Andrews University has a “George Floyd Scholar” program, financial assistance to be awarded “to one African American student each fall through the Office of the Provost.”
Who was George Floyd? A criminal, for one thing. Floyd had several drug arrests on his rap sheet. His most serious offense was a home-invasion robbery in which he held a gun to a pregnant woman’s belly, a crime for which he served five years in a Texas jail. Originally from Houston, Floyd moved to Minneapolis and, at the time of his death last May, was working as a bouncer at a nightclub.
Is it just me, or does it seem odd to you, too, that Adventism’s flagship university would name a scholarship after a non-Adventist bouncer, recreational drug user, and small-time criminal whose greatest achievement in life was to die in police custody, thereby setting off riots that killed dozens of people and destroyed billions worth of property?
The George Floyd Martyrdom Myth
Andrews’ George Floyd scholarship, and scores of others like it at universities around the country, is premised upon the idea that Floyd was a martyr of racism. America’s Marxist “mainstream” media, which specializes in far-Left narrative engineering, has spun up a myth about Floyd based upon camera phone video taken of Floyd lying in the street while Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has his knee on Floyd’s neck. Eventually, Floyd becomes non-responsive and dies.
According to the myth, Chauvin mercilessly crushed out Floyd’s life by smashing his knee down on Floyd’s trachea and holding it there, as three of his fellow-officers looked on approvingly at the murder and declined to intervene, even though Floyd was repeatedly saying he could not breathe. Nothing but calloused, depraved-heart racism can explain why the police randomly chose to snuff out Floyd’s life that day.
The myth is a lie.
The truth is that George Floyd was dying of an opioid overdose, and would have died even had he never come within 10 miles of a police officer. The knee on the neck is a restraint technique officers are trained to use in cases of “excited delirium,” meaning when a subject is high on drugs, behaving crazily, and not complying with police orders. Because his lungs were filling with fluid, Floyd complained repeatedly of not being able to breathe while he was still upright, before he was put under restraint. The neck restraint does not cut off air through the trachea nor blood flow through the carotid arteries.
George Floyd was not killed by Minneapolis police officers.
Who Killed George Floyd?
The evidence most pertinent to our inquiry is the autopsy performed by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner (ME), Dr. Andrew Baker, and the toxicology screen that was done later using blood samples drawn from Floyd’s body.
a. Floyd Had Fentanyl in His Bloodstream
Per the toxicology report (p. 14 onward of autopsy report), George Floyd had a large amount of Fentanyl (11 ng/mL—nannograms per milliliter) in his system. Fentanyl is a Controlled Substance (DEA Schedule II); it is a synthetic opioid—a morphine substitute—prescribed in cases of chronic pain management when the patient is intolerant of other analgesics, or in cases in which other painkillers have become ineffective.
Fentanyl is extremely potent. It is between 80 and 100 times more potent than morphine. It is the most potent painkiller in the armamentarium, the medicines available for prescription.
In addition, Floyd had 5.6 ng/mL of Norfentanyl, which is a major metabolite of Fentanyl, and an independently scheduled controlled substance.
Given how potent Fentanyl is, it would be very surprising if there were not thousands of overdose deaths every year, and indeed there are. Every day, one hundred and fifteen Americans die of an opioid overdose. According to the Centers for Disease Control, “opioids . . . are currently the main driver of drug overdose deaths. Opioids were involved in 46,802 overdose deaths in 2018 (69.5% of all drug overdose deaths). Two out of three (67.0%) opioid-involved overdose deaths involve synthetic opioids” such as Fentanyl.
b. Floyd Had Overdosed on Fentanyl
The amount of Fentanyl in Floyd’s system was a serious overdose. The therapeutic range for pain management is between 0.6 and 3.0 ng/mL). Considering the levels of detected metabolites, mainly Norfentanyl, Floyd must have had at least 17 ng/mL of Fentanyl in his system at peak level, which is almost 6 times the maximum therapeutic level for pain management.
c. Floyd Had a Fatal Level of Fentanyl in System
Was that enough to cause Floyd’s death? Studies indicate that it was.
