A Minnesota man who served nearly 25 years in connection with his wife’s death walked out of prison on Friday after authorities vacated his murder convictions and allowed him to plead guilty to manslaughter, citing a problem with expert testimony from a doctor whose statements in other cases have also come under scrutiny.

Thomas Rhodes, who is now 63, was convicted in 1998 of first- and second-degree murder in the death of his 36-year-old wife, Jane Rhodes, who fell overboard and drowned on a night-time boat ride with her husband on Green Lake in Spicer in 1996.

The murder conviction hinged on the testimony of Dr. Michael McGee, who said Rhodes grabbed his wife by the neck, threw her overboard and ran her over several times, the Attorney General’s Office said in a statement Friday. Rhodes told investigators his wife fell out of the boat and disappeared while he frantically searched for her in the dark.

The Conviction Review Unit in the Attorney General’s Office examined the case. As part of that investigation, a forensic pathologist found that Jane Rhodes’ death was not inconsistent with an accidental fall, the office said.

“With the benefit of a thorough review of all the evidence and circumstances, the CRU found that the medical evidence used in Mr. Rhodes’ conviction was flawed,” the statement said.

“I look forward to hugging my sons Eric and Jason, being a good grandfather to my six wonderful grandkids, and having time to create new memories with family and friends,” Rhodes told the Mankato Free Press on Friday.

Messages left Saturday at phone numbers listed for Michael McGee were not immediately returned. Efforts to reach him through social media were not immediately successful.

The state’s report did not exonerate Rhodes: the Attorney General’s Office said there was sufficient evidence to support a conviction of second-degree manslaughter, saying negligence led to his wife’s death. However, Rhodes has spent nearly 25 years in prison, which is more than twice the maximum sentence allowed for the manslaughter conviction.

Rhodes drove a small, unstable boat late at night at top speed, knowing that his wife could not swim, the statement said. She was neither wearing a life jacket nor were life jackets available. Also, the boat had no flashlights or a quick way to call for help.

On Friday, a Kandiyohi County judge vacated Rhodes’ murder convictions. The Minnesota Department of Corrections said the judge then accepted a plea to second-degree manslaughter. Rhodes was sentenced to four years in prison, and got credit for time served, which led to his release, the corrections department said.

Rhodes is the first person released in Minnesota since the Conviction Review Unit was created in 2021. The unit reviews legal cases for people who claim to be innocent.

“He was beaming the whole time,” Hayley Drozdowski-Poxleitner, a spokesperson for the Great North Innocence Project, said of Rhodes. “This has been a long, long time coming.”

The Great North Innocence Project, which worked with the Attorney General’s Office, said in a news release that nine forensic pathologists reviewed the case and found that Jane Rhodes’ injuries were most likely caused by a blow to her head, possibly from falling out of the boat or from an unintentional hit by the boat as Rhodes searched the water.

None of the forensic pathologists would have called her death a murder, the organization said.

Testimony from McGee has been questioned in several cases in recent years. In 2021, a federal judge threw out the death sentence of a man who was convicted of kidnapping in the 2003 slaying of North Dakota college student Dru Sjodin, in part because of testimony from McGee. That judge said new evidence showed McGee, the former Ramsey County Medical Examiner, was “guessing” on the witness stand. Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. is expected to be re-sentenced, and prosecutors have said they will still seek the death penalty.

___

Stafford reported from Liberty, Missouri. AP writer Amy Forliti contributed to this report from Minneapolis.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Storm-battered California got more wind, rain and snow on Saturday, raising flooding concerns, causing power outages and making travel dangerous.

Bands of rain with gusty winds started in the north and spread south, with more storms expected to follow into early next week, the National Weather Service said.

More than 68,000 utility customers were without electricity by late morning, according to poweroutage.us.

Flood warnings were issued for the region north of San Francisco Bay, including Marin, Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino counties.

To the south, warnings were posted for parts of counties including San Mateo and Santa Cruz, where the tiny community of Felton Grove along the San Lorenzo River was ordered evacuated.

The swollen Salinas River swamped farmland in Monterey County, and to the east, flood warnings were in effect for the San Joaquin Valley community of Merced.

Slick roads, snow and whiteout conditions plagued highways through the Sierra Nevada.

The UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab tweeted Saturday morning that it received 21.3 inches (54 centimeters) of snow in 24 hours and that its snowpack of about 10 feet (3 meters) was expected to grow several more feet by Monday.

A backcountry avalanche warning was issued for the central Sierra, including the greater Lake Tahoe area.

A series of atmospheric rivers has dumped rain and snow on California since late December, cutting power to thousands, swamping roads, unleashing debris flows, and triggering landslides.

