Since May 2020, people have been talking about the death (some would call it murder) of Minneapolis resident and career criminal George Floyd. And now, there might be enough proof that it actually wasn’t murder.
As you know, then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin and his partner arrested Floyd in May 2020. Video of the arrest shows that in the struggle, Chauvin, at one point, put his knee on Floyd’s neck. Floyd can be heard attempting to say, “I can’t breathe,” before passing out and then dying.
Naturally, Chauvin was blamed for the death. In 2021, he was convicted of it, too.
But recently, evidence presented by pathologist Dr. William Schaetzel of Topeka, Kansas, suggests that Chauvin was not the cause of death.
Now, to be clear, this is not the first time Schaetzel’s theory on Floyd’s death has been presented. The first was in 2021 when Chauvin’s trial was going on. However, both the trial lawyer, Eric Nelson, and Judge Peter Cahill were given this information. But nothing was ever done with it.
But this is the first that Chauvin has heard of it. And it is convincing enough that Chauvin is now filing for a new trial, or at the least to open a new evidentiary hearing to look at the evidence.
So, what does the evidence say?
Well, according to Schaetzel and his time spent with autopsy records, Floyd’s death could be just as easily explained by a rare tumor known as paraganglioma, which causes a fatal surge of adrenaline.
Chauvin believes this may be enough to pardon him, as he thinks no jury would have ever convicted him if this evidence had been made known.
Of course, this is not Chauvin’s first appeal. It is his third, with the first two being thrown out. But they didn’t have evidence like this on their side.
They also didn’t have the word of forensic pathologist Dr. Lindsey Thomas, who says that Floyd, an avid drug user, had enough fentanyl to have caused an overdose in his system on the day in question.
Maybe this time will go better for the jailed cop.
