MA Medical examiner credentials challenged

The state medical examiner’s office, which has been rocked by repeated controversies, now faces another embarrassing mess: One of the agency’s former top officials is accusing the current chief medical examiner of having falsified credentials.

Dr. Stanton C. Kessler, who for a time was the acting chief medical examiner for the state, alleged in court documents filed yesterday that Dr. Henry M. Nields, now the chief medical examiner, never finished a fellowship program that Nields has cited as one of his credentials. In fact, Kessler said in an affidavit, Nields left the fellowship program after demonstrating “anger management issues,’’ pursuing an “inappropriate and unwanted relationship’’ with a female subordinate, and precipitating a violent fight in the morgue as doctors performed autopsies.