BOMBSHELL in Chauvin Trial Today.

comedyre1i3f wrote:

wafflecopter wrote:

Except he didn't specify what type of drugs. /quote]

So did they ask what kind of drugs he was on? Was that while they were kneeling on him? Before or after he passed out?

They asked when he was still standing and he said "I ain't on nothing". But what else would you expect from a lifelong criminal. He lied about losing his mom, he lied about taking drugs, he lied about basically everything, so why would they take him at his word about anything?

So they kneeled on him when he was unconscious because they weren’t sure if he was on drugs. Got it. Great police work, worthy of a gold star.

This is Jim Kiler wrote:

I don't understand how this is a political issue, other than, this country is going downhill fast.

This is a bad cop who killed a guy. Simple as that.

Just not fair Donald Trump probably had more success in life than George Floyd and Derrick Chauvin COMBINED and nobody gives Trump Credit, not fair.

I listened to NPR today and there were no bombshells talked about , none.

This is another "voter fraud" thread (and probably populated by many of the same people).

If he said he ate too many drugs, and he probably did say that if he took his painers orally, ya say you “ate em” , but the right thing to do would be to administer narcan. Ultimately it’s voluntary manslaughter or negligent homicide. He’ll definitely get the max tho. He’s gotta take one for the city cause if he gets off they’ll burn the city down.

douglas burke wrote:

This is Jim Kiler wrote:

I don't understand how this is a political issue, other than, this country is going downhill fast.

This is a bad cop who killed a guy. Simple as that.

Just not fair Donald Trump probably had more success in life than George Floyd and Derrick Chauvin COMBINED and nobody gives Trump Credit, not fair.

Trump was born worth 100s of millions. Do you think most people born with that amount of wealth f-ck it up or nah?

Trump’s net worth growth is essential his inheritance times inflation.

If a guy who has done a lot of drugs in his day says in a worried voice "I ate too many drugs" then he probably ate waaaaay too many drugs. This isn't weed, these are much more dangerous drugs that can kill you. Would the drugs George swallowed have killed him alone? Maybe, maybe not. But that is enough reasonable doubt to acquit from murder and probably man slaughter too now. Kneeling alone on a healthy non-drugged up person wouldn't kill them. I wrestled for many years, simply putting your body weight on someone isn't enough to kill them without them having some other issue going on. And George is a big guy, bigger than Chauvin. And Chauvin was the only one on him, putting less than 100% of his weight on George. I imagine Chauvin was surprised that George actually died. Which would get rid of murder and it's man slaughter at the most.

He was chewing on oral / sub-lingual fentanyl pills as he had in the past (they advise not to chew tablets because it increases the rate of administration). They also specifically advise against taking fentanyl in conjunction with amphetamines and cannabis (which he was doing). Not to mention, these pills were not made in a pharmacy, so the dosing is not regulated at all (which would explain why his serum level was so high).

* If you are taking sublingual fentanyl, remove a tablet from the blister pack and place it on the floor of the mouth directly under the tongue. Do not chew, suck, or swallow sublingual tablets.

*Common medications that may interact with fentanyl include:

anticholinergics, such as atropine, benztropine, or scopolamine

antidepressants, such as tricyclic antidepressants (eg, amitriptyline), monoamine oxidase inhibitors (eg, isocarboxazid, phenelzine, and tranylcypromine), or SSRIs (eg, fluoxetine, sertraline)

anticonvulsants, such as carbamazepine, phenytoin, phenobarbital, or primidone

antipsychotics (such as butyrophenones, phenothiazines, or thioxanthenes) and atypical antipsychotics (eg, olanzapine, quetiapine, ziprasidone)

any medication that may cause drowsiness, such as amphetamines, benzodiazepines (eg, diazepam, lorazepam), first-generation antihistamines (such as doxylamine or promethazine), metoclopramide, or opioids (such as codeine or oxycodone)

any other medication that increases serotonin levels in the body, such as 5-hydroxytrytophan, antidepressants, migraine medications (such as dihydroergotamine, sumitriptan), tramadol, or St. John's Wort

buprenorphine

HIV medications, such as ritonavir

medications that inhibit hepatic enzymes CYP3A4, such as clarithromycin, erythromycin, diltiazem, itraconazole, ketoconazole, ritonavir, verapamil, goldenseal or grapefruit

medications that induce hepatic enzymes CYP3A4 such as phenobarbital, phenytoin, rifampicin, St. John's Wort or glucocorticoids

muscle relaxants, such as baclofen or cyclobenzaprine.

