Derek Chauvin’s attorneys granted access to view George Floyd’s heart

Derek Chauvin (in a Minnesota Department of Corrections mug shot), George Floyd (Image via attorney Ben Crump)

The legal team for Derek Chauvin, the former Minnesota police officer who was convicted of murdering George Floyd, has been granted access to fluid and heart tissue samples taken from the autopsy and will be examining them to see if it was a heart condition — and not Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck — that led to his death.

U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson announced that Chauvin’s lawyers would be permitted to examine the samples in a court motion filed Monday and viewed by Law&Crime. Chauvin, who was also convicted of violating Floyd’s civil rights — with his May 2020 death sparking nationwide protests — is currently trying to appeal that civil rights charge in federal court after failing to overturn his murder conviction through an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court last year. He filed a motion for discovery on Dec. 13 requesting the fluid and tissue samples from Floyd’s autopsy, as well as pictures that were taken of Floyd’s heart.

“In the briefing on this motion, he argued that his [examination request] should be granted because he was denied the effective assistance of counsel in two fundamental ways,” Magnuson wrote in his response on Monday. “First, his attorney, Eric Nelson, failed to inform Mr. Chauvin that a Dr. William Schaetzel had contacted Mr. Nelson and opined that Mr. Chauvin did not cause Mr. Floyd’s death.”

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According to Chauvin’s legal team, Schaetzel believes Floyd may have died due to a “catecholamine crisis when his paraganglioma secreted excessive levels of catecholamines,” according to his discovery motion. It could have been these excessive levels of catecholamines, Schaetzel argues, that led to Takotsubo’s myocarditis — described by Chauvin’s lawyers as a type of heart attack or acute heart failure, which resulted in “pulmonary edema and death.”

Schaetzel allegedly contacted Nelson in April 2021 before he was federally indicted, but nothing was done. “So Mr. Chauvin’s first ground is a claim that Nelson provided ineffective assistance of counsel to Mr. Chauvin by failing to consult with him on this issue,” Magnuson explained in his motion.

“The second way Mr. Chauvin claims that Mr. Nelson was ineffective is related, though independent,” the judge said.

According to Chauvin’s lawyers, Dr. Schaetzel “urged” that fluid samples preserved from Floyd’s autopsy be tested for “catecholamines and their metabolites” and that tissue sections of Floyd’s heart be looked at as well, along with photographs of the organ.

“These tests and examinations would support Dr. Schaetzel’s opinion about what caused Mr. Floyd to die if high levels of catecholamines or their metabolites were discovered, or if the heart tissue showed evidence of Takotsubo’s myocarditis,” Magnuson said, citing Chauvin’s motion for discovery. “Nelson never requested these tests.”