A 2017 study of unintentional Fentanyl overdose deaths in New Hampshire found that “the range of fentanyl levels was wide, from 0.75 to 113 ng/mL, with an average of 9.96 ng/mL.” (Sorg, et al, “Unintentional Fentanyl Overdoses in New Hampshire: An NDEWS HotSpot Analysis,” Sept. 11, 2017). At 11 ng/mL, Floyd had more than the average fatal Fentanyl overdose in the New Hampshire study.
A study of Fentanyl overdoses in New Haven, Connecticut, in 2017 found “postmortem levels in the first two patients who died were 11 ng/mL (patient E) and 13 ng/mL (patient I).” (Tomassoni, et al, “Multiple Fentanyl Overdoses — New Haven, Connecticut,” MMWR, Feb. 3, 2017, 66(4);107–111). Again, Floyd’s blood post-mortem blood level was 11 ng/mL, a fatal overdose per the Connecticut study.
d. Prosecutors Charged Chauvin with Murder Before They Learned of Floyd’s OD
Floyd died on May 25, 2020. Instead of doing the toxicology screen locally in Minneapolis, the blood samples were sent for analysis to a company called NMS Labs, in Horsham, Pennsylvania. The report was not completed and sent to Minneapolis until May 31, six days later.
Meanwhile, within hours of Floyd’s death, the camera-phone video had gone viral with no context, the media had whipped up a frenzy with “racist, murderer cop” narrative, and Black Lives Matter had swung into action with multiple protests and riots. Four days later, on May 29, under unimaginably intense pressure from mobs burning down the City of Minneapolis, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office charged Derek Chauvin with third-degree murder.
Two days later, on May 31, the tox screen results came in.
Prosecutors Patrick Lofton and Amy Sweasy, the latter well regarded for her work prosecuting Mohamed Noor in the Justine Damon case, met remotely with the ME via Microsoft’s version of “zoom.” Sweasy prepared a memo dated June 1, 2020, documenting what was said at this meeting, including that 11 ng/mL is “a fatal level of Fentanyl under normal circumstances” and that “if Mr. Floyd had been found dead at home and there were no other contributing factors he would conclude that it was an overdose death.”
e. Floyd Killed by Opioid-Induced Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome
Not only do we know that Fentanyl killed George Floyd, we know how it killed him. It caused a pulmonary edema, which means that Floyd’s lungs filled with fluid and he could not breathe.
The most severe side effects of fentanyl relate to its interference with respiration. If you go to the “drugs.com” article on “Fentanyl Side Effects,” you will be warned about “Life-Threatening Respiratory Depression.” If you click on the embedded link there, you will be taken to their page on ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) where you will be told that:
“ARDS is a type of acute respiratory failure caused by fluid buildup in your lungs. The fluid prevents your lungs from filling with oxygen. Your blood is not able to get the oxygen it needs to carry to your body. Organs such as our kidneys can shut down from a lack of oxygen. ARDS is life-threatening and immediate treatment is needed.”
The Cleveland Clinic’s page on ARDS tells us that “causes of ARDS include: Drug overdose: An overdose on drugs like cocaine and opioids.”
Several lines of evidence indicate that George Floyd died of opioid-induced Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome.
1. Floyd’s Lungs were “congested and Edematous”
In the autopsy, Dr. Baker found that Floyd’s “pulmonary parenchyma is diffusely congested and edematous.” The parenchyma is the area of the lungs where the gas exchange takes place, as opposed to the large tubes. “Edematous” means swollen with an excessive accumulation of fluid in the tissues. Pulmonary edema is a condition caused by excess fluid in the lungs, which makes it very difficult to breathe. A person with pulmonary edema would probably say something like “I can’t breathe.”
2. Floyd’s Fluid-filled Lungs Weighed 2.5 times the Average
Dr. Baker weighed Floyd’s lungs during the autopsy; the right and left lungs weighed 1085g and 1015g, respectively. This is far more than they should have weighed.
