Technology: Question of the day: Edmonton, Alberta Police have released an AI image to assist in identifying a deceased female. Ethical issues?, by Reporter Stephanie Swensrude, noting that: "The National Council of Canadian Muslims criticized the resulting image EPS released as racist because it created a “vague portrait” and a “generic image of a Black male,” a statement at the time read. “It is hard to overstate the absurdity of releasing a hypothetical, racialized portrait of a suspect to the public, while hoping such a tactic might lead to overall vigilance and perhaps an arrest,” the statement said. “In effect, the public is asked to ‘watch out’ for a person of a particular race, with some other physical traits thrown in as ranges (eg. height). It is racial profiling backed up by incomplete science.” EPS (Edmonton Police Service) has since apologized for releasing the 2022 photo."

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: " (Police spokesperson) Voordenhout said that when police have exhausted traditional investigative methods, a technologically enhanced image of a deceased person may be used to portray the individual. EPS consulted with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and with a forensic anthropologist before facial recognition experts in the digital forensics section created the AI-generated image. Voordenhout said neither the original photo of the deceased woman nor the police sketch were uploaded into the AI image generator; instead, the image was produced entirely through repeated prompts until it resembled the woman as accurately as possible."

STORY: "Police use of AI to create photo of dead woman ‘complicated’: Ethicist," by Reporter Stephanie Swensrude, published by Taproot, on November 27, 2025. (Stephanie Swensrude attended NAIT's radio and television program and has worked at CBC, CFJC in Kamloops, and 630 CHED.)

GIST: "An artificial intelligence and data ethicist said she feels the Edmonton Police Service’s recent use of AI to create a photo of an unidentified deceased woman raises several questions."

“I think it’s complicated, and I’m trying to think about it in a very holistic way,” said Katrina Ingram, CEO of Ethically Aligned AI, an Edmonton company that helps organizations and individuals build and deploy ethical AI solutions.

As the use of AI becomes more common across all industries and sectors, including policing, the ethics of how these tools are applied is a growing conversation.

Edmonton police said a woman’s body was found in a waste bin in downtown Edmonton in late December 2024. Officers released sketches of the woman and her tattoo, as well as stock images of her jacket and boots, in an attempt to confirm her identity in March 2025. In November, EPS then used AI to create an “image that is an approximate likeness of the deceased female” in hopes that it would generate tips about her identity.

Ingram said there are ethical questions about how AI tools are built and function, due to the data that they acquire to generate images and other content. “Should we use these tools? And there are even some questions about the lawfulness of the data that was acquired to build these tools, which really starts to raise questions for law enforcement agencies, because as a law enforcement agency, you shouldn’t use a tool that was unlawfully made,” Ingram said.

Police spokesperson Cheryl Voordenhout told Taproot that EPS doesn’t release operational details like the specific software that police use. She said the digital forensics team used an AI model that was ingested into a secure EPS platform where no data is transmitted externally, and that the source code is publicly accessible, fully transparent, and legal to use.

Ingram said she thinks this particular case is ethical because the police were motivated to identify a deceased person when a traditional sketch had produced no answers. “They turned to AI, hoping that the more realistic version might be helpful,” she said. “That context matters in terms of what they did.” Additionally, Ingram said, EPS members could confirm whether the AI-generated photo actually resembled the deceased person.

But Ingram contrasted the ethics in this case with an instance in 2022, when EPS used DNA found at a crime scene to produce an approximate image of a suspect in an unsolved sexual assault. Ingram has used this example when giving talks related to AI and racial bias.

The National Council of Canadian Muslims criticized the resulting image EPS released as racist because it created a “vague portrait” and a “generic image of a Black male,” a statement at the time read. “It is hard to overstate the absurdity of releasing a hypothetical, racialized portrait of a suspect to the public, while hoping such a tactic might lead to overall vigilance and perhaps an arrest,” the statement said. “In effect, the public is asked to ‘watch out’ for a person of a particular race, with some other physical traits thrown in as ranges (eg. height). It is racial profiling backed up by incomplete science.” EPS has since apologized for releasing the 2022 photo.

Voordenhout said that when police have exhausted traditional investigative methods, a technologically enhanced image of a deceased person may be used to portray the individual. EPS consulted with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and with a forensic anthropologist before facial recognition experts in the digital forensics section created the AI-generated image. Voordenhout said neither the original photo of the deceased woman nor the police sketch were uploaded into the AI image generator; instead, the image was produced entirely through repeated prompts until it resembled the woman as accurately as possible.

