Ex-Cop Chauvin Appeals Murder Conviction for George Floyd, Citing Pathologist's Theory Jury Never Heard
The former Minneapolis police officer who was convicted in the 2020 police-involved death of George Floyd has filed an appeal of his conviction, citing new evidence that the jury never saw.
Police officer Derek Chauvin, who was convicted in 2021, filed papers in court on Monday, saying that the evidence proves that he did not commit murder in Floyd’s death, the Associated Press reported.
In his filing, the former cop said he would never have agreed to plead guilty if he had known about the theories of a Kansas pathologist who says that Floyd’s physical condition was the principal cause of death, not the actions of the police.
Chauvin is asking the judge to throw out his conviction and order a new trial, or at the very least open a new evidentiary hearing to look at the evidence.
The convicted Chauvin pleaded guilty to charges after a video showed him placing his knee on George Floyd’s neck during an arrest attempt on May 25, 2020. In the video, Floyd is heard saying “I can’t breathe,” before passing out. The man’s death sparked dangerous and costly riots nationwide and spurred the growth of the anti-cop “Defund the Police” movement.
More riots were threatened, too, if the courts did not convict Chauvin.
Chauvin said that Topeka, Kansas, Dr. William Schaetzel has reviewed the autopsy records and feels that Floyd did not die of asphyxia caused by the cop’s knee cutting off his air flow, but instead died of a rare tumor called a paraganglioma, which can cause a fatal surge of adrenaline.
Schaetzel told The Associated Press that he felt his diagnosis was serious enough to alert authorities and Chauvin.
“I can’t go to my grave with what I know,” Schaetzel said. “I just want the truth,” he added.
Schaetzel also said he tried to alert officials during Chauvin’s trial in 2021, as well. He said he spoke to trial attorney Eric Nelson as well as Judge Peter Cahill, but nothing came of the attempt.
Chauvin claimed that Nelson was negligent for neglecting to tell him of Schaetzel’s claims. The convicted cop also said that Nelson failed to challenge the constitutionality of the federal charge.
The jailed cop also said that no jury would have convicted him if they had heard Schaetzel’s evidence.
Chauvin filed his motion without a lawyer.
When he pleaded guilty in 2021, he also waived his right to appeal the conviction, unless he could prove he was given ineffective counsel from his lawyer.
This is not the first time Chauvin has filed an appeal, though. Two previous attempts have already been rejected. And he is still waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether it will hear his case for acquittal.
Many others agree with Chauvin that Floyd died from medical causes, not from a knee on his neck, and that Floyd was not “murdered.”
Last month, for instance, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed that “the whole George Floyd story was a lie.”
In his commentary, Carlson pointed to testimony by former Hennepin County prosecutor Amy Sweasy, who said that Floyd’s autopsy showed no evidence that anything the police did caused Floyd’s death.
Carlson then noted that Floyd was “not murdered,” but “died instead of what we used to call natural causes — which in his case would include decades of drug use, as well as the fatal concentration of fentanyl that was in his system on his final day.”
In other evidence, forensic pathologist Dr. Lindsey Thomas has said that Floyd had an extremely high level of fentanyl in his system, according the the autopsy, and could have died from an overdose, not asphyxiation.
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