A study of organ weights in men killed suddenly and traumatically—not at the end of a disease process—found that, “the mean weight of . . . the right lung was 445 g (range, 185–967 g), that of the left lung was 395 g (range, 186–885 g), . . . Regression analysis was performed and showed that there were insufficient associations between organ weight and body length, body weight, and body mass index to allow for predictability. (Molina, et al, “Normal Organ Weights in Men: Part II—The Brain, Lungs, Liver, Spleen, and Kidneys” American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology: Dec. 2012, 33:4; 368-372).
Floyd’s lungs weighed about 2.5 times the average weight of adult male lungs, because they were full of fluid.
Baker did not explain the significance of the lung weight in the autopsy report itself, but he did explain it privately to Lofton and Sweasy on the conference call. According to Sweasy’s memo, Baker said:
“This level of Fentanyl can cause pulmonary edema. Mr. Floyd’s lungs were two to three times their normal weight at autopsy. This is a fatal level of Fentanyl under normal circumstances.”
To sum up, six days after Floyd died—long after the video went viral and two days after Derek Chauvin was charged with murder—the ME received the results of the toxicology screen, showing what he acknowledged was “a fatal level of Fentanyl.” He then joined a Zoom call with prosecutors and explained that their “murder victim” had died of a drug overdose.
Astonishingly, the ME and the prosecutors sat on this fact all summer, only releasing the Sweasy memo on August 25th, a few days prior to a hearing in the criminal case. America’s cities burned, billions worth of property was damaged, and dozens of people were killed during BLM’s summer of rage; meanwhile, the prosecutors knew all along that George Floyd had died of opioid-induced pulmonary edema.
Floyd’s Recorded Behavior Confirms Fentanyl Overdose
Floyd’s bizarre behavior as he began to interact with the police officers was recorded by the officers’ body cameras, and is entirely consistent with the fact that he was suffering from Fentanyl intoxication and overdose.
Floyd passed a counterfeit $20.00 at a convenience store, then went across the seat and sat in a blue Mercedes-Benz SUV. And sat there. And sat there for 8 minutes until police arrived. If he had bothered to drive away, it is unlikely the cops would even have looked for him. But someone with 6 times the maximum therapeutic dose of the most potent drug on the planet might not be thinking clearly enough to leave the scene of his crime (or even know he had committed one).
Officers Thomas Lane and Alexander Kueng were the first to respond to the call. Kueng is black, and earned a degree in sociology from the University of Minnesota, so it seems unlikely that he harbors much hatred for black people. There were no prior complaints against either Lane or Kueng.
As they approached the blue Mercedes SUV, they observed Floyd making troubling movements in the front seat. Lane drew his sidearm and several times ordered Floyd to show his hands. When Floyd finally complied by placing his hands on the steering wheel, Lane holstered his weapon. Nevertheless, Floyd continued to plead with Lane not to shoot him, despite Lane’s repeated assurances that he was not going to shoot.
Here, it is worth pausing to note that, in addition to the Fentanyl and Norfentanyl, Floyd also tested positive for methamphetamine at a level of 19 ng/mL. One well-known side effect of methamphetamine is paranoia.
After getting out of the vehicle, Floyd acted erratically, raising the suspicion that he was high on drugs. As the officers tried to move Floyd to a police car, the following exchange occurred:
Lane to Floyd: What, are you on something right now?
Floyd: No, nothing.
Kueng: Because you are acting a little erratic.
Lane: Let’s go. Let’s go.
Floyd: I’m scared, man.
Lane: Let’s go.
Kueng: You got foam around your mouth, too?
Floyd: Yes, I was just hooping earlier.
It was obvious to the officers that Floyd was high or intoxicated. Kueng says to Floyd, “You got foam around your mouth, too?” It is not clear whether Kueng knew it, but foaming at the mouth is a well-known symptom of Fentanyl overdose. In fact, according to the CDC, it is one of the most common symptoms of Fentanyl overdose.
Floyd responds, “Yes, I was just hooping earlier.”
Hooping? Does he mean he was playing basketball?
