Why Derek Chauvin should be found not guilty; Floyd was already dying of fentanyl overdose
Documents filed in the George Floyd case give clarity to how the Hennepin County Medical Examiner believes George Floyd died
The murder case accusing former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin of murder in the death of George Floyd got underway with great and morbid fanfare this week in a Hennepin County, Minnesota court room. Chauvin has long since been tried and convicted by the Fascist Left media that serves as lapdog and mouthpiece to the totalitarian Democrat regime currently in power in Washington, D.C.
That media and a huge chunk of the U.S. public have believed a lie.
Quite likely, so do a good many of the jurors sitting in that circuit courtroom in Minneapolis. Everyone in the nation, unless they have been living under a rock or on a mountain top, has seen the video of Chauvin, his knee planted on Floyd’s neck, allegedly choking the life out of the seven-time felon who was accused of passing a counterfeit $20 bill at a neighborhood convenience store.
Is that what really happened, though?
Maybe. Maybe not. Though public opinion has already reached a conclusion, it is possible Derek Chauvin should be a free man after this trial. A shocking statement, we agree, but we at ACV only ask for your indulgence for a few minutes to allow us leeway to explain why we believe that could happen.
First, there is the video you have not seen. It is the body cam video of one of the officers who confronted Floyd in his vehicle outside Cup Foods, the Minneapolis store that accused Floyd of attempting to pass a fake $20 bill. We post the whole video in this artcile for the reader to view uninterrupted. We will call attention to key time stamps that lend themselves to the possibility Floyd was already dying before the police arrived.
Our video, shared with us by The London Daily Mail that acquired it in June 2020, begins with the officers confronting Chauvin outside the convenience store. Claiming “I’ve been shot twice before,” Floyd refuses orders to get out of the vehicle, begging officers, “Please don’t shoot me!” on several occasions.
At the 2:36 mark of our video — ignoring the time stamp on the video itself — Floyd resists arrest while claiming he is not doing so. Once seated next to the building at 3:35 of the video, Floyd pleads not to be arrested, giving officers his vital information in between complaints. Numerous times over the next two minutes, Floyd is told why he is being arrested and immediately asks, “What’s going on?” as though he does not know.
Once taken to a police car across the street from Cup Foods, Floyd begins complaining of being claustrophobic [afraid of close spaces] and insists, beginning at the 6:03 mark of the video, he cannot get in the vehicle. At 6:53 of the video, he first says “I can’t breathe!” long before the more famous statements he made while Chauvin was using a legal pinning maneuver, his knee on Floyd’s neck, as taught at the Minneapolis PD Academy.
At 10:07 of this video, Floyd is placed on the ground next to the police car with Chauvin pinning him to the ground. The actual video time stamp, howver, shows this happened 22 minutes into the arrest process from when officers first arrived at Cup Foods, and Floyd had been complaining of breathing problems for a full seven minutes at that point. Officers kept trying to get Floyd to relax, but he appeared incapable of doing so by that time. In the last two minutes of this video, Floyd says “I can’t breath,” at least 17 times before he passes out and eventually dies.
Click the “Watch on YouTube” link to watch the entire video on our channel. It supports everything Derek Chauvin’s defense is claiming leading up to the trial that started this week in Minneapolis. (Video: Courtesy London Daily Mail/The Daily Wire)
Did Derek Chauvin deprive George Floyd of oxygen to the point of asphyxiation leading to his death?
That is a question the jury will have to decide, if they are capable of impartially doing so, given the hype the “I can’t breathe!” video narrative has received. The evidence, however, can be interpreted to show that George Floyd was already dying long before he even went to Cup Foods, much more so before the four Minneapolis police officers arrived to arrest him for forgery.
Internal Affairs officers investigating potential culpability by Derek Chauvin and the other three officers interviewed one of the pathologists that performed the autopsy on George Floyd not long after it was completed. Handwritten notes of that interview with Dr. Andrew Baker, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner, show him stating that Floyd had 11 ng/mL of fentanyl in his system.
"If he were found dead at home alone and no other apparent causes, this could be acceptable to call a … [drug overdose]. Deaths have been certified with levels of 3," Baker told investigators. In another document, Baker said, "That is a fatal level of fentanyl under normal circumstances."
But then Baker added, "I am not saying this killed him."
That statement is called CYA. George Floyd was experiencing cardiopulmonary and psychological distress minutes before he was placed on the ground, let alone had a knee to his neck. That is clearly apparent on the video, with Floyd complaining of chest pain and breathing difficulty while still in his own vehicle, at least 13 minutes before being placed in the knee restraint by Chauvin
The video indicates that the four officers were never more intensive with George Floyd than was indicated by his level of resistance and by his psychological symptoms. In fact, the officers can be heard on the video as agreeing among themselves that Floyd was suffering from “excited delirium syndrome” (ExDS), a condition which police departments across the country consider an extreme threat both to their officers and to individual suspects and any bystanders in the vicinity.
A white paper used by the MPD, other police major departments and prepared by the American Psychiatric Association acknowledges that ExDS suspects may die irrespective of force involved. The officers’ response to this situation was in line with MPD guidelines for ExDS, as it would be in literally dozens of other law enforcement agencies.
Floyd’s autopsy revealed a potentially lethal concoction of drugs, as acknowledged by Dr. Baker — and not just a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl, but also methamphetamine. Together with his history of drug abuse and two serious heart conditions, Floyd’s condition was exceptionally and unusually fragile.
Chauvin’s neck restraint is unlikely to have exerted a dangerous amount of force to Floyd’s neck. Floyd is shown on video able to lift his head and neck, and a robust study on double-knee restraints showed a median force exertion of approximately approximately 105lbs.
A rush to judgment is not a rush to justice. George Floyd had sentenced himself to death, whether inadvertently or not we cannot say, by his use of a lethal dose of fentanyl hours before he decided to try to pass a fake bill at a convenience store. The hue and cry for Chauvin’s blood is driving what may very well be an unjust, racist jury decision that ruins his life and does nothing to honor the memory of George Floyd.