The police officer who kept his knee on George Floyd’s neck for about nine minutes in 2020 was convicted of murder, and the medical examiner determined that police efforts to subdue Floyd caused his death. Nothing about the autopsy’s findings have changed, but social media posts falsely claim new documents show Floyd died of a drug overdose or natural causes.
George Floyd, a Black man, was killed on May 25, 2020, after a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeled on Floyd’s neck during an arrest in Minneapolis for about nine minutes while Floyd said repeatedly that he couldn’t breathe. The incident sparked protests and riots across the country.
Chauvin was subsequently convicted of murdering Floyd.
The county medical examiner who conducted the autopsy listed Floyd’s death as a homicide and determined that the cause was “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.”
This finding was highlighted in the first set of charges leveled against Chauvin in May 2020 and was explained in detail by the medical examiner, Dr. Andrew Baker, during Chauvin’s trial.
“The top line of the cause of death is really what you think is the most important thing that precipitated the death. Other things that you think played a role in the death but were not direct causes get relegated to what’s known as the ‘other significant conditions’ part of the death certificate,” Baker said at the trial, explaining why Floyd’s other...
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