Umm, no. Hooping is street slang for inserting drugs anally, typically crystal meth but other drugs as well. Enthusiasts say that, short of pushing the drug intravenously, anal insertion is the quickest route to a drug-induced high. The drug goes directly into the bloodstream through the anal mucosa, so there is more and faster bioavailability. By contrast, ingesting the drug orally can lead to nausea and vomiting, and some of the drug will be lost to stomach acid and other enzymes trying to digest it.
During his interaction with the officers, Floyd repeatedly stated that he was scared. He violently resisted sitting in the back of the police SUV, complaining of claustrophobia. Officer Lane repeatedly assured him that he would lower the windows and turn on the air conditioning, but Floyd still resists police commands to get in the vehicle:
Floyd: Please, man. Don’t leave me by myself man, I’m just claustrophobic, that’s it.
Lane: Well, you’re still going in the car.
***
Lane: I’ll roll the windows down, okay?
***
Kueng: Take a seat!
Floyd: Y’all I’m going to die in here! I’m going to die, man!
Kueng: You need to take a seat right now!
Floyd: And I just had COVID man [his autopsy did show him positive for COVID], I don’t want to go back to that.
Lane: Okay, I’ll roll the windows down. Hey, listen!
Floyd: Dang, man.
Lane: Listen!
Floyd: I’m not that kind of guy.
Lane: I’ll roll the windows down if you put your legs in all right? I’ll put the air on.
***
Floyd: I don’t want to go in. I’m claustrophobic, and I got anxiety, I don’t want to do nothing to them!
Lane: I’ll roll the window down.
Floyd: I’m scared as f**k man.
Floyd: [inaudible] when I start breathing it’s going to go off on me, man.
Lane: Pull your legs in.
Floyd: Okay, okay, let me count to three and then I’m going in, please.
Floyd is having a panic attack. It turns out that anxiety, irrational fear, and panic attacks are yet more well-known symptoms of Fentanyl overdose.
Now, if I were having a panic attack/acute claustrophobia combined with trouble breathing, the last place in the world I would want to be on a muggy late spring day is in the back of a police car. Rolling down the windows and turning on the AC, as the officers promised to do, would certainly help, but I still would not want to be there. Floyd’s otherwise bizarre, utterly crazy behavior is perfectly understandable as a product Fentanyl overdose, including both the psychiatric (anxiety, fear, panic attack) and the physical (severe and increasing difficulty breathing) side effects.
In the struggle to get Floyd into the police SUV, Floyd hit his head on the car’s window and suffered a minor cut. Consequently, the police placed a “Code 2” call for Emergency Medical Services.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, a fatal feedback loop, a death spiral, has begun. Floyd’s encounter with the police, and his anxiety and panic, are rapidly elevating his heart rate, metabolism, and especially his need for oxygen. At the same time, the pulmonary edema caused by the Fentanyl overdose is eroding his lungs’ ability to get him that oxygen. A few minutes later, this will kill him.
Floyd’s Breathing Trouble Began Before He Was Restrained
After one of Kueng’s orders to “take a seat” in the squad car, Floyd said,
“I can’t choke, I can’t breathe Mr. Officer! Please! Please!”
Though he is upright, he asks the officers if he can lie down on the ground, probably thinking this will slow everything down and help him make up his oxygen deficit. This is not a bad idea. Sometimes, lying flat on your back with no activity other than deep breathing is the quickest route to recouping a severe oxygen deficit.
Floyd: I want to lay on the ground. I want to lay on the ground. I want to lay on the ground!
Lane: You’re getting in the squad [car].
Floyd: I want to lay on the ground! I’m going down, I’m going down, I’m going down.
Kueng: Take a squat.
Floyd: I’m going down.
Onlooker: Bro, you about to have a heart attack and s**t man, get in the car!
Floyd: I know I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. [crosstalk]
Lane: Get him on the ground.
Floyd: Let go of me man, I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.
Lane: Take a seat.
Floyd: Please man listen to me.
Officer Chauvin [who has now shown up with his partner, Tou Thau]: Is he going to jail?
Floyd: Please listen to me.
Kueng: He’s under arrest right now for forgery. [inaudible] what’s going on.
