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Disputed Cause of Death in the George Floyd Case
The Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s office released a one-page summary report Monday of its autopsy of George Floyd. It supports my speculation, which I first stated on Friday (comment five here) that Mr. Floyd died of a heart attack. This conclusion has been disputed by medical examiners hired by the lawyers representing Mr. Floyd’s family, which concludes that Mr. Floyd was asphyxiated due to compression of the neck and the back.
The findings of the Hennepin County ME (here), in full, are:
Cause of death: Cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression
Manner of death: Homicide
How injury occurred: Decedent experienced a cardiopulmonary arrest while being restrained by law enforcement officer(s)
Other significant conditions: Arteriosclerotic and hypertensive heart disease; fentanyl intoxication; recent methamphetamine use
It appears that “cardiopulmonary arrest” is synonymous with “cardiac arrest” (here).
My terminology was not technically accurate. I use the term “heart attack” as a synonym for “cardiac arrest,” which is not correct. A “heart attack” (called a “myocardial infarction”) is the death of heart tissue resulting from a blockage of blood flow, which can then cause “cardiac arrest.” “Cardiac arrest” is the term meaning, essentially, that the heart stops beating. It can have multiple causes other than a “heart attack,” including arrhythmia, congestive heart failure, hypovolemic shock, overdose, and drowning (among others).
The report of fentanyl intoxication is new (I think). Previous reports, principally based on the 911 call, indicated that Mr. Floyd was drunk. The degree of fentanyl intoxication is not given, and it does not say that Mr. Floyd either was, or was not, intoxicated with alcohol. Based on the Hennepin County ME report, he was either not drunk, or if he was, the ME did not find it to be a significant condition.
I have not seen a written report by the MEs hired by the Floyd family lawyers, and I would appreciate a link if anyone has it. They apparently released their results in a news conference and a memo by the lawyers. Here is a CBS News article describing their findings. Here are a couple of key excerpts:
- “He couldn’t breathe — asphyxia due to compression of the neck and the back,” Dr. Michael Baden, the former chief medical examiner of New York City, told reporters in a videoconference. “And that’s homicidal.”
- “The autopsy shows that Mr. Floyd had no underlying medical problems that caused or contributed to his death,” Baden said. “He was in good health.”
If you want to reach a conclusion, you will have to make your own decision regarding the credibility of these experts. I am troubled by Dr. Baden’s statement that Mr. Floyd “was in good health,” which does not seem consistent with the Hennepin County ME’s report of arteriosclerotic and hypertensive heart disease; fentanyl intoxication; recent methamphetamine use. However, in the absence of a written report, it remains possible that Dr. Baden might agree about the presence of these conditions, but have concluded that they did not cause or contribute to Mr. Floyd’s death.
My initial assessment is that this will make it quite difficult for the prosecutors to prove their homicide case against Ofc. Chauvin. The Hennepin County ME’s brief summary report did conclude that the cause of death was homicide, but this is without details. It does seem quite plausible to me that the interaction between the officers and Mr. Floyd was the thing that triggered his cardiac arrest. I think it will be more difficult to tie that death to any allegedly wrongful actions by the officers, as they were justified in arresting and restraining him. They may have used excessive and unjustified force, but if so, I think that the homicide case would require proof that it was the allegedly wrongful, incremental force that caused the death. I suspect that such proof will be quite difficult in the circumstances, especially using the standard of proof — beyond a reasonable doubt — that applies in a criminal prosecution.
I expect that the Floyd family, and its lawyers, will have a significantly better chance of persuading a jury of the cause of death in a civil suit, in which the standard of proof will be a preponderance of the evidence (probably — I haven’t checked Minnesota law on this point, but this is the usual standard of proof in such cases).
Published in Policing
Jerry/AP, I think the other interesting question will be which of the various officers and their hands-on activities had the most to do with Mr Floyd’s heart ceasing to beat?
