A memorandum from the assistant county attorney for Hennepin County, Minnesota, confirms that George Floyd had taken a fatal dose of fentanyl before the encounter on May 25 with police officer Derek Chauvin, during which Floyd died.
Big League Politics disclosed the memorandum yesterday.
The memorandum, which cites the county medical examiner’s opinion, validates the official autopsy, which showed high levels of the potentially fatal narcotic in Floyd’s bloodstream, but no life-threatening injuries from the knee restraint with which Chauvin pinned Floyd by the neck.
The Memo
The memo from assistant county attorney Amy Sweasy was written for prosecutors’ file on Chauvin and recounts a conversation with her colleague, Patrick Lofton and Dr. Andrew Baker, the county coroner.
“Dr. Baker said he had (and had recently received) the final toxicology results from Mr. George Floyd’s samples which were analyzed by NMS labs,” Sweasy wrote.
Baker told the prosecutors that “hospital blood” taken from Floyd, meaning blood taken upon his admission and not after he died, yield more accurate results “for determining actual blood toxicity than samples taken at autopsy.”
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Then Baker, again, in Sweasy’s words, explained what was in Floyd’s blood:
• 4ANPP-a precursor and metabolite of fentanyl present in Mr. Floyd’s blood.
• Methamphetamine — 19 ng/ML which he described as “very near the low end” and “a stimulant hard on the heart.”
• Fentanyl — 11. He said, “that’s pretty high.” This level of fentanyl can cause pulmonary edema. Mr. Floyd’s lungs were 2-3x their normal weight at autopsy. That is a fatal level of fentanyl under normal circumstances.
• Norfentanyl — 5.6 a metabolite of fentanyl.
Yet it’s Baker’s conclusion from those numbers that might well show that Chauvin’s knee restraint did not kill Floyd.
Mr. Floyd’s urine was tested for 4 things and are redundant, given the blood analysis. [Baker] said, “the only thing that matters is what’s in his blood.”
[Baker] said that if Mr. Floyd had been found dead in his home (or anywhere else) and there were no other contributing factors he would conclude that it was an overdose death.
Autopsy Report
The final autopsy report concluded that Floyd died of “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.”
The report also disclosed multiple “natural diseases,” including “severe” coronary artery disease, high blood pressure, and hypertensive heart disease, the top cause of death from high blood pressure, the WebMD website says. Floyd also suffered with cardiomegaly, an enlarged heart.
On top of that, Floyd had, again, ingested a dangerous cocktail of drugs. Meth notwithstanding, Fentanyl, an opioid, is 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine. Opioids are respiratory depressants.
Floyd complained that he couldn’t breathe before Chauvin pinned him to the ground and admitted “hooping,” meaning the rectal administration of a drug.
The autopsy says Floyd suffered multiple “blunt force” wounds but that “no life-threatening injuries [were] identified.” It also listed what the autopsy did not find:
A. No facial, oral mucosal, or conjunctival petechiae
B. No injuries of anterior muscles of neck or laryngeal structures
C. No scalp soft tissue, skull, or brain injuries
D. No chest wall soft tissue injuries, rib fractures (other than a single rib fracture from CPR), vertebral column injuries, or visceral injuries
E. Incision and subcutaneous dissection of posterior and lateral neck, shoulders, back, flanks, and buttocks negative for occult trauma
The absence of petechiae — small red or purple spots in the eyes or skin from bleeding capillaries — is significant because they usually occur in strangulation or traumatic asphyxia; i.e., increased pressure on the neck of the kind that Chauvin applied to Floyd.
On top of it all, Floyd also had contracted the Chinese Virus, a deadly killer for those with serious comorbidities of the type Floyd had.
Will it Help the Defense?
Given the evidence that suggests Floyd’s drug use was the ultimate cause of his death, not Chauvin’s nearly nine-minute neck restraint, the state’s decision to charge Chauvin with second-degree murder would be nearly inexplicable.
Chauvin’s defense attorneys will surely argue that leftist Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a leftist Islamic radical, not only overcharged Chauvin but also that race and politics, not sound prosecutorial judgement, were behind Ellison’s move.
In other words, Chauvin could well be acquitted of the most serious charges, if not all of them.
And then the Floyd riots would begin again.
Image: Zerbor/iStock/Getty Images Plus
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