At least 19 storm-related deaths have occurred, and a 5-year-old boy remained missing after being swept out of his mother’s car by flood waters in San Luis Obispo County.

Half of the deaths have involved motorists, and some could have been prevented if drivers had heeded road closure signs, said Sean Duryee, acting commissioner of the California Highway Patrol, during a briefing by state and federal officials on Friday.

In Santa Barbara County, where a massive debris flow through the community of Montecito killed 23 people on Jan. 9, 2018, residents were told that new evacuations were not expected but that they should be prepared.

Montecito and adjacent areas were most recently ordered evacuated last Monday, the fifth anniversary of what is locally remembered as the “1/9 Debris Flow.” But the community perched on foothills of coastal mountains escaped serious harm.

In a visit to Montecito on Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom asked residents to exercise caution, and to heed warnings from public safety officials.

“I know how fatigued you all are,” Newsom said. “Just maintain a little more vigilance over the course of the next weekend.”

Dry days are in next week’s forecast for California starting on Tuesday.

“Question will then become do we stay dry through the end of month?” the San Francisco Bay Area weather office wrote.

——

AP reporter Janie Har contributed from San Francisco. AP/Report for America writer Sophie Austin contributed from Mather, California.

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — For months, Tennessee’s Republican leaders have maintained that the state’s abortion ban — known as one of the strictest in the U.S. — allows doctors to perform the procedure, should they need to in order to save the patient’s life, even though the statute doesn’t explicitly say so.

This assertion has been met with skepticism from health care experts, attorneys, Democrats and reproductive rights advocates, who counter that the law has created a dangerous, new legal landscape for those navigating pregnancy and for medical providers.

Since some isolated Republican lawmakers vouched for exceptions, this week a key legislative leader acknowledged that the skeptics had a point — and he thinks the law should be changed.

“You have all kinds of people who say: I don’t see it, can you point to it?” House Speaker Cameron Sexton said, about the statute’s unclear language around exemptions, in an interview with The Associated Press. “If that’s the intent, then let’s clarify it. Let’s have the exemption for the life for the mother.”

Sexton’s comments stand in stark contrast to the stances of Senate Speaker Randy McNally and Gov. Bill Lee, both Republicans. While all three lawmakers largely oppose abortion, Sexton is the lone, top Republican leader to concede that the ban could be clarified and improved.

These divisions have emerged as state lawmakers returned to Tennessee’s capitol city this week to start the 2023 legislative session. They could represent the next front in the legal fight over when and how to make exceptions to abortion bans in states with Republican majorities.

With supermajority control, Tennessee Republicans are expected to advance a wide range of issues — from tax breaks, to harsher penalties for certain crimes, to policies that target treatment for transgender children — without much resistance. They also must grapple with a crisis inside Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services, which has been flagged as failing to properly protect the state’s most vulnerable children. Meanwhile, Sexton said he’ll introduce legislation that would allow teachers to take up to six weeks of paid maternity and paternity leave.

Yet on abortion, the Republican rift has left little certainty about what, if anything, will pass.

Tennessee’s abortion ban is considered one of the nation’s strictest. It makes performing an abortion a Class C felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. There are currently no exceptions.

Instead, the law includes an “affirmative defense” for doctors. Rather than make the state prove that the procedure was not medically necessary, the law shifts the burden to the doctor to argue in court that it was.

Tennessee lawmakers passed the law in 2019, when the idea of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade was a hope among most Republicans, rather than an impending reality. In the months since Tennessee’s law has been in effect, at least one Republican state lawmaker has admitted that he voted for the trigger law after hardly reading it because he never thought the high court would revoke the constitutional right to abortion.

Still, in an interview with The AP, McNally said he supports the current law and doesn’t think it should be changed, saying “we should see how it works out.”

McNally said he thinks the law provides protection for people who are pregnant, but “it’s not absolute because making a decision about the life of a mother is not absolute.”

He said “it could be something that there’s a small chance that it might harm her, or it could be a critical decision such as an ectopic pregnancy.” He said he generally has faith in prosecutors, since they can decide whether or not to bring charges under the law.

And though he said he would probably vote against a bill that would change the abortion law, McNally said abortion won’t be used as a “litmus test” for GOP senators. He said he wouldn’t actively work to block a bill from coming to the floor for a vote.

“I usually don’t get involved and usually trust the committee system, and certainly would in that issue,” McNally said.

Meanwhile, Lee has downplayed concerns that the abortion ban’s current language about exemptions has sparked confusion and fear in the medical community. As a vocal opponent of abortion rights, Lee has maintained that doctors can use “their best judgment” to save the pregnant person’s life.

Sexton says his support for abortion exceptions aligns with what most Tennesseans want, pointing to various polling that showed support for exemptions.