Your main point has been that none of the officers, including Chauvin, are culpable and that there has been a rush to judgment. As far as being a “disputed” cause of death, that may be true, but is dwarfed next to the finding of “homicide,” which does not appear to be disputed.
Initial reports were that Floyd did not die of asphyxia, which likely led to the offense with which Chauvin was charged. If there’s anything in this new data to prove Chauvin was overcharged, I’ve missed it.
Chauvin is charged with third-degree murder. That does not require intent as far as I know, but I suppose if there’s some question as to whether holding Floyd down for 8+ minutes is not “eminently dangerous,” the prosecution may have a problem..
Cardiac arrest is the definition of death not specifically a cause of death. The question remains why did his heart stop? I will be amazed if any jury thinks any underlying medical condition out weighs 250 pounds of force planted on his neck for many minutes even after he was unresponsive.
What evidence to you have that 250 pounds of force was placed on Mr. Floyd’s neck, ever? I watched the video, and the force appeared to be much smaller, with the officer resting his weight on his other knee.
If any of them. It’s a good question, and I don’t know whether the full autopsy report will show more.
There are many possibilities, which may be very difficult or impossible to prove. The Hennepin County ME’s report mentions only neck compression, though it doesn’t quite state that this was a cause in itself. The MEs hired by the family’s lawyers state have a different cause of death, asphyxiation, and attribute it to both compression of the neck and the back. This second possibility would implicate at least two of the officers, but may never be used in a criminal trial.
One must take exception to the dominant analysis ongoing here. The Hennepin County findings are a masterpiece of bullsh*t, artfully constructed to fool the unwitting, including, it would appear, a majority of Ricochetti. I shall translate.
“Cause of death: Cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.”
Let’s clarify that. Almost everyone, except those of us who are atomized in a bomb blast, will die of cardio-pulmonary arrest. Cardio arrest: the heart stops beating. Pulmonary arrest: breathing ceases. To say “cardiopulmonary arrest” merely says “death”. My wife who died of flu in 2004 suffered cardio-pulmonary arrest, but the thing that killed her was the flu.
“Cause of death: Death complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.”
We have a redundancy. Let’s remove it.
“Cause of death: law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.”
Let’s clarify further by taking out the next redundancy. To be “subdued” by law enforcement is to be restrained.
“Cause of death: law enforcement restraint, and neck compression.”
The neck compression was a means of restraint. Further clarification yields:
“Cause of death: law enforcement neck compression.”
The next and final simplification is the observation that the neck compression did not cause law enforcement, but that law enforcement caused neck compression.
“Cause of death: law enforcement.”
It doesn’t matter if Mr Floyd was high, was low, had diabetes, was on an acid trip, or if he suffered an acute myocardial infarction. He only suffered that infarction because he was illegally restrained and as a result of such illegal restraint could not, it appears, create enough chest excursion to oxygenate his blood. This is similar to the Eric Garner debacle. A beached whale dies of suffocation.
Mr Floyd was killed by the actions of the officers who restrained him by pressing on his neck while he lay handcuffed on the pavement. That only the fellow whose weight was actually applied has been jailed and charged is a prosecutorial failure, one which I hope will be remedied soon. All four of them are culpable; the other three had a duty to pull off Officer Chauvin.
These officers committed a monstrous crime, killing a citizen who was in their custody, and all four of them deserve punishment. We should not want the State to allow its peace officers to restrain criminals in a lethal way for non-violent crimes.
Shooting looters in the heart, that’s another matter. I’m all for that.
It’s certainly true we don’t know the degree of force used by Chauvin, but it’s worth noting that Michael Baden, who conducted an independent autopsy for the family, concluded that there was “neck and back compression that led to a lack of blood flow to the brain . . .”
Doctor Robert said what I was trying to say more effectively. I have watched all of the videos available on the internet and it is indisputable to me that murder occurred.
That said, if George Floyd tested positive for covid-19, some jurors might accept that as a reasonable cause of death.