Avoid drinking alcohol or taking illegal or recreational drugs, including cannabis, while taking fentanyl.

What if Chauvin was going by the book and the book, the standard manual of operating procedures, is itself the societal flaw? The fact that we get these cases over and over again is because police training in general leads to them. Get as many stops as possible. Assume guilt and try to write them up for as much as possible every time. Try to do a visual search of the car before knowing guilt. Demand absolute control and use violence if the subject is not complying, instead of stepping back and de-escalating the situation. A lot of this comes out of the Reid police handbook used all over the country.

Interesting but irrelevant. The pulmonary expert in the stand is showing exactly Floyd died.

Medical experts that performed both autopsies:

“Floyd did not die of an OD“

Letsrun experts that performed 4:20 mile back in the day:

“YES HE DID 🤬😡”

Come on guys, this really is the same thing as the voter fraud situation, (claims without evidence, “Just you wait until the real truth comes out” mentality, trashing on someone’s character instead of making valid arguments) and it’s really making a lot of you look so politically biased that you can’t think for yourself, let alone rationally.

xczvzxcv wrote:

What if Chauvin was going by the book and the book, the standard manual of operating procedures, is itself the societal flaw? The fact that we get these cases over and over again is because police training in general leads to them. Get as many stops as possible. Assume guilt and try to write them up for as much as possible every time. Try to do a visual search of the car before knowing guilt. Demand absolute control and use violence if the subject is not complying, instead of stepping back and de-escalating the situation. A lot of this comes out of the Reid police handbook used all over the country.

Why do you think that there was a focus on police procedure within the first few witnesses?

CopperRunner wrote:

Medical experts that performed both autopsies:

“Floyd did not die of an OD“

Letsrun experts that performed 4:20 mile back in the day:

“YES HE DID 🤬😡”

Come on guys, this really is the same thing as the voter fraud situation, (claims without evidence, “Just you wait until the real truth comes out” mentality, trashing on someone’s character instead of making valid arguments) and it’s really making a lot of you look so politically biased that you can’t think for yourself, let alone rationally.

First, nowhere in the autopsy does it say that he did not die of an OD, in fact the 11 ng/mL serum level of fentanyl would suggest the opposite. The autopsy also notes that there were no “telltale signs of asphyxiation”.

Second, the coroner's autopsy reached a different conclusion than the one bought and paid for by the prosecution: Coroner - Cardiopulmonary arrest, Prosecution - Asphyxiation from sustained pressure. Meaning the cause of death is not clear cut. Both are educated guesses. There is reasonable doubt. Even the county coroner went so far as to note that Floyd had a "fatal level of fentanyl under normal circumstances" and that "if he were found dead at home alone and no other apparent causes, this could be acceptable to call an OD." That means even the coroner believes there is a reasonable doubt.

The facts of the case - 11 ng/mL of fentanyl, 75% blockage of two coronary arteries and 90% blockage of a third, COVID infection, a history of stimulant abuse (cocaine, methamphetamines, nicotine, etc.), presence of two substances contraindicated for use with fentanyl (amphetamines and cannabis) in his blood, foaming at the mouth, etc. are all consistent with a heart attack caused by fentanyl overdose.

Basically the respiratory depressant attributes of fentanyl and some of the other drugs swimming around in his system would decrease his O2 saturation levels which would trigger his heart to have to pump harder, which in its already damaged state combined with elevated cortisol levels from the stress of the situation would go into arrythmia causing outward signs of shortness of breath and foam at the mouth ultimately ending in arrest.

So far there has been one side of the story presented. Wait until the defense has the opportunity to present their case before you determine that there is no basis for their argument.

He is saying “I AINT DOIN ANY DRUGS”, are you guys fkn ree-tar-ted? When someone asks if you hear xyz, you hear xyz. Confirmation bias. Jesus chroiiiiiist yall are slow.

A picture is worth a thousand words.The trial to me is

just a formality,doesn't matter the prosecution or the

defense.The video tells me all I need to know.Guilty.

Ain't 1857 wrote:

A picture is worth a thousand words.

I am not sure a thousand words is quite what it used to be. There are more than a thousand words in this thread and it doesn’t add up to much value.

comedyre1i3f wrote:

It also cannot be understated that the median lethal fentanyl blood concentration in corpses is 9.96 ng/mL and George Floyd's was 11 ng/mL. Fentanyl causes respiratory depression that can either cause respiratory failure or a heart attack. Floyd had significant pre-existing heart damage. The end result was cardiac arrest.

