Derek Chauvin’s Lawyers Granted Permission to Test George Floyd’s Heart Tissue for Pre-Existing Condition

Former police officer Derek Chauvin’s defense attorneys have been granted permission to have samples from George Floyd’s body examined to see if he died from a heart condition instead of asphyxiation caused by the ex-cop holding him down with his knee during the infamous 2020 arrest.

U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson gave lawyers for Chauvin, who has been doing time in a Texas federal prison for murder and violation of civil rights charges, permission to George Floyd’s heart tissue and fluid samples on Monday, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

“Given the significant nature of the criminal case that Mr. Chauvin was convicted of, and given that the discovery that Mr. Chauvin seeks could support Dr. [William] Schaetzel’s opinion of how Mr. Floyd died, the Court finds that there is good cause to allow Mr. Chauvin to take the discovery that he seeks,” Magnuson wrote in his order, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.

Chauvin is attempting to overturn his civil rights conviction by arguing that his first lawyer, Eric Nelson, failed to pursue potential evidence about Floyd’s pre-existing health issues brought up by forensic pathologist Dr. William Schaetzel, the Western Journal reported.

According to Schaetzel, Floyd may have suffered from takotsubo cardiomyopathy that killed him instead of the prosecutor’s claim that Chauvin killed him by kneeling on the back of his neck during an arrest.

Chauvin filed a motion in federal court in November 2023, saying that he would have never pleaded guilty to the federal civil rights charge in 2021 if he had known about Schaetzel’s theories, according to PBS News Hour.

The former Minneapolis officer is serving his 20-year sentence for civil rights violation and 22.5-year sentence for murder concurrently after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his appeal of his murder conviction last year, the AP reported.