You can breath in a sleeper hold, the blood just doesn’t reach the brain. The rest of the body gets all the blood it needs. You basically just go to sleep and die.
Right, but your body instinctually reacts to the hold and fights it if you’re not trained to respond to it, which is why most people instinctively want to tap out even before the hold’s effect actually sets in. Also, Epstein would have to be knowledgeable and precise to make sure he put himself into a sleeper and not an outright choke—and the autopsy should show which it was. I’d be interested to see what the autopsy indicates on this, along with a crime scene re-enactment of an average person’s reaction using the same material found around Epstein’s neck.