Yeah, unless a third M.E. comes out and says the cause of death is COVID-19, and the three guys on his back were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, I think the Floyd family has a pretty good case
My main point, previously, has been that the evidence did not support the claim that Ofc. Chauvin asphyxiated Mr. Floyd. I don’t think that you’ve properly characterized my prior position, which was that there was insufficient evidence to conclude that any of the officers were culpable, and my speculation of a cardiac arrest (which I erroneously called a heart attack in my prior comments), which has been confirmed by the Hennepin County MD.
I’d like to see the reasoning behind the Hennepin County ME’s conclusion that the death was homicide. I’m not sure what definition of “homicide” they are using. In one usage, it is a generic term for a criminal act causing death that would include both murder and manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide (which is a separate crime in some states, and a category of manslaughter in others, I think). In another usage, “homicide” simply means a death caused by another person, which may not be criminally culpable, as in “justifiable homicide.”
I hope that we will eventually get to see the full autopsy report, which will probably contain additional details that could aid in my understanding of the Hennepin County ME’s theory of what happened that resulted in the conclusion that the death was homicide.
The way that it is phrased — “Cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression” — is difficult for me to interpret. If the theory is that the neck compression performed by Ofc. Chauvin caused the cardiopulmonary arrest, I would have phrased it differently, but they may have phrased it differently in the full autopsy report.
[Cont’d]
My impression, at the moment, is that it will be difficult for the prosecution to demonstrate that the cardiac arrest was caused by the neck compression applied by Ofc. Chauvin. There may be further details in the full autopsy report that will bridge this gap in the limited evidence that we’ve seen thus far.
If I were on the defense side, I would work on developing the evidence that Mr. Floyd’s cardiac arrest started before he was on the ground on the passenger side of the cop car. As I noted in prior comments (on other posts), the probable cause statement (here) says: “While standing outside the car, Mr. Floyd began saying and repeating that he could not breathe.” This was apparently before: “The defendant went to the passenger side and tried to get Mr. Floyd into the car from that side and Lane and Kueng assisted” (as this is the very next sentence).
The third-degree murder statute at issue (here) provides:
The prosecution might argue that the knee-on-neck maneuver, even if the force was minimal (which it may or may not have been), was nevertheless “an act eminently dangerous to others.” I don’t know the details on this one, although I saw a news article previously stating that this hold was prohibited by some police departments, but was not prohibited by the Minneapolis PD.
This is a tougher case for the prosecution than most. In most of the notable white-cop-kills-unarmed-black-man cases recently, the suspect was shot, and there is no question of the cause of death, and the principal issue is whether the use of deadly force was justified. Here, as in the Eric Garner and Freddie Gray cases, the cause of death is less clear.
In the Eric Garner case, the officer was not indicted by the grand jury. In the Freddie Gray case, several officers were tried — three were acquitted, and one trial ended in a mistrial, at which point all of the state charges were dropped against all officers. The federal authorities declined to prosecute in the Freddie Gray case.
I am mostly concerned about what I consider to be misinformation being spread about the death of Mr. Floyd. A great many news people, politicians, and even Ricochet contributors have claimed that Mr. Floyd was strangled or asphyxiated, which is not well supported by the facts — though as noted in the OP, this is the opinion of the MEs hired by the lawyers for the family.
Jerry, please go back and re-read what I wrote. The Hennepin County coroner gives “neck compression” as the cause of death. That’s fancy talk for “strangulation”. Whether Mr Floyd was asphyxiated by crushing the trachea or suffered a massive stroke from bilateral carotid artery compression or suffered displacement of the cervical spine with mid-brain injury, all possible scenarios from having 150 pounds of a peace officer’s knee pressing on your neck for 8 minutes while three of his colleagues ignore this illegal action, it still counts as “strangulation”.
Just sayin’.