According to a recent Vanderbilt University poll, most registered voters in Tennessee said they wanted exceptions for rape or incest in the state’s sweeping abortion ban — and many don’t know the specifics of what’s in the law as it stands today.

Fewer than 1 in 5 were able to pick which of the statements Vanderbilt provided that most closely described the current abortion law’s requirements, according to Vanderbilt pollsters.

However, Sexton said he’s unsure if there’s enough House GOP support to add exemptions for rape and incest. Several bills this session will offer tweaks to the ban, he said.

“We need to, especially in our caucus, listen to all the women and let’s see what they say,” Sexton said. “You’re gonna have some who believe in (the) trigger (law), you’re gonna have some believe we need exceptions … but it needs to be a conversation where we listen instead of trying to talk to them about what we think is needed.”

Tennessee’s abortion ban has not faced a legal challenge since it went into effect last August. However, legal challenges are popping up across the country against the strict restrictions that states have implemented since the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling.

Most recently, South Carolina’s Supreme Court struck down a ban on abortion after about six weeks into pregnancy, ruling that the restriction enacted by the Deep South state violates a state constitutional right to privacy.

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UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants to visit the United Nations to address a high-level meeting of the 193-member General Assembly on the eve of the first anniversary of Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of his country if the security situation permits, a senior Foreign Ministry official said Friday.

First Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzhaparova cautioned in an interview with The Associated Press that many factors need to be in place for him to come, citing first and foremost the military situation on the ground and a warning from Ukraine’s intelligence service that Russia is planning “a very serious offensive in February.”

“Our president would want to come, he has a will or intention to come,” she said, “but it’s still a question if there will be a security situation that will allow him to come.”

If Zelenskyy does come to the U.N., it would be only his second trip outside Ukraine since the invasion. He made a surprise visit to Washington on Dec. 21 to meet his most important backers in the war against Russia — President Joe Biden and members of Congress whom he thanked for their support and told that “against all odds” Ukraine still stands.

Ukraine’s U.N. Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya said the General Assembly has already scheduled a high-level debate on the war on Feb. 23, which will be followed by a ministerial meeting of the Security Council on Feb. 24.

Dzhaparova said Ukraine would like to see the assembly adopt one of the two resolutions that Zelenskyy wants to see approved on the eve of the anniversary of the invasion.

She said Ukraine is consulting with its partners on the two measures, one that would support the president’s 10-point peace formula that includes the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the withdrawal of Russian forces and the other that would establish a tribunal to prosecute crimes of aggression, which would enable Russia to be held accountable for its unprovoked invasion.

“We have to act step by step,” Dzhaparova said. “It’s still a question what will be the first. … I believe that this is something that we will know very soon, in the nearest week or two.”

In late December, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told AP the government wanted a “peace” summit by the end of February at the U.N., with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as mediator, but he didn’t anticipate Russia taking part. That would make it difficult to foresee mediation or an end to the devastating war.

Kyslytsya, the Ukrainian ambassador, said he doesn’t think Russian President Vladimir Putin would allow anyone to attend a summit because it doesn’t go along with his plan that Russian territorial gains are non-negotiable.

Dzhaparova said a summit is still under discussion and stressed that “it’s not a negotiation.”

Dzhaparova said the summit would be a platform to discuss things that Ukraine considers important on top of the 10-point peace proposal, which also includes the release of all prisoners, a tribunal for those responsible for the Russian aggression, and security guarantees for Ukraine.

“It’s about shaping the discourse,” she explained.

It doesn’t mean that by adopting a resolution or holding a summit Ukraine is ready to sign up to a peace agreement or cease-fire, Dzhaparova said. It means that only after a resolution or summit “negotiation about peace, or the agreement on peace, might be started.”

The former journalist and TV anchor, a Crimean Tatar whose parents left Crimea after Russia’s 2014 takeover and annexation of the strategic peninsula, said Ukraine needs political, economic and military support.

Politically, Dzhaparova said, Russia has discredited the U.N. Charter, which opposes the use of force against another country, and flouted international law and should be isolated by the international community.

She said it’s crucial to provide financial support to Ukraine because its economy has suffered much more than Russia’s, and to provide weapons “to fight for peace.”

Dzhaparova said the Ukrainian armed forces are highly motivated and are fighting to protect their land and people, “but the Russian army doesn’t understand what they’re fighting for.”

“We are doing our best to win, but then at the end of the day, it’s still a question of what will be the end,” she said.

If Ukraine were to lose, Dzhaparova said, Putin won’t be satisfied “and I’m sure that Russia would attack other countries in the nearest future.”

“This is not about Ukraine solely, it’s about a common goal to avoid further aggression,” she stressed. “If the war is not contained in Ukraine, the war will become bigger.”