A Stearns County man’s conviction for fatally shaking his baby was vacated. Now the county is trying him again.

ST. CLOUD – Robert Kaiser had spent more than seven years behind bars when he was released on bail in the spring of 2022.

After being convicted of causing the death of his 2-month-old baby, Kaiser anticipated being in prison for at least five more years. But Great North Innocence Project, an organization that works to free wrongfully convicted individuals, took on his case.

After finding the state’s experts gave false testimony that could have affected the outcome of the trial, the court vacated Kaiser’s conviction. Two more courts, including the state’s Supreme Court, agreed.

So for more than two years, the 42-year-old Kaiser has been rebuilding his life — getting a job, mourning his parents who died when he was in prison, and visiting his son’s burial place in North Dakota when he’s granted permission by the court to leave the state.

But it’s not over. When the court vacated the conviction, it granted Kaiser a new trial — if Stearns County prosecutors decided to bring the case to trial again. They are now doing just that: Evidentiary hearings are scheduled for mid-December and a monthlong trial is slated to begin in April.

“We have reviewed the case and have been in consultation with our medical experts. We believe the evidence shows that Mr. Kaiser committed this crime and we believe we can prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt at trial,” Assistant Stearns County Attorney Josh Kannegieter said last week.

In Kaiser’s first trial, the jury acquitted him of one count of first-degree murder, but convicted him on two counts of second-degree unintentional murder in the 2014 death of his son, William. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

But according to the Supreme Court opinion, the state’s experts made false statements of medical fact to the jury: an ophthalmologist and forensic pathologist testified that macular schisis (found in William’s eyes) is only caused by abusive head trauma. Later, during an evidentiary hearing, the ophthalmologist said it “would be incorrect” if he testified abusive head trauma is the only cause of macular schisis.

The Great North Innocence Project, which started investigating Kaiser’s case in 2020, says a team of experts concluded the medical evidence did not support the trauma diagnosis and instead identified a nontraumatic medical cause for his condition: blood clots in William’s brain veins known as cerebral venous thrombosis, a “serious medical condition that causes many of the same symptoms often attributed to [abusive head trauma].”

The prosecuting team has argued this “new interpretation” is not new evidence, “rather the same evidence in a different wrapper.”

During the first trial, the prosecution heard from many doctors who treated William at Children’s Hospital in August 2014, as well as William’s mother, who testified she observed a bruise on William’s chin that August and speculated it could have been caused by her sister’s handling of him during a previous visit.

Court documents state William was feeling unwell in August 2014 and taken to a doctor, who found abnormal lab results but that the mother left the clinic before doctors could complete all their tests. The jury also heard William might have fallen from a stroller in late July 2014.

On Aug. 27, 2014, Kaiser was caring for William while the child’s mother was at work. Court documents state William was pale, sweaty and fussy during the day and became nonresponsive in the evening. He was brought to Children’s Hospital by air ambulance with seizure activity. The bruise on his jaw had grown and a doctor testified he saw the bruise as a sign of trauma because facial bruises are not typically an injury infants can acquire on their own. Doctors also discovered William had healing rib fractures.

An ophthalmologist observed multiple hemorrhages in William’s eyes, particularly his left eye which the doctor described as probably the most extensive he’d seen in his career. A neurologist who saw William on Sept. 2 said the seizures that weren’t being controlled with medications were likely a symptom of a brain injury. Doctors also discovered William had developed bowel necrosis.

On Sept. 3, doctors found William’s neurological condition had deteriorated and he was moving toward brain death; they recommended he be removed from life support. An autopsy showed a hemorrhage on the back of William’s head and multiple bruises, but couldn’t rule out if some of the injuries were caused by treatment at the hospital.

“Given the lack of any bruising, laceration or other sign of impact to the infant’s head, the state theorized Mr. Kaiser must have violently shaken William or slammed him into a soft surface,” leaders at Great North Innocence Project said in a statement earlier this year. “At the trial, the state’s medical witness relied heavily on medical imaging, insisting to the jury that there was no other explanation for the infant’s neurological presentation.”

Kaiser filed for postconviction relief, which the district court granted in April 2022. That decision was affirmed by the Minnesota Court of Appeals last year and affirmed by the Supreme Court in March this year.

“We do not affirm the reversal of a murder conviction lightly, and we make our decision realizing a new trial will cause renewed pain for William’s family,” Associate Justice Gordon Moore wrote in his Supreme Court opinion.

If a jury finds Kaiser guilty again, he could be sent back to prison but will get credit for time served, which includes more than two years in jail while he was awaiting trial and more than seven years in prison. He was expected to serve about 11 years total in prison with the remainder of the balance on supervised release.

In a video posted to the Great North Innocence Project website, Kaiser says he wrote to more than four dozen legal groups across the country after his conviction.

“Prior to this, had I been outside as a normal person and seen me in the paper, I’d have thought he was a monster, too,” he said in the video. “I actually believed in the legal system, and if it hadn’t been for this situation, I wouldn’t have questioned that.”