Two autopsies — one by a county medical examiner and another by a private medical examiner hired by Floyd’s family — as well as a review by military experts conducted for the federal government, reached the conclusion that Floyd died of cardiopulmonary arrest as the officers subduing him compressed his neck and chest.

Andrew Baker — the medical examiner in Minnesota’s Hennepin County, who is expected to be a key witness in the trial — formally declared Floyd’s death a homicide in June, listing “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression” as the cause of death.

The report listed heart disease, fentanyl intoxication, recent methamphetamine use and Floyd’s bout with the coronavirus as other “significant conditions.”

The analysis also found other health issues, including sickle cell trait. People who inherit one gene for sickle cell disease and one normal gene have sickle cell trait. They generally do not have any symptoms of the disease but can pass the trait to their children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Those findings have given Chauvin’s attorney, Eric J. Nelson, an opening to argue that Chauvin is not responsible for Floyd’s death. The trial could begin as soon as March 29.

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“Combined with sickle cell trait [and] his preexisting heart conditions, Mr. Floyd’s use of fentanyl and methamphetamine most likely killed him,” Nelson wrote in an Aug. 28 court filing that unsuccessfully sought dismissal of the charges against Chauvin, which include second-degree murder. “Adding fentanyl and methamphetamine to Mr. Floyd’s existing health issues was tantamount to lighting a fuse on a bomb.”

The defense strategy rings of earlier, successful attempts to blame drugs in police violence against African Americans. In 1992, when four Los Angeles police officers were acquitted of the videotaped beating of motorist Rodney King, one testified of fears that King was on PCP, a drug the officer contended gave King “hulk-like strength.” No PCP was found in King’s system.

“Using drugs to justify harsh policing has a long history in the United States,” said Jon Zibbell, a senior scientist at the think tank RTI International, who studies illicit drug use and public health. “And it’s worked.”

The effects of fentanyl and methamphetamine

Citing footage from Officer Thomas Lane’s body camera for most of his argument, Chauvin’s attorney recounted in court papers that the well-known events from last spring began when Lane and his partner, J. Alexander Kueng, approached Floyd’s car. The rookie officers were investigating a complaint that Floyd had allegedly passed a counterfeit $20 bill in a nearby convenience store, Cup Foods.

Nelson declined a request for an interview.

“A white object was visible in Mr. Floyd’s mouth,” Nelson wrote. “At one point, Mr. Floyd turned away from officers, and when he faced them again, the white object was no longer visible.”

Two other people in the car with Floyd, which was parked outside Cup Foods, told police that Floyd was a habitual drug user, and both later said they believed Floyd “was under the influence of narcotics,” according to the court papers. Floyd had been previously arrested for drug possession.

One of the car passengers, Morries Lester Hall, said Floyd quickly fell asleep in the driver’s seat upon returning from the minimart, according to Nelson’s filing. That could have been a sign of use of illegal fentanyl, a fast-acting sedative and powerful painkiller that produces feelings of euphoria.

The police also suspected that Floyd was using drugs. As Lane and Kueng walked Floyd from the car to a sidewalk, they observed him “acting erratically” and repeatedly asked whether he was drunk or “on something,” according to the court papers.

Police were a part of George Floyd’s life from beginning to end

They also saw foam coming from Floyd’s mouth, which he explained by saying he had been “hooping earlier.” Nelson, citing the online Urban Dictionary, contended that this is an admission by Floyd that he had ingested drugs rectally.

During court proceedings on another matter Monday, Nelson asserted for the first time that fragments of a pill with Floyd’s DNA on it were found in the back of the squad car. The fragments contained methamphetamine and fentanyl, he claimed. Prosecutors acknowledged the existence of the pill fragments and that they contained methamphetamine, but they did not address the other claims.

The Minnesota attorney general’s office, which is prosecuting Chauvin, has a very different view of events. If Floyd had anything in his mouth, it was probably chewing gum, Assistant Attorney General Matthew Frank and private attorney Neal Katyal wrote in a Sept. 18 response to the defense’s claims.

The “foam” around Floyd’s mouth was probably spittle, they said, and “hooping” was a reference to playing basketball, which Floyd often did. They also noted Nelson’s conflicting claims that Floyd had taken drugs orally and rectally. The prosecutors did not respond to a request for an interview.

