Derek Chauvin (in a Minnesota Department of Corrections mug shot), George Floyd (Image via attorney Ben Crump).
Prosecutors in Minnesota have responded to Derek Chauvin, the ex-Minneapolis officer found guilty of killing George Floyd, for requesting to test heart and fluid samples from Floyd’s autopsy. They find it hard to believe that he made such a request.
“No legal basis exists for Defendant’s discovery requests,” prosecutors charged Tuesday in a motion to reconsider after U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson granted Chauvin’s legal team access to the samples a day earlier. “It defies belief that, if Defendant had been aware of a weaker medical defense theory than the one already rejected by his state jury, he would have chosen trial again, in the face of overwhelming evidence and a Guidelines sentence of life.”
Chauvin, 48, is looking to run tests on Floyd’s heart and fluid samples to see if it was a heart condition that ultimately led to his death and not Chauvin’s knee being on Floyd’s neck for more than 9 minutes, per prosecutors. His lawyers believe Floyd may have died due to a “catecholamine crisis when his paraganglioma secreted excessive levels of catecholamines,” according to the discovery motion filed by them on Dec. 13, with a “pulmonary edema” possibly being caused by Takotsubo’s myocarditis, which is described by Chauvin’s legal team as a type of a heart attack or acute heart failure.
