CHANHASSEN, Minn. (AP) — A Minnesota doctor saw Prince twice in the month before his death, including the day before he died, and prescribed him medication, according to contents of a search warrant that were revealed Tuesday even as authorities revisited the musician’s estate.
Dr. Michael Todd Schulenberg treated Prince on April 7 and April 20, and he prescribed “medications and prescriptions” for the musician, according to the warrant, which was filed Thursday in Hennepin County and obtained by at least two news outlets before authorities moved to ensure it was sealed.
Investigators interviewed Schulenberg and searched a suburban Minneapolis hospital where he worked. The warrant did not specify what medications were prescribed for Prince or whether he took them.
Contents of the warrant were revealed the same day that authorities returned to Prince’s Paisley Park home and studio in suburban Minneapolis where he was found dead April 21. A sheriff’s vehicle entered through the gates of Paisely Park on Tuesday afternoon, followed by about a dozen unmarked vehicles. Asked why investigators had returned to Paisely Park, Carver County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Jason Kamerud told The Associated Press by phone that they were “being thorough.”
Kamerud said he could not answer questions about the search warrant that names Schulenberg because it was supposed to be sealed.
The warrant was carried out at North Memorial Medical Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Robbinsdale.
Lesa Bader, a spokeswoman for North Memorial Medical Center, said Schulenberg was a primary care physician at its Minnetonka clinic but that he no longer works for the health care system. No one answered the door at the doctor’s home on Tuesday and a phone message left for him wasn’t immediately returned.
Schulenberg’s April 7 treatment of Prince came the day he canceled shows in Atlanta citing illness. He played makeup shows April 14, then fell ill on the flight home and was taken by ambulance from the plane during an emergency landing Moline, Illinois.
A law enforcement official has told the AP that investigators are looking into whether Prince died from an overdose and whether a doctor was prescribing him drugs in the weeks before his death. The law enforcement official has been briefed on the investigation and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The search warrant naming Schulenberg seeks “any and all medical records, documents, reports, charts, photographs, prescriptions, doctor notes and medical images for Prince Rogers Nelson.” The warrant, signed by Carver County Sheriff’s Detective Chris Nelson, also seeks any and all legal records attached to those files.
Schulenberg told Nelson that tests were performed on Prince and that he had gone to Paisley Park to drop off the results when he came on the death scene, according to the warrant. Schulenberg also told the detective that he had prescribed Prince “medications” with the prescription to be filled at a Walgreen’s.
The warrant also notes an interview with Kirk Anthony Johnson, a Paisley Park staff member and sometime drummer for Prince, who told another detective that Prince had visited the Highway 212 Medical Center in Chaska for “an illness” in 2014 or 2015. Johnson told the detective that Prince had been given fluids during the visit.
Carver County previously released a log of 911 calls to Paisley Park that showed a 53-year-old man, apparently dehydrated, taken to Highway 212 Medical Center in 2013. That man’s age was given as 53; Prince would have been 55 at the time. A hospital spokeswoman said earlier she couldn’t provide any information patients due to privacy laws.
Asked about the warrant, Kamerud said it was supposed to have been filed under seal and that he had contacted a court administrator to ensure it was sealed.
The people who found Prince dead included Andrew Kornfeld, the son of California addiction specialist Dr. Howard Kornfeld, who was asked by Prince representatives to help the star. Andrew Kornfeld had taken a redeye flight the night of April 20 but did not meet with Prince before his death.
The Kornfelds’ attorney, William Mauzy, said at a news conference last week that Dr. Kornfeld arranged for Prince to be evaluated by a Minnesota physician on April 21. The attorney refused then to identify the Minnesota doctor, and it was not clear whether that physician had a prior relationship with Prince.
The search warrant does not say whether Schulenberg was that doctor.
According to the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice website, Schulenberg has not been subjected to any disciplinary or corrective action in Minnesota or other states. He’s a 1995 graduate of the Oregon Health Sciences University School of Medicine. His license status is listed as active. It expires Oct. 31 of this year.
The site lists no self-reported criminal convictions. State law requires the board to post felonies and gross misdemeanors that happened after July 1, 2013, in any state.
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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Prince carefully guarded his public image in life, and now some Minnesota lawmakers are trying to ensure that his estate can continue doing so after his death.
A Minnesota House committee on Tuesday began debating a measure that would create a so-called Right of Publicity in the state, which would clarify the rights of artists to control the commercial use of their names, likenesses, images, voices and signatures, and to extend those protections even after they die.
Other states have similar laws, but Prince’s death brought the question to Minnesota of how to ensure that an artist’s legacy remains in the hands of his or her estate. That occurred to Sen. Bobby Joe Champion when he dropped in on one of many Prince celebrations and saw people selling T-shirts with Prince’s likeness that he believes were probably unlicensed.
“It raised a really important issue to say: ‘Well, hold up. Do we have any protections here in Minnesota around a person still being able to control their likeness and their image even after their death?'” said the Minneapolis Democrat, who once directed a choir that backed up Prince in several performances. “We realized in Minnesota we didn’t have any responsible protection.”
Prince was found dead in his suburban Minneapolis home on April 21, and since then questions have swirled about what will happen to his estate and legacy.
In Minnesota, there is common law that seems to recognize that there is a right of publicity that allows people to control their own names and likenesses, according to Joel Leviton, an attorney for Stinson Leonard Street, the law firm representing the special administrator of Prince’s estate. What has never been established in case law is whether it passes to heirs, he said.
“Without clear legal protection prohibiting unauthorized commercial uses of Prince’s name and likeness, the asset — that is Prince’s identity itself — begins to diminish in value as others use it for commercial purposes,” Leviton told lawmakers in the House on Tuesday. “There is no way a subsequent court case can fully recover the value for Prince’s heirs. There are just too many people who can sell T-shirts and merchandise with Prince’s image.”
Some say the proposed law — which would protect one’s likeness for at least 50 years — is overreaching and could have serious unintended consequences that likely won’t be thoroughly vetted with less than two weeks remaining in Minnesota’s legislative session.
William McGeveran, a law professor at the University of Minnesota who specializes in information law, said the bill could raise constitutional questions. He said that unlike trademark law, which generally focuses on whether a consumer believes someone is trying to “pass off” or misrepresent their goods as someone else’s, this measure has blanket protections that could stop people from creating things pertaining to an artist, such as an unauthorized biography, even if it’s clear it’s not associated with the artist’s estate.
McGeveran also said lawmakers need to consider why these rights of publicity should be protected after an artist dies.
“The purpose of a copyright is to reward and encourage people for making great music, art, writing, things like that,” he said. “What are we trying to encourage by having these celebrity publicity rights? Do we think that people need to have decades of rights after they die or else they won’t plan on becoming famous? Do we think that people becoming celebrities contributes to our culture the way that Prince’s music does?”
Associated Press writer Kyle Potter contributed to this report.
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