Ingram said another layer of complexity is added by the potential shock or trauma that the image might cause to the woman’s loved ones.

“I’m trying to imagine the relatives and friends of this person seeing that particular image and how they might feel about that. Because it is trying to be in service of identifying a deceased person in order to bring some closure to loved ones, there might be a sense of relief (because they) can recognize that person, but there might also be a sense of trauma in looking at the person in that way,” Ingram said. “It’s very complicated, and it’s hard to know how they will actually react.”

Other North American police services are using AI to generate photos of unidentified people. Earlier this year, the Calgary Police Service used AI to create an image of a man who was found deceased by the Bow River.

Meanwhile, a police service in Arizona is using AI to attempt to find suspects of crimes. To create the images, a victim describes the suspect to a sketch artist as usual, but then the sketch is put into an AI image generator. The artist works with the victim to tweak the AI image to match what the victim remembers.

Developers have created a platform to help create forensic sketches from scratch. But an ethicist told Vice in 2023, when the software was created, that using AI in police forensics can be dangerous, as it can reinforce existing racial and gender biases.

“The problem with traditional forensic sketches is not that they take time to produce (which seems to be the only problem that this AI forensic sketch program is trying to solve). The problem is that any forensic sketch is already subject to human biases and the frailty of human memory,” Jennifer Lynch, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said. “AI can’t fix those human problems, and this particular program will likely make them worse through its very design.""

The entire story can be read at:

https://edmonton.taproot.news/news/2025/11/27/police-use-of-ai-to-create-photo-of-dead-woman-complicated-ethicist

PUBLISHER'S NOTE:  I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic"  section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com.  Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.

SEE BREAKDOWN OF  SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG,  AT THE LINK BELOW:  HL:

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985

———————————————————————————————

FINAL WORD:  (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases):  "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."

Lawyer Radha Natarajan:

Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;

—————————————————————————————————

FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions.   They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!

Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Tommy Zeigler: Death Row Orlando, Florida: Great post evidence hearing analysis by Leonora LaPeter Anton who zeroes in on the efforts of the scientists who tried to bring certainty to the 50-year-old murder case, noting that: "Confined to a cell for nearly a half-century, Zeigler has become the longest-serving death row inmate in Florida and quite possibly the nation. His case landed back in court this month after Monique Worrell, the elected state attorney for Orange and Osceola counties, agreed to let him extensively test the evidence for blood and touch DNA, something her predecessors declined to do over two decades. The test results arrived from a California lab earlier this year."

QUOTE  OF THE DAY: "The state decided that Zeigler killed his wife for an insurance payout and lured Mays, a 35-year-old father of four, and others to the store to blame them for his family’s deaths. Defense attorneys Dennis Tracey and David Michaeli keyed on new DNA tests that found no blood from Zeigler’s relatives on his clothes. That alone, they say, should raise reasonable doubt, the standard they said is required to win a new trial. “This is devastating to the state’s case,” Michaeli said. “They don’t have anything. Nothing.”

————————————————————

SECOND QUOTE OF THE DAY: "And now, they must all wait. Terry Hadley, Zeigler’s original criminal attorney, told Crawford that the hearing had to be transcribed, then each side would have 30 days to file final statements. The judge would have another 30 days to file her response. “Tragically, we’re waiting until mid-March,” Hadley told Crawford, “and the way Tommy is looking, I’m worried because of his health.”

----------------------------------------------

STORY: "Scientists try to bring certainty to 50-year-old murder case," by Former Times Reporter Leonora LaPeter Anton, published by The Tampa Bay Times, omitted  December 9, 2025.

SUB_HEADING: "Tommy Zeigler’s attorneys hope to have convinced a judge to grant a retrial."

PHOTO CAPTION: "Tommy Zeigler watches his lawyers and prosecutors tell conflicting stories about the DNA evidence in his case. Zeigler has been on Florida's death row since 1976.

GIST: Ten attorneys sat before Circuit Judge Leticia Marques at the Orange County Courthouse last week during a hearing for a 50-year-old murder case. In a few months, she will decide whose arguments in Courtroom 13E were the most compelling as she weighs the fate of death row inmate Tommy Zeigler.

A frail Zeigler, 80, sat quietly next to his six volunteer lawyers, his feet and left arm shackled to his wheelchair and an oxygen cannula stuck in his nose, his declining health evident on hollowed cheeks.

