Trayvon Martin Medical Examiner, Dr. Shiping Bao, Says Prosecutors Intentionally Lost Case, Preparing $100 Million Lawsuit
After being fired from his job with Volusia County, Fla., last week, Trayvon Martin's medical examiner, Dr. Shiping Bao, who offered conflicting testimony in the George Zimmerman trial, is now preparing a $100 million lawsuit claiming prosecutors intentionally lost the case.
Bao claims through his high-profile attorney, Willie Gary, that the state attorney's office and Sanford Police Department were all biased against Martin, according to a WFTV report.
"He says their general attitude was that he got what he deserved," said Gary.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Gary argued that the medical examiner is being made a scapegoat and is prepared to offer testimony that 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was not the aggressor in the incident that cost him his life.
"He was in essence told to zip his lips.'Shut up. Don't say those things,'" Gary explained of his client.
Prosecutors, he argues, never asked the medical examiner a question crucial to their case.
"He wanted a question that would have allowed him to explain to the jury with scientific evidence how there was no way Trayvon Martin could have been on top of George Zimmerman," he said.
According to a CBS report, Volusia County released a letter dated Aug. 23 citing Bao's firing after he refused to resign from the job he started in 2011 at an annual salary of $175,950.
Bao reportedly changed his testimony about how long Martin lived after he was shot by Zimmerman. Initially, he estimated that Martin lived from one to three minutes after Zimmerman shot him, but testified later that he lived up to 10 minutes.
The fired medical examiner noted that he had changed his estimates three weeks before the trial based on another case similar to that of the dead Florida teenager.
In court, Bao told Zimmerman's defense that he didn't tell prosecutors about his change of estimates and didn't see a problem with it.
"If you have new information, new experiences, you read a new book, you change your opinion," he said. "If someone never changes opinion, you can call them mentally retarded. You never learn, right?"
"I believe it is my opinion that Trayvon Martin was in a lot of pain, and that he was suffering," Bao said July 5 during testimony in the George Zimmerman trial.
On the stand, Bao changed his testimony about key statements he'd made and said he'd changed his mind about Martin only being alive for as many as three minutes after the shooting.
"I believe he was alive one to 10 minutes after he was shot. His heart was beating until there was no blood left," Bao said.
