Albany Man Found Not Guilty in Retrial After Second Degree Manslaughter Conviction was Overturned Three Times

(KNSI) — An Albany man whose 2016 conviction for second degree manslaughter was overturned and which two higher courts have upheld that ruling is finally a free man.

Robert John Kaiser was found not guilty by a Stearns County jury.

In the re-trial, which began April 7th, prosecutors said the child died of shaken baby syndrome while in Kaiser’s care and was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but Kaiser appealed, and his attorneys said he was deprived of his constitutional right to a fair trial. They also said new evidence supports Kaiser’s claims of innocence.

Several independent medical experts looked at the evidence and said there was a medical cause for William’s injuries, and there was no criminal element to it. William had an undiagnosed medical condition known as cerebral venous thrombosis, which causes clotting in the brain’s venous system. He was also administered Propofol in the hospital and placed on a feeding tube, which punctured a portion of the small intestine immediately below the stomach, which caused him to develop a serious and often fatal condition involving the disintegration of the bowel, which called into question William’s cause of death.

Defense attorneys argue that none of the State’s medical witnesses disclosed the presence of CVT and insisted that there was no other explanation for William’s deteriorating condition other than abuse.

In 2022, a Stearns County judge overturned Kaiser’s conviction, but prosecutors took their case to the Minnesota Court of Appeals, which upheld the lower court’s ruling in 2023. Prosecutors appealed again, this time to the Minnesota Supreme Court. In March of 2024, the panel upheld the two previous decisions, saying, “Here, the State’s experts made statements of medical fact to the jury that proved crucial in establishing Kaiser’s guilt. The district court conducted a thorough 9-day evidentiary hearing and gathered the facts necessary to conclude that the trial testimony was false. And the State’s own witness, in effect, recanted his trial testimony by saying later that it was incorrect.”

The Stearns County Attorney’s Office opted to retry him as the case doesn’t fall under the double jeopardy statute.

Kaiser’s attorneys, speaking exclusively to KNSI News, said they didn’t know why the State was going to take another run at this case because three courts had already ruled that his conviction should be vacated. They also mentioned the considerable cost to taxpayers and that Kaiser had already served much of his sentence imposed by the court.

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