BREAKING: Judge grants Derek Chauvin permission to examine George Floyd heart tissue

A federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan has just granted Derek Chauvin permission to examine heart tissue from George Floyd to determine if a temporary heart condition is what killed Floyd and not asphyxiation caused by his knee on Floyd’s neck.

As the Daily Mail points out, proving this theory would only affect his federal sentencing of 21 years and not the state sentence of 22 years.

Here’s more:

Lawyers for Derek Chauvin, the disgraced Minneapolis cop convicted of murdering George Floyd back in 2020, have been granted permission to examine heart tissue and fluid samples taken from the victim’s body.

US District Judge Paul Magnuson granted the motion Monday, after attorneys argued it was a heart condition that claimed the 46-year-old victim’s life, and not Chauvin’s knee on his neck.


Chauvin, 46, was convicted the following year, and is now in a little more than three years into his 21-year federal prison sentence.

His latest bid to have the conviction tossed cites ‘ineffective assistance of counsel’ from original defense attorney Eric Nelson, whom he says failed to relay to him a Kansas forensic pathologist’s theory that Chauvin did not cause Floyd’s death.

‘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 upon making his decision.

He added how Chauvin’s defense team will now have the ability to procure evidence from histology slides and tissue samples taken from the victim’s heart during his initial autopsy, the results of which were used to convict Chauvin and three others.

Chauvin was hit with by far the sternest sentence of the pack, with a 21 year federal sentence and another 22 years on the state level.

The current motion to appeal would apply to the former conviction, leaving only the state one to be served.

It saw Chauvin claim Nelson failed to seek testing of Floyd’s heart tissue samples during the high profile case, after Topeka-based Dr. William Schaetzel aired his belief such tests would show evidence of a heart condition called takotsubo cardiomyopathy.

A temporary condition, it develops in response to an intense emotional or physical experience, leading to a sudden, temporary weakening of the muscular portion of a patient’s heart, causing cardiac arrest.

Chauvin’s lawyers are thus also allowed to inspect and make copies of any photographs taken of Floyd’s heart during the initial autopsy, which found Floyd’s heart had stopped while he was being restrained and that his death was a homicide.

The official cause of death was ‘cardiopulmonary arrest [caused by] law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression’.

A second autopsy, this one commissioned by Floyd’s family, came to the same conclusion, citing asphyxia specifically as the cause of death.

It also ruled out the possibility that underlying medical problems contributed to Floyd’s passing, citing how Floyd was able to speak under the pressure of Chauvin’s knee.

As a result, in March 2021, not even a year after the murder, Minneapolis’s city council awarded Floyd’s family a $27million settlement in response to their wrongful death lawsuit.

Chauvin, meanwhile, was fired, and charged with second- and third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. He was eventually found guilty of all three, in addition to two federal counts of violating Floyd’s civil rights.

He is now serving his state and federal sentences concurrently at a federal prison in Arizona, where he stabbed by another inmate 22 times with an improvised knife.

He was seriously injured as a result, but has since recovered.

I really hope Chauvin is vindicated in this because I have never believed that what he did caused the death of Floyd. I hate this won’t affect his state sentence, should they prove their case, but it absolutely should in my opinion.

https://therightscoop.com/breaking-judge-grants-derek-chauvin-permission-to-examine-george-floyd-heart-tissue/