A jury convicted him in 1976 for the Christmas Eve murders of his wife, Eunice; her parents, Virginia and Perry Edwards; and another man, Charlie Mays, at Zeigler’s furniture store in Winter Garden, about a dozen miles from the Magic Kingdom.

Confined to a cell for nearly a half-century, Zeigler has become the longest-serving death row inmate in Florida and quite possibly the nation. His case landed back in court this month after Monique Worrell, the elected state attorney for Orange and Osceola counties, agreed to let him extensively test the evidence for blood and touch DNA, something her predecessors declined to do over two decades.

The test results arrived from a California lab earlier this year. Worrell, though, declined to support Zeigler’s efforts to overturn his conviction, saying the new evidence didn’t exonerate him. She joined Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier in fighting Zeigler’s request and allowed his office to take the lead. But Judge Marques, first elected in 2012, saw enough to warrant this weeklong inquiry.

The judge listened intently as assistant attorney general Joshua E. Schow stood at the podium in front of her, pounding away at the quality of the forensic analysis, the qualifications of the defense experts and the interpretation of the DNA results. He argued, sometimes successfully, to keep out witnesses, reports and taped interviews.

“After all these years, the jury got it right in 1976,” said Schow during his closing argument.

The attorney, a 2020 graduate of the Stetson University College of Law, demonstrated a command of the case details and Florida criminal law. Most of the defense attorneys are from a global law firm in New York that specializes in corporate litigation, but they have been working pro bono on Zeigler’s case for 40 years.

The crime scene that police encountered at the Zeigler furniture store on Christmas Eve 1975 defied easy explanation. Four people had been shot in the head in different parts of the store. Two of them — Zeigler’s father-in-law and Mays, a crew chief at a nearby orange grove — had been struck repeatedly on the head. Multiple guns lay scattered around the bodies, all of them wiped clean.

Zeigler was bleeding from a bullet wound to the stomach when police arrived. He said he’d walked in on a burglary, been hit over the head, lost his glasses and fought with two men, including one he thought was Mays, one of his customers. He struck one of them with a gun and possibly shot him. Then he’d felt a bullet enter his abdomen and passed out. He said he did not realize that Eunice, his wife of eight years, and her parents were dead in the store until the next day.

The state decided that Zeigler killed his wife for an insurance payout and lured Mays, a 35-year-old father of four, and others to the store to blame them for his family’s deaths.

Defense attorneys Dennis Tracey and David Michaeli keyed on new DNA tests that found no blood from Zeigler’s relatives on his clothes. That alone, they say, should raise reasonable doubt, the standard they said is required to win a new trial.

“This is devastating to the state’s case,” Michaeli said. “They don’t have anything. Nothing.”

On the prosecution side of the courtroom, family members of Eunice Zeigler and her parents kept a daily vigil, tearing up and occasionally leaving as experts pored over bloody pictures on overhead screens. Many days, they drove from their homes in south Georgia and sat with Mays’ sons when they showed up.

Zeigler’s supporters included his cousin, Connie Crawford, and her daughter; his private investigator of 15 years, Lynn-Marie Carty; and Catholic volunteers who visit him weekly on death row. The hearing also drew a documentary crew that has been filming Zeigler for about eight years.

The lawyers from Hogan Lovells US, the firm that paid more than $100,000 for Zeigler’s DNA testing, returned over and over to the lab results in their defense.

DNA analysts, the lawyers said, examined 47 samples from Zeigler’s dark orange shirt, undershirt, checkered pants and the socks he wore the night of the murders. The experts said he could not have killed his relatives without any traces of their blood on his clothes.

“We don’t have to prove to a certainty that Tommy Zeigler is innocent,“ Michaeli told the judge. “We have to raise questions that give rise to reasonable doubt about his guilt, and I think we have done that in spades.”

The prosecution, though, focused on getting scientists to acknowledge that the two female victims — Eunice Zeigler and Virginia Edwards — didn’t have blood spatter on their clothes. Which means, they argued, that Zeigler might not have gotten their blood on his clothes.

Kristen Harty-Connell, a senior analyst with Forensic Analytical Crime Lab in Hayward, Calif., did find two small spots of Perry Edwards’ DNA on Zeigler’s brown suede shoes. Both were mixed with Mays’ blood.

Other tests had shown Perry Edwards’ blood soaked into the lower reaches of Mays’ plaid pants. And Mays could not be excluded as a source of five of the 21 samples taken from Eunice Zeigler’s herringbone overcoat, Harty-Connell said.