The bolded is mine and I’d only like to point out that it is how I characterized your position (above). Regarding the matter of a rush to judgment, that is admittedly subjective, but I think your initial post on that was where this all started. Regarding the matter of asphyxia, I’m not sure it was ever contested or, given the charge, that it really mattered–as was evidenced by the preliminary finding of no asphyxia that formed the basis for the charge. The question is Chauvin’s role in Floyd’s death–not whether Floyd was asphyxiated.
Based on the present state of the evidence, including the finding of homicide, and the third degree murder charge, it’s possible that this won’t even get to a jury. We will agree to disagree on whether this is a tough case, and I suspect that there will be convincing medical evidence available that Chauvin’s length of positioning was “eminently dangerous.” There may be other shoes to fall, but that’s my take for now.
Doc, I didn’t see your comment before mine — I think that yours went up while I was writing mine.
I have now read what you wrote, and I have some questions for you. Is it possible that Mr. Floyd was having a heart attack, or other event of cardiac arrest, while he was still standing on the other side of the cop car? As noted in my latest comment, the probable cause statement says that he said that he could not breathe at that time, before anyone is claiming that excessive force was applied.
Is it possible that Mr. Floyd would have died anyway, as a result of an ongoing cardiac event, even if the officers had left him completely alone on the ground on the passenger side of the cop car? I don’t know the answer to this. I don’t see how you could have enough information to determine this, without the full autopsy report and based on the limited report issued thus far, but you’re the doc.
Can you tell me why you think murder occurred, with specifics? Do you think that Ofc. Chauvin caused Mr. Floyd’s death by compressing his neck? Or is it something else?
Good points, fairly stated. But c’mon, if a citizen under your arrest is having a heart attack, complaining of inability to breathe, one’s first duty is not to apply a knee to his neck. One’s duty is to see that he can’t use this as a ruse to escape or injure you, then provide first aid.
I look at the Hennepin County coroner’s report and see what it hides with verbosity. Indeed, I was of the “let’s get all the facts first” school before I read the HCC report, which to my eyes is an admission of police malfeasance hidden in plain sight.
I also found the phrasing of the Hennepin County ME’s report to be strange. I just didn’t go to the same conclusion that you did. I had seen the prior statement in the probable cause report (linked in my comment 11 above) that:
Note that this is not a direct statement from the ME, but a statement supporting the arrest warrant, presumably drafted by one of the prosecutors.
I have a greater suspicion that the Hennepin County ME is obscuring evidence of a heart attack. I would expect that this would be evident from an autopsy, from damage to the heart, but I don’t know that for certain. I also don’t know whether a heart attack occurred. It seems to fit their other statements, and the other facts, but this would require either the full autopsy report or a clear yes-or-no statement on the issue by the ME.
Positional asphyxiation is another plausible theory, supported by the MEs hired by the Floyd family lawyers. Their press statement, quoted in the OP, indicates that the cause of death was a combination of neck and back compression. This would implicate another officer — Ofc. Keung, I think, who was holding down Mr. Floyd’s back. There was a third, Ofc. Lane, holding down his legs.
Positional asphyxia would also be a complicated case here, I think. I do have some litigation experience on this issue. If this theory is correct, there would be a combination of factors: (1) Mr. Floyd’s arms being handcuffed behind him; (2) Mr. Floyd’s position, prone on his stomach; (3) pressure applied by Ofc. Keung to Mr. Floyd’s back; and (4) neck compression by Ofc. Chauvin.
One more issue. I don’t know, but I doubt that failure to render first aid would support a criminal charge.
I have something else to add. I’ve been skeptical of the criminal homicide claims against Ofc. Chauvin thus far. He’s been fired, and now arrested and incarcerated. Even if he is ultimately acquitted, his life will be close to ruined.
In most of the white cop-black suspect cases, I have a lot of sympathy for the cop. The Michael Brown case comes to mind, in which I think that the officer did absolutely nothing wrong.
I have virtually no sympathy for Ofc. Chauvin. I am skeptical of the claim that his knee-to-the-neck maneuver caused Mr. Floyd’s death, though this may turn out to be the case. But even if it did no harm, it was an obnoxious and unprofessional thing to do in these circumstances, in my estimation. I can see no reason for it whatsoever.
