Derek Chauvin did not receive a fair trial. George Floyd did not die of asphyxiation

Question

A few film suggests that Derek Chauvin is a "scapegoat, not a murderer" due to the release of new evidence - transcripts of a deposition. Related right-wing propaganda outlets have picked up the story of the new film to claim that Floyd's death was drug-related.

https://x.com/TheFP/status/1747305117940953220?s=20

https://www.thefallofminneapolis.com/

https://www.newsmax.com/michaeldorstewitz/blm-black-minneapolis/2023/11/20/id/1142959/

Answer 1

There are three main claims in this fact-check. I will attempt to fact-check all of them, but some are harder to investigate than others and rely more on speculation, which I will try to avoid. I will not be watching the hour-and-a-half documentary to comment on this, but if someone has more free time than me, I would gladly welcome anyone to add on to my findings for this fact-check.

1)Derek Chauvin is not a murderer but a scapegoat, and the hold he used was a standard police hold when a handcuffed person is continually resisting arrest, called an MRT trained by the MPD.

For the first claim, I was able to find a PDF (linked below) of the MRT outlined by the City of Minneapolis and posted by their government. The PDF is from back in 2014. The maneuver outlined in the PDF does not resemble anything that Derek Chauvin did and notes to constantly monitor the detained person. Link to PDF: Use of Force Policy Excerpt

2 )Asphyxiation was cited as the cause of George Floyd's death, but the autopsy found no evidence of death by asphyxiation. Instead, he died of cardiac arrest and had a near-lethal amount of fentanyl in his system.

The second claim is also not very strong. The autopsy report (linked below) shows Floyd had an 11 ng/ml amount of fentanyl in his system; the lethal dose is 2mg, which is equivalent to 2,000,000 ng/ml. The amount Floyd had in his system was the recommended amount for anesthesia, as outlined in the report on fentanyl linked below. However, there were multiple drugs found in his system, including methamphetamine, and I could not say for absolute certainty that this did not play a factor in his cardiac arrest that led to his death.

Link to Floyd Autopsy Report

Link to Fentanyl Report

Comments

I think that this is a very fair and unbiased answer for this question. I think you did a good job citing both the use of force information document and the autopsy report, as both are important primary sources in this case.

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This is a great fact check that is thorough and concise. I really appreciate your in-depth analysis of the claim as it was insightful to understand what is actually true. You did an excellent job of finding reliable sources and primary documents to counter the claim. You also purely focused on facts, and kept your personal opinion/bias out of it.

Answer 2

In the claim, a source provided by X (previously known as Twitter) shows the tactic used on Floyd's arrest was the 'maximal restraint technique.' When researching this technique, the National Library of Medicine describes when to properly apply this technique, "The prone maximal restraint (PMR) position has been used by law enforcement and emergency care personnel to restrain acutely combative or agitated individual." In the bodycam of Floyd's arrest, the officer who used this technique had justified reasons. Floyd was combative, acutely, compared to other individual arrests. In the video, Floyd said he wouldn't get in the back of the cop car because he was claustrophobic, yet he was pulled over while driving. Furthermore, Floyd said he couldn't breathe before anything was ever close to blocking his air passageway.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24237806/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fpivi5ljhI

Contrary, the dismissed Police Officer pleaded guilty to "the use of unreasonable force by a police officer, resulting in Mr. Floyd's bodily injury and death."

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-minneapolis-police-officer-derek-chauvin-sentenced-more-20-years-prison-depriving

However, the autopsy report says, "no injuries of anterior muscles of neck or laryngeal structures" meaning the larynx (organ forming an air passage to the lungs and holding the vocal cords in humans) wasn't blocked.

https://www.hennepin.us/-/media/hennepinus/residents/public-safety/medical-examiner/floyd-autopsy-6-3-20.pdf

I don't under any circumstances want to provide a definitive answer because different factors contributed to the calamity as a whole. So I would leave off by saying this claim might just be misleading, but there isn't a clear answer even with the autopsy report.

Answer 3

This statement is false. George Floyd's autopsy report that was released by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner's office on June 3, 2020 (and has not been changed) shows that Floyd did not have any "life-threatening injures." The report says Floyd did have fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system, but he died from "cardiopulmonary arrest," and not an overdose. Independent experts told AP that "underlying medical problems and drug use revealed in the autopsy report doesn't change the conclusion that Floyd's death was a homicide. A separate autopsy done by Floyd's family (USA Today), said that "asphyxiation from sustained pressure" was the cause of death and that "neck and back compression" caused a "lack of blood flow to the brain."