In a recent development, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin's legal team has been granted permission to examine autopsy heart and fluid samples from the post-mortem examination of George Floyd.
The decision was made by U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson, who concurred with Chauvin's defense that Floyd's demise was due to a heart condition, not police brutality. At the time of his arrest on charges of circulating a counterfeit bill, Floyd was reportedly under the influence of Fentanyl.
According to The Post Millennial, Judge Magnuson penned in his ruling, 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. This ruling allows Chauvin's attorneys to test evidence from histology slides and tissue samples taken from Floyd during his autopsy.
The prosecution had previously asserted that Chauvin's act of kneeling on Floyd's neck while restraining him was the lethal factor. Chauvin's conviction in Floyd's death sparked widespread unrest and destruction during the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots. Following Floyd's death in police custody on May 25, 2020, protests and violence erupted in Minneapolis and quickly spread across the United States, causing billions of dollars in damages according to insurance companies.
Chauvin, who was sentenced to 21 years in prison, has been persistent in his attempts to overturn his conviction. He cites "ineffective assistance of counsel" from his initial lawyer, Eric Nelson, whom he accuses of neglecting to pursue a forensic pathologist's assessment that absolved Chauvin of responsibility for Floyd's death. Dr. William Schaetzel opined that Floyd's death was due to a heart condition known as takotsubo cardiomyopathy, a temporary but potentially traumatic condition affecting the heart's muscle walls.
The other three Minneapolis police officers present at the scene, Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane, were also convicted in the case. Thao received a concurrent sentence of four years and nine months for aiding in Chauvin's second-degree manslaughter charges. Former officer J. Alexander Kueng was sentenced to three-and-a-half years imprisonment on federal and state charges to be served concurrently. Lastly, Thomas Lane was sentenced to three years in total, with a two-and-a-half year federal sentence being served concurrently with a three-year state sentence.
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