Ralph Erdmann

Ralph R. Erdmann was a pathologist. He has been convicted on several counts of evidence tampering and perjury.

Training

Commander 829th. Station Hospital. Lubbock, Texas

Schools attended: George Washington University, University of Texas, University of Michigan, National University of Mexico, Alexander von Humboldt. He received his Doctorate in Medicine, at the National University of Mexico, in Mexico City.

Specializing at the forensic pathology at Johns Hopkins

Texas Autopsy scandal

In 1992, he was convicted of falsifying autopsy reports. The scandal began in 1991 when the family of Robert Craig Newman questioned the findings of an autopsy report. It included information about the weight of the dead man's spleen. The deceased man's son told authorities that his dead father had had his spleen removed years earlier. When the body was exhumed, there was no evidence that an autopsy had even been performed.

Convictions

He pleaded no contest to seven felony charges. He was sentenced to 10 years probation, 200 hours of community service and fined $17,000 for botched autopsies and exhumation expenses. He also surrendered his medical license and moved to Washington state.

In 1995, police found his gun collection (he was a Colonel, hunter and lifetime gun collector). They confiscated his arsenal of weapons, some illegal, in his Redmond, Washington home. Two years later he was released.

Sources

• Fight the Death Penalty in USA
• [1] Actual Innocence : Five Days to Execution, and Other Dispatches From the Wrongly Convicted - Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld, Jim Dwyer (Doubleday, 2000) ISBN 0-385-49341-X