Floyd ‘didn’t die of overdose’
Experts challenge Chauvin defence
Medical experts used anatomical diagrams and charts to testify that George Floyd was killed by police pinning him to the ground, not a drug overdose, challenging a key assertion by former police officer Derek Chauvin in his murder trial for Floyd’s deadly arrest.
Dr Martin Tobin, who treats patients in a Chicago hospital’s intensive care unit, told the jury that Floyd died “from a low level of oxygen” caused by being handcuffed face down in the street with the police officer’s knee on his neck. Video of the arrest last May sparked global protests.
Jurors touched various parts of their necks under Dr Tobin’s guidance as the doctor gave impromptu anatomy lessons from the stand. Any “healthy person”, he said, would have died in a similar restraint, which he compared to a vice, supporting the county medical examiner’s finding that Floyd’s death was a homicide at the hands of police.
Dr Daniel Isenschmid said the toxicology tests he performed on Floyd’s blood found fentanyl, but at a level comparable to those found in samples taken from living people detained for driving under the influence of narcotics.
Dr William Smock, a police forensic pathologist, said Floyd died of “positional asphyxia” from the police holds, “which is a fancy way of saying he died because he had no oxygen left in his body”, he said.
Video of the arrest showed Mr Chauvin, who is white, pinning Floyd’s neck to the ground with his knees for more than nine minutes as Floyd, a 46-yearold black man, begged for his life, gasping more than two dozen times: “I can’t breathe.”
Mr Chauvin, who denies murder and manslaughter charges, can be heard on video dismissing Floyd’s pleas, saying: “It takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to say things.”
All three doctors called by prosecutors from the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office pointed to different moments from the video that they said undermined Chauvin’s defence.
Dr Tobin said Floyd’s breathing became fatally shallow under the police restraint but asked jurors to count along with him as they watched body-worn camera video of the dying Floyd’s torso.
The close-up footage showed that the number of breaths he took per minute did not decrease up until the moment he lost consciousness.
A fentanyl overdose, in contrast, is marked by a sharp decrease in the frequency of breaths, he said.
The doctor also unbuttoned his shirt collar and began to feel parts of his neck, as he described how Mr Chauvin’s knee blocked a vital part of the respiratory system in the lower part of the throat.
Defence lawyer Eric Nelson objected to the anatomy lessons but the judge said it was up to the jurors if they wanted to follow along with Dr Tobin in feeling their own throats.
Most continued to do so.