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Why Derek Chauvin Deserves A New Trial (And Will Win It)
With the acquittal of Daniel Penny in Manhattan, it’s clear that Democrats are going to have some difficulty rounding up political prisoners for the next few years. As that trial demonstrated, they can’t even sell a BLM narrative to a jury full of liberal women (and a guy wearing a COVID mask). People are more skeptical of race hysteria now, across party lines. They understand when they’re being manipulated. They care more about facts, instead of whatever the corporate press is saying. And that’s all very bad news for Democrat prosecutors who are looking to collect a scalp.
But this development is obviously small comfort to the many victims of these prosecutors who are still languishing away in prison, after being convicted in show trials to appease the mob. And of course, maybe the single most prominent of those victims is a man named Derek Chauvin. Chauvin was a police officer in Minneapolis who went to work in May of 2020 with the goal of protecting his community from violent felons — people like George Floyd. He’s been sentenced to more than two decades in prison because Floyd, who had a recent history of overdoses, died in his custody while high on fatal levels of fentanyl.
The issue of “causation” was the single most important issue of the trial — that is, the question of whether Chauvin actually killed Floyd. If Chauvin’s actions weren’t a “substantial factor” in Floyd’s death, then under Minnesota law, he’s innocent. That pretty much sums up the entire case.
But after the trial was over, the jury came out and publicly admitted that they didn’t really care about this issue at all. “Causation” just didn’t matter to them. They gave an interview with CNN where they explained that, in their view, Chauvin’s actions didn’t matter at all. Instead, they determined that Chauvin was guilty because of what he didn’t do. They didn’t convict him for murdering Floyd. They didn’t convict him because his actions caused Floyd’s death. Instead, they convicted him for failing to “care” for George Floyd in some unspecified way.
It’s an incredible piece of footage. First of all, there’s no reason for a jury to be looking for a “light bulb moment” which allows them to rationalize a guilty verdict — unless they were looking for some pretext to convict Chauvin (which they obviously were). The jury shouldn’t be trying to find a way to get a conviction. They should be looking at whether the prosecution proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt. And if they find themselves doubting that the prosecution proved its case, they don’t get to rewrite the law to help the prosecution out.
But in this case, that’s exactly what the jury did. They ultimately decided to hold Chauvin accountable for things he didn’t do. He didn’t respond compassionately enough to George Floyd’s overdose, or live up to the police department’s motto, I guess — even though none of those things, even if they were true, would make Chauvin a murderer. The new rule, according to this jury, is that police officers have an obligation to perform CPR on violent suspects the moment they say they can’t breathe — even though Floyd was claiming that he couldn’t breathe just a few minutes earlier, when he was resisting arrest and struggling with the officers in the back of a patrol car. And if police officers don’t administer CPR, and someone dies, then we’ll just assume that the officer killed them. We’ll just make that leap of logic, because why not?
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But just because the jury didn’t consider the issue of causation to be relevant, that doesn’t mean it’s not relevant. From a legal perspective, on appeal, it’s still very important. And that’s why a federal judge in Minnesota named Paul Magnuson, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan, has just issued a ruling that could ultimately lead to a new trial in this case. This is a decision that’s worth dissecting at length, because it highlights what a farce the trial of Derek Chauvin really was. No matter how corrupt you think this trial was, it was actually a lot worse than that.
The decision came in response to a motion filed by Chauvin’s new lawyer in federal court. Chauvin’s legal team is seeking to have his conviction overturned, in part, because his previous lawyer was ineffective — to the point that he denied Chauvin his constitutional right to a fair trial. There are other objections too — including that many of the jurors said they felt threatened by the mob, so Chauvin couldn’t get a fair trial.
But there are two central claims in the motion arguing that Chauvin received “ineffective assistance of counsel.” The first is that Chauvin’s lawyer, during the trial, failed to tell Chauvin that a doctor had determined that George Floyd died due to acute heart failure, resulting in pulmonary edema and death. There were indications that Floyd had a heart tumor that could’ve caused sudden cardiac death, and Chauvin was never told about it — nor was it brought up at trial.
The second claim is that Chauvin’s lawyer should have listened to the doctor, and ordered tests on samples that were preserved from George Floyd’s body. Those tests could have determined whether Floyd died of a type of myocarditis, or some other heart ailment. And now, several years later, the federal judge has finally allowed Chauvin’s new legal team to conduct those tests. Depending on what they show, they could completely undermine the prosecution’s argument that Chauvin caused the death of George Floyd. And that, in turn, could lead to the conviction being thrown out — and potentially a new trial, if prosecutors decide to pursue it.
One of the reasons this is such an important ruling is that, in Chauvin’s trial, there was clear evidence that the prosecution lied about the concentration of fentanyl in George Floyd’s system when he died. And if this case is tried again, this is going to be a major issue. You might remember that, in the initial autopsy report, the medical examiner determined that Floyd had lethal levels of fentanyl in his system. He said that there were no physical signs of strangulation, and that it looked like a textbook overdose. But shortly afterwards, his assessment changed.
The threats and the political pressure, we’re supposed to conclude, didn’t influence the medical examiner. We’re supposed to pretend that he somehow wasn’t bothered by the mob that was threatening to destroy the entire city of Minneapolis when he changed his determination about the cause of George Floyd’s death.
We’re also supposed to think that Democrats in Minneapolis didn’t exert any political pressure at all. But as the reporter Liz Collin found, there was even more pressure on the medical examiner than many people realize.
One internal memo from a prosecuting attorney in Minneapolis at the time says that on May 26, 2020, a team of six FBI agents met with medical examiner Andrew Baker to discuss his preliminary findings. And then after this meeting, he changed his conclusions. He decides that Floyd’s death was a homicide caused by neck compression — and that fentanyl wasn’t the cause.