DNA expert Richard Eikelenboom, who has worked on the murder cases of Casey Anthony, Jon Benet Ramsey and Amanda Knox, testified for the defense. He said that the shots that hit Virginia Edwards and Eunice Zeigler would have produced spatter. Perry Edwards’ injuries, five gunshots to the head and torso and 10 lacerations on his head, also would have left spatter on his killer, Eikelenboom said.

When it was the prosecutor’s turn to question Eikelenboom, Schow dropped a 6-inch stack of documents on the podium. Some referred to a case in Colorado where Eikelenboom had been excluded from testifying because of an accreditation problem, among other issues, which he later resolved. Schow got Eikelenboom to admit that he hadn’t read Zeigler’s 3,000-page trial transcript, that he hadn’t visited the store where the murders took place and that he got a few facts wrong in his report.

At one point, Schow’s disparaging commentary prompted Marques to admonish the attorney. “Just ask your questions.”

Schow zeroed in on whether Zeigler had killed and beaten Mays. Eikelenboom pointed to spatter from Mays on Zeigler’s collar and the back of his shirt.

Zeigler has always claimed he fought with and may have shot Mays in self-defense. But the prosecutor said the evidence now shows that Zeigler struck Mays repeatedly.

“Is it your opinion that the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that Tommy Zeigler beat Charles Mays?” Schow asked.

“Yes,” Eikelenboom responded.

“Remind me what the cause of death for Charles Mays was?”

“A beating.”

Ralph Seegobin, an assistant state attorney, questioned the credentials of another defense witness, Ibrahim Garcia, a former Miami Beach Police Department homicide detective. Garcia criticized the original investigation. He said it would be unlikely for the right-handed Zeigler to shoot himself with a .357 Magnum at that trajectory.

But Seegobin suggested Garcia didn’t have the expertise to comment on a 1975 homicide. He pointed out that Garcia now managed security at Joe’s Stone Crab restaurant in Miami Beach, that he didn’t have a college degree and hadn’t been working in law enforcement for eight years.

The state’s only rebuttal witness was Anna Cox, a former crime scene and bloodstain pattern expert for the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office and now a forensic consultant.

Michaeli, the defense attorney, asked Cox how Zeigler could have murdered Perry Edwards and walked away without being covered in his blood.

She offered no explanation.

She did say, however, that the blood evidence did not indicate Edwards fought with his attacker.

“Ms. Cox, are you aware that the state argued something different at the trial?” Michaeli asked.

“I don’t care,” Cox responded.

Later, when Michaeli made his closing statement, he pointed out how Cox’s testimony undermined the prosecution’s narrative. In fact, he said, the new evidence had contradicted the state’s previous conclusions on the order of the murders.

“If the state wants to change its story, well it needs to share the evidence to support that with a new jury,” Michaeli said. “Even if the state is allowed to change its story, the new story wouldn’t hold water, either.”

Michaeli reiterated that the original jury harbored doubts about Zeigler’s guilt. They decided in favor of a life sentence, rather than the death penalty, but were overruled by the judge.

In his closing statement, Schow reminded Marques that Zeigler’s lawyers had to prove more than that the state changed its theory from the original trial. They had to prove the defendant was not culpable in the murders.

“If he beat Charlie Mays to death, then his entire story collapses,” Schow said.

The judge interjected.

“Is it your insinuation that because he beat Mr. Charles Mays, then he must have killed the other three?” Marques asked Schow.

“Correct.”

Marques asked Zeigler’s lawyers to comment on his involvement in Mays’ death.

The new evidence, Michaeli said, did not reveal one way or another whether Zeigler was acting in self-defense.

Schow asked the court to consider the victims’ families and the pain they have had to go through every time Zeigler challenged his conviction.

As the hearing concluded, the victims’ family members held onto each other’s shoulders, conga-style, as they moved through the crowd to another room. They declined to talk about the case. “This is my family,” said Pierre Mays, Charlie Mays’ 62-year-old son, as he disappeared into the room, reflecting the solidarity of the two families. Schow declined, as he slipped into the same room, to talk about the case.

Carty, Zeigler’s private investigator, held both of Michaeli’s hands and tearfully told him he had done a great job.

Zeigler was wheeled out of the courtroom, headed back to death row.

Crawford, who has stood by her cousin’s side throughout the 50-year battle, said she was hopeful that he’d leave prison at some point. “I have a place for him,” she said, a bedroom in her home.

