One of the things that makes American Thinker so readable is that even our longer articles have a maximum allowable length. For most subjects, that length is perfectly adequate and, indeed, helps people write leaner, more accessible essays. Occasionally, though, a subject requires the writer to develop so many details that a different forum makes more sense. That’s what happened when one of our favorite writers, Jack Cashill, got together with Dr. John Dunn, who is both a physician and a lawyer, about an experiment Dr. Dunn ran to determine what really killed George Floyd. The resulting article at The American Spectator is long but well worth your time – including the time you’ll spend watching Dr. Dunn’s video.

Here is the article’s premise:

In his motion for a new trial, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, through his attorney Eric Nelson, made an obvious point. Quoting case law, Nelson reminded the court of “the prosecutor’s inherently unique role in the criminal justice system, which mandates that the prosecutor not act as a zealous advocate for criminal punishment, but as the representative of the people in an effort to seek justice.”

Had the State prosecutors set out to honor this mandate and seek justice, they would not have presented the medical evidence they did. In fact, they would not have charged Derek Chauvin with second-degree murder or charged his colleagues as accomplices.

If justice were the goal, prosecutors would have taken two critical steps to assure that the medical testimony supported the charge of murder. The first was to run a controlled experiment to see if Chauvin’s actions could possibly have resulted in the death of George Floyd. The second was to make the court and the defense aware of the potential compromise of its star medical witness, Hennepin County Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker.

While I urge you to read the entire article, here’s a brief rundown of the two key points: First, Dr. Dunn, using two subjects, one about George Floyd’s size (a big man) and one about Derek Chauvin’s size (a smaller man), had the “Chauvin” subject spend 10 minutes kneeling on the “Floyd” subject’s back in the same way shown in the infamous video. At the end of the experiment, the “Floyd” subject had a perfectly normal blood oxygen level and was suffering no ill effects.

Of course, the “Floyd” subject wasn’t hopped up on fentanyl (inserted into his rectum), methamphetamines, and marijuana, all on top of severe cardiac disease. Taken together, these factors created a fatal arrhythmia that Chauvin could neither have known about nor prevented.

That’s the short version. Be sure to read Mr. Cashill’s longer discussion.

As for the compromised medical witness, on appeal Chauvin is asserting that the coroner’s original report exonerated Chauvin. However, because of pressure, the coroner changed that report – and testified dishonestly. Again, be sure to read the longer discussion.

Nobody is saying that Derek Chauvin is a nice man. Apparently, he could be unpleasant and overly aggressive. However, neither of those traits is grounds for conviction. Each case must be determined on its merits – and Jack Cashill and John Dunn make a compelling case that the merits strongly favored Chauvin, who actually acted in a textbook manner when facing someone severely compromised by a drug overdose.

IMAGE: Derek Chauvin hearing the verdict. YouTube screen grab.

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