The second autopsy was conducted by Dr Michael Baden. He was a very high profile forensic pathologist, as can be seen from the Wikipedia article on him, but there is also a lot of criticism of him in that article.
That article points out that, when he conducted his autopsy on Floyd, the evidence available to him “did not include a toxicology report or unspecified bodily samples”. I can’t remember where I saw it, but I have seen a claim that he did not have Floyd’s heart, or at least not the diseased portions thereof, which would be a very serious omission, and means that we cannot have any confidence in his conclusion that “Floyd had no underlying medical problem that contributed to his death.” That is just not true.
In a fortunate coincidence, I happen to have a statement Dr Baden made on “Larry King Live” on August 5, 2002 when discussing the Samantha Runnion kidnapping and murder: “When the passions of the community and the district attorney and the prosecutor are so raised in a case, one can get a false verdict.” So true in the Floyd case.
And he gave an example (this is still from Larry King Live):
“We had another case outside Chicago some years ago. A little girl, Nekariko (ph), was forcibly abducted from her home, brought to the woods, raped and murdered. And two people were falsely convicted, were on death row for something like 13, 14 years. And it turned out because of the community passions that police, prosecutors and forensic scientists got caught up in, and gave false results. It turned out clearly they were innocent, they were released. DNA proved somebody else was the perpetrator who has never been arrested for it, as I understand. And I think that there is a real danger in these most heinous of cases for mistakes to be made. And we have to calm our passions, as horrible as this crime is.”
And Larry King then gave an example of his own: “We have the famed Pittsley (ph) case in Florida. They were on death row for many years for a crime they did not commit based on overzealousness.”
Baden’s example was the Jeanine Nicarico case in 1983, and Larry King’s example was the Pitts and Lee case in 1963.
Thank you for the information.
I’m not going to argue this anymore.
Dr. Baden is paid for his testimony. The two autopsies were done by people with absolutely zero skin in the game.
You’re simply wrong. Floyd’s heart and the fentanyl contributed to his death, but what expedited his death was that he neck was compressed for a period of time that cut off his airway enough to stop his heart.
Do I think Chauvin should be in prison for as long as he’s been sentenced? No, but saying he didn’t kill Floyd is absolutely wrong.
Period, end of discussion.