Baden's independent autopsy findings are often in conflict with the local authorities' opinions; as such, many consider him to be a headline-seeking physician as opposed to a legitimate source of information.
O.J. Simpson Baden testified in the O.J. Simpson trial on August 10 and 11, 1995, and made two claims that he later disowned. First, he claimed that
Nicole Brown was still standing and conscious when her throat was slashed. The purpose of this claim was to dispute the theory that Brown was the intended target. The prosecution argued that Brown was murdered first and the intended target because the soles of her feet didn't have any blood on them despite the large amount of blood at the crime scene and that she was unconscious when her throat was cut because she had very few defensive wounds. At the subsequent civil trial the following year he disowned that claim and admitted it was absurd to think that someone would stand still without moving their feet while their throat is being slashed and not fight back. Baden then claimed that
Ron Goldman remained conscious and fought with his assailant for at least ten minutes with a severed
jugular vein. At the subsequent civil trial he initially denied making that claim and then after being confronted with a video clip of him saying it at the criminal trial, he disowned it. Baden claimed he misunderstood the question but the Goldmans' attorney allege he said it because the defense paid him to do so. He also alleged that Baden knowingly gave false testimony because he knew that Ron Goldman's blood was found inside Simpson's Bronco despite Goldman never having an opportunity within his lifetime to be in Simpson's car. Because of the negative reaction to the acquittal by the public, the jurors stating they believed his two aforementioned claims that he later disowned, and the trial being televised making his testimony widely known, In 2017, the state's chief medical examiner formally changed the manner of John Sheridan's death from suicide to undetermined, after an open letter whose signatories included three former governors, two former state attorneys general and one sitting justice of the state Supreme Court, urged the change.
Michael Brown At the request of the family of
Michael Brown, Baden conducted a four-hour autopsy. The body had been washed and embalmed, and he did not have clothing or x-rays to examine for gunpowder residue or bullet locations. He determined his evidence was insufficient to forensically reconstruct the shooting. Baden has stated that the autopsy "points to homicide".
George Floyd In late May 2020, Baden and Allecia M. Wilson, a pathologist and director of autopsy and forensic services at the University of Michigan Medical School and owner of Michigan Autopsy & Medicolegal Consulting, PLLC, were hired by the family of
George Floyd to perform an autopsy following Floyd's murder by
Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer. From the evidence available to them, which did not include a toxicology report or unspecified bodily samples, Baden and Wilson announced on June 1 that Floyd's death was caused by asphyxia due to neck and back compression and that Floyd had no underlying medical problem that contributed to his death. Their results conflicted with the autopsy performed by Andrew Baker, a pathologist and the chief medical examiner for Hennepin County since 2004, which found that the cause of death was "cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression." ==Personal life==