George Floyd had long seen sports as his path out of the poverty, crime and drugs of Houston’s Third Ward.

The biggest problem for the defense argument is that events that evening don’t fit a fentanyl overdose, experts said.

“I’m skeptical of the notion of opioid overdose as the cause here,” said David Juurlink, head of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto. “The sequence of events isn’t characteristic of opioid overdose.”

Fentanyl kills by shutting down the part of the brain that controls respiration. Breathing slows, then stops, followed by the heart.

If Floyd had ingested an opioid and fell asleep on his way toward an overdose death, several experts told The Post, he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, have spent the next 20 minutes coherently interacting with police, repeatedly describing his claustrophobia and anxiety, battling with them as they tried to put him in a squad car and struggling against the three officers who pinned him facedown on the street. Instead, he would have become even more sluggish on the path toward unconsciousness and death, these experts said.

“It’s just complete garbage to call it an overdose,” said Kimberly Sue, medical director of the Harm Reduction Coalition, a national advocacy group, and a Yale School of Medicine instructor. In an opioid overdose, “a person is basically blue, unresponsive. … It happens usually from the moment people use to 10 minutes.”

Others noted there is no evidence that police or emergency medical personnel who later arrived used the fast-acting opioid antidote naloxone on Floyd, most likely because they did not believe he was showing signs of an opioid overdose. Both carried the medication, with the United States in the midst of the worst drug epidemic in history. Naloxone can be administered by injection or nasal spray.

“Overdose deaths shouldn’t occur in front of trained first responders” who arrive in time, Babu said.

Instead, when Floyd lost consciousness and police could no longer find his pulse, the officers discussed rolling him onto his side to revive him, which Chauvin rejected in favor of waiting for medical personnel. The police also refused the help of an off-duty firefighter who came to the scene before an ambulance arrived.

The experts agreed that the amount of fentanyl found in Floyd’s blood was very high, at 11 nanograms per milliliter. Lewis Nelson, chief of the Division of Medical Toxicology for Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, said that amount indicates enough to cause a fatal overdose in someone taking the drug for the first time. The analysis was conducted by NMS Labs, a Pennsylvania company.

But Floyd was a longtime fentanyl user — Chauvin’s defense called him an “addict” — who probably had built a tolerance to the drug and could consume larger-than-average amounts without overdosing, experts said. Longtime opioid users often need to take increasing amounts of the drug to achieve the same level of euphoria.

The ratio of fentanyl to one of its by-products, norfentanyl, in Floyd’s blood is consistent with chronic use rather than an acute overdose, Babu said.

The amount of fentanyl in Floyd’s blood also provides only one piece to an overall puzzle, they said. Toxicology is not nearly as precise as it appears on television crime shows. After death, the amount of drug in the blood can increase dramatically, as substances move from organs and viscera into the bloodstream, a point the prosecution raises in its legal papers. The amount found in overdose victims varies widely.

In this case, lab records show that the analysis was performed on blood taken from Floyd at 9 p.m., less than an hour after the confrontation began, as hospital personnel were presumably working to save his life. The records note that the tests were performed on this “hospital blood,” which likely makes them more accurate than blood recovered the next day during the autopsy.

Defense attorneys for Chauvin and the other officers have nevertheless seized on the toxicology findings and Baker’s subsequent comments to prosecutors about those results.

FAQ: What you need to know about the trial

According to notes of a meeting between Baker and prosecutors that have been filed as evidence in the case, the medical examiner told them that if Floyd had been “found dead at home alone and no other apparent causes,” it would have been “acceptable” to call his death an overdose. But, Baker added, “I am not saying this killed him.”

Nelson, the toxicologist, said “it is not inconceivable” that fentanyl caused some respiratory depression in Floyd, but the drug’s impact cannot be considered separately from the officers’ behavior. Had Floyd been alone, he “probably wouldn’t have died,” Nelson said.

“If you’re not breathing well because you have respiratory depression, adding compression to the chest and neck is certainly going to contribute,” he said.

“Context matters,” Babu said.

Street-drug users often combine fentanyl with methamphetamine, Zibbell said, believing that the stimulant and the depressant balance each other. But experts said the amount of methamphetamine discovered was very small.

