Michael Baden

Michael Baden, born in 1934 in the Bronx, New York, is an American physician and board-certified forensic pathologist who served as Chief Medical Examiner of New York City from 1978 to 1979 and later chaired the forensic pathology panel of the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations, reviewing the deaths of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. He has since built a prominent career as an independent forensic consultant, conducting or reviewing autopsies in numerous high-profile cases, including testifying for the defense in the 1995 murder trial of O.J. Simpson, disputing the official ruling of suicide in the 2019 death of Jeffrey Epstein, and performing an independent autopsy in the 2020 death of George Floyd that found the cause of death to be asphyxia. His decades of casework, including hosting the HBO documentary series Autopsy, have made him one of the most publicly recognized forensic pathologists in the United States, though some of his findings and courtroom testimony have themselves drawn scrutiny and criticism from within the field.