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Just for the Record
The expert witnesses in the George Floyd trial have added their opinions to the court record. The prosecutor’s witnesses say Chauvin killed Floyd. The defense witnesses say Floyd’s underlying cardiac disease killed him (along with a little carbon monoxide and presumed effects of a paraganglioma–finding a paraganglioma on autopsy does not confirm that the paraganglioma was metabolically active; such can exist without causing any clinical symptoms whatsoever–that was discovered during his autopsy). The medical examiner had already ruled the death a murder. All of this is meretricious film flam.
There is no possibility at all, physically, that Chauvin’s actions could have killed Floyd. Physically impossible. A presumed cardiac arrhythmia is just that: Presumed. No way to confirm or refute that claim, except that clinically, Floyd’s death did not follow a pattern that would have indicated such an arrhythmia, e.g, an abrupt demise. His was a gradual (over some minutes) decline. There was no evidence of an acute myocardial infarction on autopsy that would have underpinned that claim from the defense expert.
The only thing that could possibly have happened, is that Floyd died of a drug overdose. His gradual decline, after proclaiming that he “ate too many drugs,” is fully consistent with the respiratory depression caused by Fentanyl. This was a drug overdose death. No one will say that, apparently for political reasons. The levels of fentanyl ascertained on autopsy were sufficient to cause death. The clinical course was fully consistent with a drug-induced overdose death.
The fault of the officers is that they did not recognize the situation in a timely manner and get the right help: e.g., an IV dose of Narcan, and possibly respiratory support (intubation). They did not start CPR. One can fault them for that, but those skills are the bailiwick of a good ER physician, not cops on the beat. And, unfortunately, the great and learned experts missed exactly what the cops missed.
A farce.
To cite the most relevant savant on such events: Stupid is as stupid does.
That’s all I’m going to say about that.
Published in General
I would have sworn the original autopsy report cited fentanyl overdose as the cause of death . . .
There is no fairness in this trial. The only drama here is that we still think he will be found innocent. The learned media has declared it a murder. The reporting has said the prosecution case is airtight and the defense are bumbling fools. NOTE: This is based upon my wife’s detailed reading of state media approved source and nothing else.
If Officer Chauvin were to be acquitted then last summer would look like a halcyon summer of youth. One can tell that the “fix” is in when the icon of women’s TV the Shondaland shows on ABC Thursday night have decided that plot lines about George Floyd were optimal to air during the trial to reinforce that if you don’t feel utter and complete revulsion at the heinous actions of Darth Chauvin and his storm trooper friends in the callous murder of Mr Floyd that you are just a worthless conservative who lacks basic human decency. When I noted this to my wife she asked me if I had given any thought to why I disagreed with the shows’ underlying themes and what that said about me as a person.
The more I see what is happening in the world, the more I realize just how brilliant Andrew Breitbart was. We have eschewed fighting the culture wars and now, as the result of that surrender when the politics follows we are aghast and shocked.
I believe the medical examiner conceded that the death would have been ruled a drug overdose had the circumstances not included the interaction with the police. The medical examiner declined to rule the cause of death as drug overdose (eg, the medical examiner’s ruling was a political ruling not a medical ruling) but acknowledged that drugs and underlying heart disease were contributing factors. The cause of death on the original autopsy was listed as due directly to the actions of Officer Chauvin. Which is complete nonsense.
Yes. I agree that so far the defense may have hurt itself by bringing in all the distractions of carbon monoxide, etc.
The prosecution witnesses who asserted either no excited delirium or no overdose had big holes in their arguments that the defense failed to exploit. Perhaps the defense did not exploit on the grounds that they will bring up the issue in closing. A bit risky.
For example, on the OD front, one doctor said Floyd did not OD because he was so animated and a Fentanyl OD would have had the opposite effect. But he also seemed surprised that the high Fentanyl level did not knock Floyd out. He apparently attributed that to tolerance. But that all begs the timing of the Fentanyl ingestion. If Floyd ingested some or all while struggling in the cruiser, perhaps it would have kicked in about the time he appeared to stop breathing. Evidence in the cruiser was consistent with Floyd having stashed at least two pills in his mouth while in his own SUV and, during the struggle in the cruiser coughing up most of one and a small bit or bits of another.
The original report was issued before the tox results were in. Reads like Keith Ellison was in the room when it was dictated.
This seems like an opportunity. Why not have cops carry a narcan kit in their cars. We had 82,000 Americans OD last year. This country is awash in Fentanyl thanks to China and it is killing more people than all the handguns and drunk drivers combined. The best-case scenario for this Floyd outcome would be a national standards for policing driven that protect the officers and the citizens they have to deal with.
Some cities with large numbers of ODs did exactly that, as you suggest, to my awareness.
I believe many do. But I recall the ER physician testified that Narcan needs to be given before the heart has stopped.
