In August 1996, Thomas Rhodes chopped through the cool waters on a late-night boat ride near Spicer, Minnesota, with his wife, Jane Rhodes.

But a tragic ending altered their lives. Rhodes was convicted of first-degree murder after investigators alleged he’d killed his wife and then tossed her overboard. He spent 25 years in prison before his wrongful conviction was vacated last year because of questionable investigative practices by a medical examiner.

In January, Rhodes filed a federal lawsuit against former Ramsey County Medical Examiner Michael McGee, who performed the autopsy on his wife and concluded that she’d been killed intentionally and not drowned by accident. Overall, at least “four people have either been released from prison or resentenced to a lower penalty” as a part of a review of more than 200 cases tied to McGee, according to Ramsey County Attorney John Choi.

At a press conference last week, Choi said the number of homicide cases connected to McGee had been reduced to seven, which will now undergo a more thorough scrutiny by an independent group of medical experts.

“The legitimacy and the integrity of all of our convictions matter in how people trust what happens in the courtroom and prosecutors play a very critical role to ensure that we avoid wrongful convictions but at the same time, when we get information and we get conclusions that says that some type of testimony or some sort of process is unreliable, we have to have the courage to look backwards without fear or favor,” Choi said at the press conference, stressing that his office has not made a final conclusion yet.

While I respect Choi’s effort to examine all of the cases affected by McGee’s work, I also think he fell short in his description of the problem. If any public operation has been influenced by corrupt actors, then the entire process is worthy of suspicion. Choi has focused on the individuals but the entire system now demands proper attention.

There is no reason to believe that only seven of the cases that involved McGee’s work were potentially damaged by his decisions and choices. There is no reason to believe that a medical examiner who held his post for decades operated with proper accountability and guardrails around him. And there is also no reason to believe that McGee, alone, represented the only flaw within Ramsey County’s criminal justice process.

Officials on Thursday identified one of two people shot to death in south Minneapolis in connection with what police said were three shootings carried out a day earlier by the same gunman.

Roland Scott Littleowl, 20, was shot in the head Wednesday in an alley in the 2500 block of S. 17th Avenue, the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office said. The examiner’s office said Littleowl died at the scene.

The shooting, the first of the three within 16 hours, was reported at 4:40 a.m. and also left a man in his 30s critically wounded, police said.

Minneapolis police have arrested a man suspected in the three shootings left a total of four people hit by gunfire, according to police. Officials have yet to identify the suspect, who has yet to be charged.

The first two shootings occurred near homeless encampments. Police have yet to offer motives for any of the gunfire.

The second shooting unfolded four blocks away, in the 2500 block of S. Bloomington Avenue, at 4:15 p.m. Police Chief Brian O’Hara said a man in his 30s was standing by a garage in an alley when a group of people passed by. One in the group approached the man and shot him in the head.

In the third incident, a man suffered a potentially life-threatening gunshot wound at 7:20 p.m. in the 2300 block of S. 17th Avenue. The suspect was arrested 15 minutes later near E. 26th Street East and S. 17th Avenue, according to police.

The shootings have escalated frustrations surrounding encampments of unhoused people on the city’s south side. Residents and have expressed concerns of sanitation and safety, while service providers and advocates have argued the city lacks shelter space, affordable housing and other resources.

Triggered by loud percussive sounds, the surveillance network captures audio clearly enough to triangulate the location of gunshots down to the exact block, determine how many rounds were fired and whether there were multiple shooters. ShotSpotter does not, however, purport to reduce overall gun violence.

Yet, a growing body of research questioning the system’s reliability in recent years has intensified scrutiny by activists and academics when those contract renewals came before local government bodies.

Critical reports by Chicago’s Office of Inspector General and the New York City Comptroller accused ShotSpotter of being a resource drain, often sending officers chasing alerts where no evidence of a shooting exists. In New York, the audit found that it also failed to detect more than 200 real incidents of gunfire in 2022 around Manhattan.

In Minneapolis, an examination of 4,100 police responses to ShotSpotter activations throughout 2022 shows about 70% with dispositions indicating police didn’t encounter anything – no victims, shell casings or physical evidence of a shooting – upon arrival, according to a Star Tribune analysis of 911 dispatch data.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.