Derek Chauvin’s lawyers allowed to examine George Floyd autopsy samples

Lawyers for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin will be permitted to study autopsy heart and fluid samples from the George Floyd's post-mortem medical examination. US District Judge Paul Magnuson agreed to the request Monday, after Chauvin’s legal team argued that it was a heart condition that killed Floyd. Floyd was also high on fentanyl when he was arrested on allegations of passing a counterfeit bill. 

“Given the significant nature of the criminal case that [Chauvin] was convicted of, and given that the discovery that [he] seeks could support [the pathologist's] opinion of how Mr. Floyd died, the Court finds that there is good cause to allow [Chauvin] to take the discovery,” Magnuson wrote in his ruling. He said Chauvin’s attorneys can now test evidence from histology slides and tissue samples removed from Floyd when he was undergoing an autopsy.

Prosecutors alleged that Chauvin kneeled on Floyd's neck while restaining him and that the action was lethal.  Chauvin was convicted in the death of George Floyd, which inspired widespread violence and mayhem in the BLM riots of 2020. Floyd died in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020. Protests, riots and violence began in Minneapolis then spread to cities across the United States. Insurance companies estimate the damage in the billions of dollars.

Chauvin was sentenced to 21 years in jail. He has continued his efforts to have that conviction reversed by referencing “ineffective assistance of counsel” from his first lawyer, Eric Nelson, whom he accuses of not following-up on a forensic pathologist’s assessment that Chauvin was not to blame for Floyd’s death. Dr. William Schaetzel stated that he believes Floyd died as a result of a heart condition called takotsubo cardiomyopathy. Although an attack is only temporary it can be highly traumatic to the muscle walls of the heart.

Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane, the other three Minneapolis police officers at the scene, also received convictions in the case. Thao was sentenced to a concurrent four years and nine months for assisting in Chauvin’s second-degree manslaughter charges. Former police officer J. Alexander Kueng got three-and-a-half years imprisonment on federal and state charges to be served concurrently.

The final member of the group, Thomas Lane, was sentenced to three years in total, although he was also subject to a two-and-a-half year federal sentence that is also being served concurrently with a three year state sentence.