An interesting item is the response time of the ambulance. According to testimony by the hateful firefighter on cross examination, the ambulance should have arrived within five minutes. It took about twenty minutes. The whole time Floyd was outside the squad car on the ground, he should have been in the ambulance. Chauvin waited patiently in a position to restrain Floyd if it became necessary. He waited patiently for an ambulance that should have been there long ago.
The initial call was for a non-emergency–Floyd cut his forehead springing up out of the back seat. They later called (a) to get an ETA and (b) to bump up the priority. The idiot witness tried to offer the opinion that the ambulance was not called when it was. The bulk of her testimony was opinion BS that should never have been allowed.
@oldbathos, I never did see a detailed timeline of the times and calls and arrival. Surely it was introduced. Do you know where it can be accessed?
This all isn’t quite correct.
First, the autopsy report was issued after the tox results were in. The tox report was attached, but the autopsy report itself did not significantly discuss the possibility of fentanyl overdose.
Second, the cause of death in the autopsy report itself did not mention homicide. There was a news release from the ME’s office, unsigned, which classified the death as a homicide for statistical purposes.
Third, it is correct that the ME noted that he would have concluded that the cause of death was overdose, from the autopsy alone. This was not in the autopsy report. It was in some notes that were released later, from the ME and prosecutors.
If you want to track down the details, I posted on the autopsy itself on June 6, 2020 (here), and I posted on the ME/prosecutor notes on August 26, 2020 (here). The original documents are linked in my posts.
The prosecutor’s notes stated:
The ME’s handwritten notes stated:
I read your original post on this and thankfully learned the critical information months ahead of most other people. The biggest thing that struck me about the autopsy report is that it stated that Floyd’s death was due to the handling by police officers, but then it completely failed to give an actual specific cause of death, even ruling out asphyxiation. That indicated to me that the blame affixed to the officers was a political decision, not a medical one.
No. I read Parry’s timeline using the bodycam footage.
After a brief foray out of his lane with a few columns on impeachment, Andrew McCarthy has returned to “good read” status at NRO. I thought these comments of his were particularly illuminating.
Also:
I don’t think that the autopsy report actually stated that Floyd’s death was due to handling by police officers. The precise language from the autopsy report is:
This is not given as the cause of death, but as the “case title.” I put it in all caps, because it was in all caps in the autopsy report.
Many people seem to interpret the word COMPLICATING in this description to mean “caused by.” I don’t think that this is the correct meaning of the word COMPLICATING.
The phrase chosen by the ME seems vague and misleading to me, and my own opinion is that this was deliberate. This strange phrasing suggests that law enforcement was the cause of death, while actually saying that the law enforcement activities were “complicat[ed]” by the cardiac arrest.
Actually, McCarthy is missing the point entirely. There is no evidence for manslaughter. Chauvin’s actions had no bearing on Floyd’s death. It was an overdose death. McCarthy elides that question. Of course, the trial is nonsense unless you utterly deny that Floyd’s death was due to overdose. McCarthy is misleading you in the extreme. This is an “emperor’s new clothes” scenario. No one dare speak the OD cause of death. I reviewed the autopsy at the link provided, and there is nothing in the autopsy to support anything but an overdose death, which it supports strongly. The entire trial is an egregious miscarriage of justice, carried out with malice aforethought, and is a signal indicator of the complete collapse of the legitimacy of our legal system. The Trayvon Martin case was bad, in which a fake witness for the prosecution was allowed on the stand. This is even worse. There is no evidence for the entire predicate of this trial. Sorry to be so blunt.
I got the impression that McCarthy was looking at it from the standpoint of what jurors will do. Once the knee-on-neck thing blew up, the prosecution got experts to say that holding him down tightly so that his chest could not expand was the real reason for the asphyxiation. He thinks that the jurors will jump on that rather than make the more politically difficult call of finding reasonable doubt.
No “sorry” necessary. Blunt is good and is in keeping with my own preferences, but I have a hard time thinking a former prosecutor with considerable criminal experience is wrong. I realize that it doesn’t comport with your preferred interpretation, but I don’t see McCarthy as likely to be “missing the point entirely.” The main flaw in the pro-Chauvin narrative is the amount of time that lapsed between when no pulse was detected and the time Chauvin ceased “subduing” Floyd. McCarthy’s “substantial factor” analysis leads me to think that he recognizes this. BTW, he is very skeptical of the murder charges.
