John Jefferson
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Federal prosecutors in Minnesota are asking a judge to reconsider his decision to allow former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin to re-examine George Floyd’s heart as part of an appeal after he was convicted of violating Floyd’s civil rights.
United States District Court Judge Paul Magnuson ordered on Monday that Chauvin’s lawyers be allowed access to Floyd’s heart tissue and histology slides, photographs of his heart and samples of Floyd’s bodily fluids, as his legal team is investigating the possibility that Floyd died from a heart condition and not Chauvin’s actions.
In a 10-page motion to reconsider filed Tuesday, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota argued that Chauvin had “no legal basis for [his] discovery requests, all of which stem solely from an email he received from an unvetted doctor offering a weaker version of the medical defense than the version that the jury had previously rejected at his state trial.”
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Prosecutors also disputed Chauvin’s claim that he had ineffective counsel at trial, claiming that his original defense team’s decision not to examine Floyd’s heart was a “strategic decision that courts have recognized as ‘virtually unchallengeable.’”
Magnuson, however, said the evidence would help Chauvin’s defense investigate information from Dr. William Schaetzel, who contacted Chauvin’s original trial lawyer, Eric Nelson, and argued that Floyd died of a specific type of heart attack.
Chauvin’s new legal team said Nelson never told his client about the doctor’s theory, and therefore, no testing was done to try and confirm it.
“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. 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 ordered Monday.
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Read the government’s filing
Experts told Fox News Digital that Chauvin’s defense has a right to the materials, whether they help him win on appeal or not.
“Chauvin should have every opportunity to exhaust his appeals just like any other defendant,” said David Gelman, a Philadelphia-area criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor. “If this was any other case, I bet the Justice Department wouldn’t have objected.”
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Chauvin was also convicted of state murder charges in connection with Floyd’s death on Memorial Day in 2020, when he appeared on video holding his knee on the man’s neck for more than nine minutes, prompting riots around the country.
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Nelson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
After his conviction, another inmate stabbed Chauvin 22 times in a federal prison in an attack allegedly inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, which picked up steam after Floyd’s death and has been criticized for violent demonstrations around the country.
Chauvin was one of four officers who arrested Floyd after he allegedly passed a counterfeit $20 bill at a coffee shop and refused to cooperate with police.
Chauvin’s appeal of his state murder charges was rejected by the Supreme Court last year.
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