Chauvin’s attorney contends the presence of both fentanyl and methamphetamine in Floyd’s blood is evidence of the dangerous practice of taking the two drugs together, known as “speedballing,” which can present the risk of “death from stroke, heart attack, aneurysm, or respiratory failure.” He also cited Baker’s remarks to the FBI that methamphetamine can be “bad for your heart.”

Nelson, the toxicologist, said the small amount of methamphetamine in Floyd’s blood indicates he took the substance a day earlier or perhaps the same morning, not in combination with fentanyl at the scene. Methamphetamine remains in the body for about three days, he said.

Floyd's underlying health problems

At 6’4” and 223 pounds, according to the county’s autopsy, Floyd was an imposing figure. Beneath his exterior, however, he had several health problems. In addition to his clogged arteries, the examination showed, he had sickle cell trait, high blood pressure and a small tumor in his abdomen, none of which was involved in his death, according to the experts and the autopsies.

Floyd had a coronavirus infection less than two months earlier, but it, too, was not considered a factor in the outcome, according to the autopsies and the experts.

The autopsy found that Floyd’s lungs contained fluid, which can be caused by fentanyl, but that kind of buildup is also the result of CPR, which paramedics performed when they arrived and presumably continued into the hospital. The attempt to resuscitate Floyd also fractured one of his ribs, according to the county autopsy.

Geoffrey Barnes, an assistant professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School, expressed concern over the narrowing of three of Floyd’s coronary arteries. One was 90 percent blocked and two others were narrowed by 75 percent.

“Once you get a blockage that’s more than 70 percent, that’s when we start to say in times of stress, you might not get enough blood flow to your heart,” Barnes said. “It’s feasible that when put under stress, his heart could have gotten ischemic, not having enough blood flow, and he went into arrest.”

Video from the scene shows that Floyd was highly agitated, almost panicky, as the confrontation began and remained under stress until he fell unconscious.

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Barnes said fentanyl could, theoretically, lower Floyd’s blood pressure to the point that oxygenated blood was no longer able to flow through the clogged arteries to his heart. But the sequence of events again makes that much less likely than cardiac arrest as a result of the pressure on his neck and back, he said.

Floyd, Barnes noted, was walking and talking, then struggling with the officers, before he was pinned to the ground.

“I always ask: Why did it happen at that moment?” Barnes said. “Why didn’t his breathing stop two minutes earlier?”

Defense attorneys also have pointed to Baker’s July interview with the FBI, which was not recorded. According to the FBI summary, agents said Baker told them Floyd’s heart and lungs had stopped “due to the combined effects of his health problems as well as the exertion and restraint involved in Floyd’s interaction with police prior to being on the ground.”

The summary says Baker told the FBI that other factors had contributed to Floyd’s cardiopulmonary arrest, including existing heart disease and the presence of fentanyl and other intoxicants.

“Baker did not know if Floyd would have lived but for the officer’s actions,” the FBI summary reads. But the medical examiner told agents that along with the other factors, “the stress from the events that occurred with Minneapolis police officers was more than Floyd could tolerate.”

Baker also told prosecutors he found “no bruising” on Floyd’s neck or damage to muscles or the structure around the neck, a detail the defense cites as proof Chauvin had not intended to “inflict harm” on Floyd.

“Mr. Chauvin was cautious about the amount of pressure he used to restrain Mr. Floyd — cautious enough to prevent bruising,” his attorney wrote.

Prosecutors contend that bruising is irrelevant because the autopsy has determined that the police subdual of Floyd was a cause of his death.

Boarded up and lined with barbed wire, Minneapolis braces for murder trial

Now Baker is poised to tell the story publicly at trial. Jury selection began this week in a courthouse surrounded by concrete barricades and high fencing topped with barbed wire, amid fears of fresh civil unrest in a city still scarred by last year’s violence.

A few blocks away, in the shadow of the city’s shiny glass NFL stadium, an equally tall fence with razor wire and concrete barricades had been installed around an otherwise unremarkable one-story concrete office building — the medical examiner’s office.

The evidence of the pulmonary expert has removed any doubt. Floyd was killed by the policemen.

I am disgusted that anyone would try to detract from this grisly murder by trying to paint Floyd in a negative light. Even if he was high and resisting arrest initially, Chauvin MURDERED him. None of those things even remotely warrant the use of deadly force.

For f**ks sake, there is video evidence of the entire encounter, where Chauvin can be seen kneeling on Floyd's neck as Floyd begs for his life. It is shameful that Chauvin wasn't convicted for murder right away.