard to civil rights and employment cases.
· prosecuting one of the earliest cases in New Jersey in the early 1980s involving the reinstatement of the death penalty.
· representing the Spring Lake First Aid Squad in a headline will dispute case involving a widow, $7 million, and a podiatrist.
