Kansas man convicted of performing illegal autopsies gets additional jail time

A Kansas man serving a federal jail term for an illegal autopsy scheme was handed down a one-year jail sentence on state charges, authorities said Wednesday.

Shawn Parcells, 43, was ordered by a state court judge to serve a 12-month sentence in Wabaunsee County, west of Topeka, after he finishes a sentence of nearly six years in federal prison on a wire fraud charge.

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He was convicted in state court of three counts of misdemeanor criminal desecration and felony theft, the Kansas Attorney General’s Office said. The sentence for the felony theft conviction will run concurrently with Parcells’ federal sentence. 

The 12 months he will serve after he finishes his federal prison time stems from the criminal desecration conviction. 

He is currently housed in a federal prison in Leavenworth. 

Between 2016 and 2019, Parcells made more than $1 million from autopsies for more than 350 clients, most of which he did not perform, prosecutors said. He has no formal education in pathology.

Parcells gained national attention in 2014 when he assisted a privately hired pathologist in an autopsy of Michael Brown, the unarmed Black 18-year-old from Ferguson, Missouri, who was fatally shot by a white police officer. The autopsy was commissioned by Brown’s family and no allegations of wrongdoing were raised in relation to it. 

The conviction on state charges stem from three autopsies Parcells performed in Wabaunsee County in 2014 and 2015.