And now, they must all wait. Terry Hadley, Zeigler’s original criminal attorney, told Crawford that the hearing had to be transcribed, then each side would have 30 days to file final statements. The judge would have another 30 days to file her response.

“Tragically, we’re waiting until mid-March,” Hadley told Crawford, “and the way Tommy is looking, I’m worried because of his health.”

The entire story can be read at: 

https://www.tampabay.com/news/2025/12/09/scientists-try-bring-certainty-50-year-old-murder-case/

PUBLISHER'S NOTE:  I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic"  section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com.  Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.

SEE BREAKDOWN OF  SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG,  AT THE LINK BELOW:  HL:

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985

———————————————————————————————

FINAL WORD:  (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases):  "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."

Lawyer Radha Natarajan:

Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;

—————————————————————————————————

FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions.   They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!

Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Dr. Bazak Sharon: Minnesota: Shaken Baby Syndrome, Abusive Head Trauma; Child abuse practitioners Nancy Sanders Harper; Debra Esernio-Jennsen, and Barbara Knox: Dr. Bazak accuses the University of Minnesota of firing him for uncovering a child abuse prosecution scheme, The Courthouse News (Reporter Ryan Luetkemeyer), reports, noting that, "Dr. Bazak Sharon accuses the university of inflating child abuse diagnoses by encouraging the manipulation of medical evidence that might have proved the innocence of parents and caregivers — all to secure lucrative grants…"Dr. Bazak Sharon accuses the defendants — including the University of Minnesota’s governing board and child abuse specialist Dr. Nancy Sanders Harper, among others — of civil rights violations and racketeering. Sharon, who served at the university for 17 years, says the scheme was intended to maximize the identification and prosecution of child abuse cases to secure funding and increase the prestige of the university’s child abuse fellowship program. The policies designed to increase child abuse diagnoses, according to Sharon, include forcing transfers of sick or injured babies to a forensic child abuse pediatrician — even if that pediatrician was not trained to treat the relevant illness — and encouraging the manipulation of medical evidence that might have proved the innocence of parents and caregivers."

--------------------------------------------------

CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW  TO ACCESS THE LAWSUIT:  NOTE THAT DR.  SHARON'S ALLEGATIONS HAVE NOT BEEN  PROVEN IN COURT - AND THE DEFENDANTS HAVE NOT YET  HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO RESPOND TO THEM;  I WILL BE FOLLOWING DEVELOPMENTS CLOSELY; HL;

federal lawsuit 

A TASTE:  "136. Once the development of medical science began to threaten one of the

foundations of child abuse pediatrics, a group of the most active child abuse pediatricians,

including Defendant Harper, created what amounts to a playbook they use to counteract the

existential crisis caused by this new medical evidence.

 137. Although this playbook was initially developed for SBS/AHT cases, it was later

adapted for use in nearly all types of suspected child abuse and has now become the standard playbook used on all sorts of presenting injuries, such as brain bleeds, broken bones, connective tissue injuries, bruising and failure to thrive.

138. Upon information and belief, the tenets and methods of this Playbook were

developed at least in part by Harper and certain other child abuse pediatricians by and through their organization known as the Ray E. Helfer Society ("Helfer Society").

139. The Helfer Society is a nonprofit organization based in Illinois. Its stated goal is

to support physicians specializing in the subspecialty of child abuse pediatrics.

140. Although much of what the Helfer Society does is legitimate, Harper and some of

her associated child abuse pediatricians have used it as a tool for the exchange of fraudulent

medical studies, fraudulent medical data, prosecutorial strategies and expert testimony strategies in order to keep the child abuse enterprise afloat in the face of multiple evidentiary attacks from the medical and legal communities

.

141. Harper was at times relevant the Helfer Society President. Fellow child abuse

pediatricians Debra Esernio-Jenssen, MD ("Esernio-Jenssen") and Barbara Knox, MD ("Knox"), are or were until recently active Helfer Society members.'

--------------------------------------------

PASSAGE OF THE DAY:  "After Sharon refused to stop complaining about the wrongful policies, he claims the institutions’ highest-ranking officials ordered him to attend disciplinary meetings and ultimately fired him in June 2023. Sharon says he “blew the whistle” on the scheme, resulting in him facing false claims from the defendants that he had been fired for sexual misconduct. These statements were spread with the intention to prevent him from testifying in related federal lawsuits filed against some of the defendants, according to Sharon. Sharon’s lawyer, Jerome Reinan, told Courthouse News that his client’s termination letter had no mention of the sexual misconduct, noting the only listed reason for his firing was failing to follow the university’s documentation policies.“ It appears to us that the university and Dr. Harper are continuing to retaliate against him for exercising his right to free speech, and trying to stifle him as a witness in these other federal cases,” Reinan said."