I may be wrong about this, but my impression is that it did not require a knee-to-the-neck hold to restrain Mr. Floyd, and it didn’t require three officers. It probably required just one or maybe two officers, relatively gently holding Mr. Floyd down with their hands while kneeling next to him — not kneeling on him. I just can’t see how Mr. Floyd could have had any leverage to get back up, while lying prone on his stomach with his hands handcuffed behind his back, if anyone was exerting even mild force to hold him down.
I don’t find Ofc. Keung to have acted well, either, though he is only in the video for a few seconds. The video I watched was a bit hard to see, but it looked as if he was kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s torso area.
I expect Chauvin to be charged with Murder 1 and eventually be convicted. It was not reckless. It was a deadly act and he knew it was a deadly act, and chose to do it. Malice aforethought.
What’s the role fentanyl “intoxication” can play in this? Is there a metric – like Blood alcohol level measures – for determining how intoxicated someone is?
Fixed it for ya.
Once he’s in cuffs and/or incapable of resisting in a way likely to compromise officer safety, the priority becomes his safety, no matter what he has done.
Positional asphyxia is what police officers are trying to avoid when they lift a handcuffed suspect into a sitting position ASAP.
It is entirely possible that Mr. Floyd had underlying cardiovascular disease and substances in his system: so what? This is America. Who doesn’t? That’s why you don’t leave people lying on their stomachs with their hands chained behind their backs.
I understand that you’re attempting a legal analysis of the position rather than a medical or even moral one, AP. The autopsy findings matter for you because these affect the nature of the charges brought against Chauvin, and the likelihood of conviction, right?
From my point of view—not concerned with the legal problem—- the autopsy findings don’t matter much at all, because they don’t affect the questions I’d be asking Minneapolis officials (rather loudly) were I given the chance to do so:
Did Chauvin and his colleagues not know that it is dangerous—painful, unpleasant and potentially fatal— to keep a handcuffed prisoner lying on his stomach, with or without large men kneeling on him? If not, why not?
On the other hand, did they know it and just not care?
Were all four officers overwhelmed by fear and panic and thus incapable not only of executing very basic (in fact, should be muscle-memory) manuevers or, for that matter, being able to tell the difference between an actively resisting suspect and a near-corpse?
Were all four officers (despite their racial diversity) simultaneously murderously racist and so unbelievably stupid that they didn’t realize that they were committing their racist murder while a.) wearing body cameras and b.) surrounded by people with I-phones, in c.) the year 2020?
In other words, were they not only willing (or eager!) to kill Mr. Floyd, but also intent on committing career suicide?
All of the above (plus the death of Justine Damon and, arguably, Philando Castile) strongly suggests that Minneapolis P.D. has a serious problem with hiring and training. They are either hiring morons or providing training that I would consider inadequate for a mall security guard, or possibly both.
Not disputing anything but “illegally restrained”. The method of restraint is dubious but the cops had every right to restrain him.
He was restrained in an illegal manner. Thanks for pointing this out.
There is a serious problem with this theory. Choke holds are apparently legal in Minnesota. Back in the 80s in LA, a guy died from a choke hold so they were banned. When the LAPD cops arrived to take down Rodney King before the female CHP officer shot him, they could not use a choke hold so they used batons. This was videotaped and got them sent to prison. It took a double jeopardy but the Clinton DOJ got it done.
For which he had no evidence but the video, however Ben Crump’s check cleared so there is that.
No evidence of either stated. The defense should be worried about jury selection as lynching is in the mind of black Muslim Ellison.
Yeah, Baden’s just some inexperienced piker looking to make a fortune.
Baden on TV today said he was unable to examine all of Floyd’s heart so his comment that he was healthy is BS.
Concur with this…he even states there is no clinical evidence and the video is only evidence for his diagnosis…