A new trial would offer Chauvin’s new defense team an opportunity to pick this claim apart. This is an opportunity that Chauvin’s first legal team missed completely, during the first trial. Outside of a few accounts on social media — people like “Data Hazard” for example — no one has talked about this. But it’s an incredible oversight by the defense team, and a remarkable act of corruption by the prosecution. And if anything completely blows apart the case against Derek Chauvin, it’s this.
Here’s the moment in the trial that I’m talking about. This is maybe the single most important testimony in the whole case. The prosecution is questioning a forensic toxicologist about the levels of fentanyl in Floyd’s blood.
It’s a lot to process, with the graphs and the numbers flying around. But the basic idea is that the expert is telling the jury that they collected post-mortem blood samples from George Floyd, meaning the samples were taken after Floyd died. And they compared these samples to other overdose victims, and DUI suspects, after their deaths. And Floyd’s levels of fentanyl were well below both of those groups, at the post-mortem stage. The conclusion was that Floyd didn’t overdose on fentanyl.
The fundamental problem here is that Floyd’s samples, according to the medical examiner’s records, were not actually conducted post-mortem, or “after death.” They’re comparing Floyd’s pre-death samples with other people’s post-death samples.
To restate: There were samples of blood collected from George Floyd before he died in the hospital, according to the government’s own documents. He wasn’t actually pronounced dead until an hour after this incident with Derek Chauvin, when he was in the hospital. And while he was in the hospital, his blood was drawn. As the judge put it in his ruling this week, quote, “the autopsy report shows that ante-mortem blood was collected.” And the prosecutors’ own statements from 2020 confirm that. Another internal memo shows what they said at the time.
“Dr. Andrew Baker … said he had the final toxicology results from Mr. George Floyd’s samples … Those samples are from Mr. Floyd’s hospital admission and were not acquired at autopsy. [Baker] said that these samples are better for determining actual blood toxicity than samples taken at autopsy,” the memo said. “Samples taken at autopsy may have undergone ‘post mortem distribution.'”
So here we have “ante-mortem” samples, or pre-death samples of Floyd’s blood. That means they were taken before the effects of Floyd’s death could impact the samples.
And the autopsy report also confirms that Floyd’s samples are “ante-mortem.”
It reads, “testing performed on antemortem blood specimens collected 5/25/20 at 9:00 p.m. … Fentanyl 11 nanograms per milliliter.” This couldn’t be any more clear. These are pre-mortem samples, according to the prosecution’s own records.
WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show
Now, you might be asking what’s the big deal — who cares if Floyd’s blood was collected before his death, or after it? As it turns out, the distinction is extremely significant. After death, fentanyl concentrations in the bodies of overdose victims are dramatically higher than they are before death. It’s a difference of up to 900% within eight hours of death. That’s because when you die, blood stops pumping, so blood concentrations change.
So what the prosecution did, in effect, was compare Floyd’s fentanyl levels before this massive spike with the fentanyl levels of overdose victims after this massive spike. Of course, Floyd’s levels were lower. And based on this apples-to-oranges comparison, the prosecutors convinced the jury that Floyd’s death had nothing to do with fentanyl.
In other words, when he arrived at the hospital Floyd had a level of fentanyl in his blood that was consistent with an overdose victim, when his pre-mortem blood was tested. In fact, Floyd’s levels of fentanyl were more than two times the average lethal level that you see in fentanyl overdoses. But the prosecution hid this fact from the jury, by presenting these blood samples as “post-mortem.” They compared Floyd’s numbers with other people who had been dead for several hours.
It’s impossible to overstate the significance of this deception. This was the crux of the prosecution’s entire argument. They hit it again and again, including during closing arguments.
Again, he’s showing the chart with the false information, presenting the numbers as post-mortem. And then at the end of that clip, the prosecutor claims that Floyd had built up a “tolerance” to fentanyl — implying that because he had overdosed before, his body could handle a high concentration of the drug.
But that was never proven at trial, either. We know that George Floyd had used fentanyl several times before. He even overdosed just months before his death, resulting in his hospitalization. But that’s very different from saying that Floyd was somehow immune to the fatal effects of a fentanyl overdose, which was never demonstrated at trial because it’s impossible.
The other major problem here is that the prosecution’s witness testified that Floyd died on the street, which seems incompatible with the idea that pre-death blood samples were later collected in the hospital
This whole trial was full of incidents like this. There was the fact that Floyd’s suspected drug dealer wasn’t prosecuted, which allowed him to take the Fifth and avoid testifying about the drugs in Floyd’s possession. There was the prosecuting attorney who was allegedly threatened with professional consequences for refusing to add charges against Chauvin. There was testimony from Andrew Baker, who admitted under cross-examination that Chauvin’s knee did not cut off Floyd’s airway. There was that statement from the judge in the case, saying every case is about “racial justice.” There was the fact that the prosecution tried to hide the tape of George Floyd saying “I can’t breathe,” when he was still in the squad car — and Chauvin’s knee was nowhere near his neck.
In 2024, there would be a chance that a jury would see through all of this corruption, and vote to acquit Derek Chauvin. But in 2021, Chauvin was never going to receive a fair trial. The threat of violence by BLM was too real. Propaganda from corporate media was still believable to millions of Americans, in part because all social media was censored. And Democrats had far too much political power.
None of that’s true anymore. That’s why Daniel Penny was just acquitted. And it’s why, if he’s granted the new trial he clearly deserves, Derek Chauvin will be acquitted too.
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