———————————————————

STORY: "Doctor says University of Minnesota fired him for uncovering child abuse prosecution scheme," by Ryan Luetkemeyer, Minnesota Reporter for The Courthouse News, published on December 12, 2025.

SU-HEADING: "Dr. Bazak Sharon accuses the university of inflating child abuse diagnoses by encouraging the manipulation of medical evidence that might have proved the innocence of parents and caregivers — all to secure lucrative grants."

GIST: "A former University of Minnesota pediatrician filed a federal lawsuit against the university, its associated medical groups and several doctors on Friday, claiming his June 2023 termination was retaliation for exposing a fraudulent scheme to maximize child abuse prosecutions."

"Dr. Bazak Sharon accuses the defendants — including the University of Minnesota’s governing board and child abuse specialist Dr. Nancy Sanders Harper, among others — of civil rights violations and racketeering.

Sharon, who served at the university for 17 years, says the scheme was intended to maximize the identification and prosecution of child abuse cases to secure funding and increase the prestige of the university’s child abuse fellowship program.

The policies designed to increase child abuse diagnoses, according to Sharon, include forcing transfers of sick or injured babies to a forensic child abuse pediatrician — even if that pediatrician was not trained to treat the relevant illness — and encouraging the manipulation of medical evidence that might have proved the innocence of parents and caregivers.

Sharon claims his conflict with the child abuse team began in 2022 when he showed disagreement with the handling of a 3-month-old baby, suggesting other causes of the baby’s head trauma rather than abuse. He says he was told by others at the university that the differences in opinions would complicate the situation, and he was then removed from the child’s care team.

Sharon claims he attempted to report this and other activity to senior leadership under the expectation that it would put an end to the scheme. Instead, the doctor asserts that the money and prestige brought to the university by Harper and her team were so important that they chose to silence him.

Sharon highlights a $23 million child abuse grant created in 2015 where a portion of the funds distributed to Minnesota counties is based on the number of open child abuse cases. In 2016, two years after Harper arrived at the university, Sharon contends more than 5,700 children in Hennepin County were reported as victims of physical abuse, an increase of 228% over the previous eight-year average.

After Sharon refused to stop complaining about the wrongful policies, he claims the institutions’ highest-ranking officials ordered him to attend disciplinary meetings and ultimately fired him in June 2023. Sharon says he “blew the whistle” on the scheme, resulting in him facing false claims from the defendants that he had been fired for sexual misconduct. These statements were spread with the intention to prevent him from testifying in related federal lawsuits filed against some of the defendants, according to Sharon.

Sharon’s lawyer, Jerome Reinan, told Courthouse News that his client’s termination letter had no mention of the sexual misconduct, noting the only listed reason for his firing was failing to follow the university’s documentation policies.

“It appears to us that the university and Dr. Harper are continuing to retaliate against him for exercising his right to free speech, and trying to stifle him as a witness in these other federal cases,” Reinan said.

Sharon brings this lawsuit to not only receive compensation for his wrongful termination, but also with the hopes of stopping the conduct and policies purportedly leading to wrongful child abuse prosecutions and poor treatment of pediatric patients.

After Sharon was fired from his position at the University, he says he has faced challenges securing any type of reasonable employment in the Twin Cities, and has been forced to pursue temporary positions across the country, according to Reinan.

“He’s basically lost his career because he was trying to blow the whistle on what he saw was a pattern of conduct and policies at the university that are detrimental to the pediatric patients that they’re supposed to serve,” Reinan said.

This is the third federal lawsuit that has been filed on this similar issue, according to Reinan.

“The university will review the complaint, but it’s our typical practice not to provide further comment on pending or active litigation,” a University of Minnesota spokesperson told Courthouse News."

The entire story can be read at: 

https://www.courthousenews.com/doctor-says-university-of-minnesota-fired-him-for-uncovering-child-abuse-prosecution-scheme/

PUBLISHER'S NOTE:  I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic"  section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com.  Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.

SEE BREAKDOWN OF  SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG,  AT THE LINK BELOW:  HL:

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985

———————————————————————————————

FINAL WORD:  (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases):  "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."

Lawyer Radha Natarajan:

Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;

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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions.   They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!

Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;

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