Shiping Bao, the medical examiner involved in the Trayvon Martin case fired earlier in the month, is suing the Volusia County Medical Examiner's office for wrongful termination and claiming that the Sanford Police Department had no interest in convicting George Zimmerman, according to the Grio.
Bao made headlines due to his often combative testimony. Bao testified that he had changed his mind about the amount of pain Martin suffered after being shot and the amount of time it took him to die in the months between his first examination and the trial, according to WFTV.
"I believe it is my opinion that Trayvon Martin was in a lot of pain, and that he was suffering," Bao said during his July 5 testimony. "I believe he was alive one to 10 minutes after he was shot. His heart was beating until there was no blood left."
In the wrongful termination suit Bao and his attorney, Willie Gary, are seeking $100 million on the belief that Bao was fired because he didn't go along with their plan to throw the case, the Grio reports.
"Number one, the medical examiner's office should be liable for the wrongful termination," Gary told the Grio. "They retaliated against [Bao] because he stood up for what he believed in. He's the scapegoat because from what he's telling me, they didn't want to win the case. They threw the case. But they didn't expect to get the public backlash."
Bao claims that the prosecutors, police officers and other employees in his department acted with indifference to the death of Martin.
"People in the office would say, 'Why are they doing this at all?'" Bao told the Grio. "'This case shouldn't have been filed. It was self-defense. Trayvon is a criminal, and he was on drugs.'"
In his interview with the Grio Bao also went on to accuse the Sanford police of failing to follow procedure when it came to the performance of the autopsy.
"In an autopsy, normally, even in the case of suicide, they come to review the results of the autopsy, watch the autopsy, they can ask and answer questions. They come all the time. But in this case they said, 'This is a straightforward case of self-defense' and they looked at the case as being over, so they never came. So there's no way we can give them the evidence. They never talked to me, I never talked to them. They don't know what I did, I don't know what they did. We never had any interaction."
While on the stand during the trial Bao believes that he was never allowed the opportunity to share all of his conclusions since the prosecution never asked him the appropriate questions.
"The state attorney just clearly disregarded a number of points he wanted to make that could have made the difference [in the outcome of the trial] and he feels strongly about that," Gary said. "After his testimony initially, when the defense took the position that Trayvon Martin was on top of [Zimmerman], he asked the question about rebuttal and told [prosecutors] that's not true. He told them, 'I can absolutely prove that.'"
