by WorldTribune Staff / 247 Real News December 17, 2024

A federal judge is allowing lawyers for former Minneapolis police office Derek Chauvin to examine samples from George Floyd’s autopsy.

Chauvin’s legal team filed a request to study autopsy heart and fluid samples from Floyd’s post-mortem medical examination.

U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson agreed to the request on Monday.

Related: No, Policeman Derek Chauvin did not get a fair trial in Minneapolis, April 30, 2023

Chauvin’s legal team argued that it was a heart condition that killed Floyd, who reportedly also had fentanyl in his system when he was arrested on allegations of passing a counterfeit bill.

“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 in his ruling.

The judge said Chauvin’s attorneys can now test evidence from histology slides and tissue samples removed from Floyd when he was undergoing an autopsy.

Chauvin, 48, continues to seek to have his conviction reversed due to “ineffective assistance of counsel” from his first lawyer, Eric Nelson, whom he accuses of not following-up on a forensic pathologist’s assessment that Chauvin was not to blame for Floyd’s death. Dr. William Schaetzel stated that he believes Floyd died as a result of a heart condition called takotsubo cardiomyopathy. Although an attack is only temporary it can be highly traumatic to the muscle walls of the heart.

Chauvin was sentenced to serve 252 months in prison with credit for time served.

Chauvin began serving his sentence at a federal prison in Tucson. Records show that he was moved recently to a transfer facility in Oklahoma. He is not expected to be released until 2038.

Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane, the other three Minneapolis police officers at the scene, also received convictions in the Floyd case.

Thao was sentenced to a concurrent four years and nine months for assisting in Chauvin’s second-degree manslaughter charges.

Former police officer Kueng got three-and-a-half years imprisonment on federal and state charges to be served concurrently.

Lane was sentenced to three years in total, although he was also subject to a two-and-a-half year federal sentence that is also being served concurrently with a three year state sentence.

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  Judge allows Derek Chauvin’s lawyers to examine George Floyd autopsy samples, WorldTribune.com