Police caused Floyd’s death, doctor testifies

MINNEAPOLIS — In a trial where many key figures have spent hours on the stand, the prosecution whipped through one of their most anticipated witnesses, the doctor who performed George Floyd’s official autopsy, in 50 minutes Friday.

The reasons for their haste became clear as the witness, Dr. Andrew Baker, the Hennepin County medical examiner, refrained from placing the sole blame for Floyd’s death on the police as he testified in the trial of Derek Chauvin, a former officer charged in Floyd’s death.

In his testimony, Baker said police restraint was the main cause of Floyd’s death, but he also cited drug use and heart disease as contributing factors, saying that Floyd died “in the context of ” the actions taken by three police officers as they pinned Floyd to the street for more than nine minutes.

“In my opinion, the law enforcement subdual, restraint and the neck compression was just more than Mr. Floyd could take by virtue of those heart conditions,” he said.

The prosecution’s other medical experts have testified that the pressure officers put on Floyd’s neck and back, not his underlying conditions, caused his death.

In most murder cases, the local medical examiner who performed the autopsy is a star prosecution witness, the most authoritative voice on the victim’s cause of death. But in the trial of Chauvin, prosecutors have regarded Baker as perhaps their most problematic witness.

Throughout the investigation Baker has made statements that the prosecutors regarded as minimizing the impact of Chauvin’s use of force. He has said that if Floyd’s body had been found at home, his death could have been attributed to a drug overdose, and that he was unable to say whether Floyd would have died were it not for his encounter with the police.

Chauvin’s lawyer, Eric J. Nelson, seemed to score some points for the argument that he had been advancing throughout the trial, that Floyd’s poor health, drug use and resistance to arrest led to his death.

During Nelson’s cross-examination, Baker acknowledged he saw no physical signs of asphyxiation; that Floyd had a level of fentanyl in his system that could have been called an overdose in other circumstances; and that his heart condition, combined with the exertion of struggling with the police, played a role in his death.

Floyd had an enlarged heart for his size, Baker said. It required more oxygen to continue pumping blood throughout the body, especially during a high-intensity situation like the one Floyd experienced when being pinned to the asphalt for more than nine minutes. “Those events are going to cause stress hormones to pour out into your body, specifically things like adrenaline,” Baker said. “And what that adrenaline is going to do is it’s going to ask your heart to beat faster. It’s going to ask your body for more oxygen so that you can get through that altercation.”

At other times, Nelson used his cross-examination to push back on Baker’s findings. Nelson urged him to elaborate on the fact that he found no bruises on Floyd’s back, and that the level of fentanyl found in Floyd’s system could have been fatal for some people. But throughout the cross-examination, Baker appeared to be uneasy with Nelson’s line of questioning.