For the record, I have followed none of it other than the Shipwreckedcrew summaries:
For entertainment purposes only, some Twain from Roughing It:
@hoyacon The problem is that what Chauvin DID didn’t impact Floyd’s death at all. What he did NOT do, eg., initiate CPR, recognize Floyd was dying of an overdose and needed Narcan/CPR/Intubation/ resuscitation, resulted in delay beyond the point of no return. But that presupposes that the cause of death was an overdose. Which no one, including McCarthy, acknowledges. I’m not saying McCarthy isn’t a skilled prosecutor/lawyer. I’m saying that he fails to emphasize, or even mention, what the cause of death actually is in the quotes you use from him. If he is emphasizing the cause of death, he is pretty subtle about it. He should be shouting from the rooftops that the cause of death was a drug overdose. Does he do that? Does he believe that? I can’t tell. Of course, McCarthy is not a physician and is more or less reliant on so-called expert testimony of physicians, as is the jury. As a physician, who has provided expert witness, I am saying that the testimony of expert witnesses in this trial is meretricious film flam. I have seen considerable amounts of such film flam from expert witnesses. It’s painful to observe. Makes one ashamed of being in the profession.
Well, we see things differently. An (approximate) tw0-minute lag between the time Chauvin was told Floyd had no pulse and the time he “released” Floyd is a substantial problem for the defense in my eyes on the issue of second-degree manslaughter.
Now one can challenge this, I suppose, by arguing that Chauvin did not “cause the death of another.” But note that (1) defines what “causing” means–culpable negligence creating an unreasonable risk . . .
I do believe that the trial should probably have been moved to the northern-most regions of the state and that Chauvin is not guilty of murder, as well could be the finding. So I’m not unsympathetic. But I don’t believe a guilty finding on manslaughter would be a miscarriage of justice if the jury had the courage to see things that way.
Hoyacon, please explain the highlighted portion. It makes no sense to me.
If Floyd had no pulse, he was dead. Even if Chauvin continued kneeling on Floyd’s neck, this makes no difference after Floyd’s death. If the argument is that Floyd could have been resuscitated, you would need medical evidence to support that, not speculation.
This strikes me as an emotional reaction, at least when I’ve heard it from other people. I remember similar complaints in the Michael Brown case — that they “left his body on the road” for several hours after his death.
By the way, one of the interesting things to come out of the trial is serious doubt about whether Chauvin’s knee was actually on Floyd’s neck. This impression appears to be an artifact of the camera angle of the bystander taking the most widely viewed video. The defense presented contrary evidence, from the bodycam of one of the officers, which clearly showed Chauvin’s knee between Floyd’s shoulder blades, not on Floyd’s neck.
I think that you’re wrong to suggest that subsection (1) defines causation. It does not. The first phrase requires proof that the defendant’s action caused the death of the alleged victim. The subsection (1) defines the mental state of the defendant, a further element of the crime. To throw around fancy Latin legal terms, subsection (1) is a mens rea requirement.
Really?
First, thanks for your input on this. I know you to be an informed contributor on such matters, but I need to truncate this for word limit and clarity, so please understand I’m not attempting to minimize your takes.
Although I’m not a doctor, it’s always been my impression that “dead is not necessarily dead.” As to the burden of showing that he could have been resuscitated, I haven’t been following the evidence introduced by the prosecution but I would think the average juror would realize that there are many, many instances of people being resuscitated. What’s also important here is that I’m making a case for second-degree manslaughter– as opposed to claims that Chauvin should be completely exonerated. The prosecution is likely aiming for a murder conviction and doesn’t want to buttress a lesser charge.
“A person who causes the death of another by any of the following means (my italics) is guilty of manslaughter . . .” My contention is that “culpable negligence whereby the person creates an unreasonable risk” is precisely a “following means.” Now that provision also defines a state of mind in taking the chance of continuing his restraint, but is not restricted to that.
It seems that you are implying that by not attempting to resuscitate Floyd for a two-minute period, Chauvin can be convicted of manslaughter. If that is the case, then all officers present at the scene could be convicted of manslaughter for failing to initiate CPR.
I really think resuscitation is a pointless matter. Firstly, the police did call an ambulance, which took longer to arrive than Chauvin’s knee was on Floyd. Secondly, CPR requires the P – Pulmonary mouth-to-mouth, or mask-to-mouth (assuming that any policeman even had a mask) since chest compressions without air exchange only circulates deoxygenated air.
But in the pandemic, I think everyone was required wear masks if closer than 6 feet. And that means a mask on Chauvin and the other police, and on Floyd himself. How does one do mask-to-mouth with a surgical mask over either the rescuer or the victim?
And most importantly it turns out that in hindsight Chauvin was right to not do mouth-to-mouth since Floyd actually did nave covid.
The other officers–at least one of whom (and perhaps more) should not even have been charged–were not actively involved in restraining Floyd to the extent that Chauvin was. One of them, in fact, told Chauvin there was no pulse. This was followed by Chauvin continuing his “restraint” for not just 30 seconds, not just one minute, but for more.
I’m sticking to my first impression: the officer holding down Floyd’s back — while Floyd was prone on his belly — was the one, if anyone at all, compromising Floyd’s breathing.