Expert Who Analyzed Leaked Mike Brown Autopsy Report Says She Was Taken Out of Context

By Carla Murphy Oct 23, 2014

One of two medical examiners the St. Louis Post-Dispatch enlisted to analyze Michael Brown’s leaked official autopsy report says that her comments were taken out of context. Dr. Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist in San Francisco told MSNBC, "You cannot interpret autopsy reports in a vacuum. You need to do it in the context of the scene, the investigation and the witness statements. Sometimes when you take things out of context they can be more inflammatory." Melinek’s analysis concluded, according to the Post-Dispatch, that Brown was reaching for Officer Darren Wilson’s gun and suggests that his hands had not been raised in surrender as described by eyewitness accounts. 

Read the latest at MSNBC. And the backstory for those catching up on Ferguson this week: An official autopsy and a toxicology report obtained by The St. Louis Post Dispatch is intensifying the heat around already-controversial police, eyewitness and community accounts of how Wilson came to fatally shoot Brown. The leaked autopsy report, officially released to prosecutors but not the public according to the Washington Post, comes ahead of an expected St. Louis County grand jury decision on whether or not to indict Wilson. Questions have been raised about the source of the leak and its timing, as well as the integrity of the secret grand jury proceedings.