Floyd: Forgery for what? For what?
Lane: Let’s take him out [of the squad car] and just MRT [Maximal Restraint Technique by which a suspect’s feet are “hobbled” to his waist].
Floyd: I can’t f**king breathe man. I can’t f**king breathe.
At this point, Kueng decides to let him get out of the squad car.
Kueng: Here. Come on out!
Floyd: [inaudible] Thank you. Thank you.
Officer Thao: Just lay him on the ground.
Let’s pause here and emphasize that Floyd, while still upright, said seven times, in front of all four officers, that he could not breathe. He wanted to lie on the ground to see if that would help him with his breathing difficulties. All of this happened before Officer Chauvin began using the neck restraint technique. At this point, no one was applying any force of any kind to his neck or compressing his back or chest, and yet he was repeatedly stating that he could not breathe.
And he was telling the truth. He couldn’t breathe because his lungs were filling up with fluid.
Excited Delirium
Before we get to the final minutes of this sad drama, we need to discuss what the police officers believed they were seeing in George Floyd’s behavior and symptoms, and what they are trained to do when they see that.
The American College of Emergency Physicians describes “excited delirium syndrome” (ExDS) as including “bizarre behavior generating phone calls to police,” “failure to respond to police presence” and “continued struggle despite restraint.” The characteristic symptoms of ExDS include bizarre and aggressive behavior, shouting, paranoia, panic, violence toward others, unexpected physical strength, and hyperthermia. ExDS is most frequently associated with cocaine, methamphetamine, and designer cathinone abuse. Acute exhaustive mania is sometimes followed by sudden death.
The Minneapolis Police, and cops all over America, are trained to recognize and deal with Excited Delirium Syndrome. Linked here, you will find a PowerPoint presentation given to Minneapolis police officers on how to recognize ExDS. One slide gives the current definition of the syndrome:
“Excited delirium: A condition that manifests as a combination of delirium, psychomotor agitation, anxiety, hallucinations, speech disturbances, disorientation, violent and bizarre behavior, insensitivity to pain, elevated body temperature and superhuman strength.
Floyd certainly was exhibiting agitation, anxiety, and bizarre behavior.
Another slide lists “common risk factors” for ExDS as:
“Male under the age of 44 median age of 36
Use/abuse of illicit drugs
Preexisting mental and/or cardiovascular disease
Exhibition of bizarre behavior such as:
Various stages of nudity
Incoherence and delirium
Running in traffic
paranoia
At age 46, Floyd was a little older than typical of the syndrome, but otherwise fits: he abused illicit drugs, and was exhibiting strong paranoia. And according to his autopsy report, his coronary arteries are well on the way to blockage:
“Cross sections of the vessels show multifocal atherosclerosis, with 75% proximal and 75% mid narrowing of the left anterior descending coronary artery; 75% proximal narrowing of the 1st diagonal branch of the left anterior descending coronary artery; 25% proximal narrowing of the circumflex coronary artery; and 90% proximal narrowing of the right coronary artery.”
Floyd was a heart attack waiting to happen.
Another slide is entitled “R: the patient is resistant” A supplied example is “verbal loop of ‘get on the ground’” We’ve seen how Floyd resisted a verbal loop of “get in the police car.”
But the most dramatic training slide, for our purposes is entitled, “OK, they are in handcuffs, now what?” The subject is pictured on the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back, and an officer’s knee on the subject’s neck, just as Officer’s Chauvin’s knee was on Floyd’s neck.
Let’s continue with the transcript with Floyd now on the ground:
Thao [the latecomer to the scene]: Is he high on something?
Kueng: I’m assuming so, we found a pipe.
Lane: He wouldn’t get out of the car. He wasn’t following instructions. [crosstalk] …
Floyd: Please, I can’t breathe. Please man. Please man!
Floyd is truthfully saying that he cannot breathe but, again, he was saying that before he was on the ground, so none of the officers has any reason to believe that it is because Chauvin is cutting off Floyd’s air.
At this point, Tou Thao asks if the ambulance is coming; Lane says, yes, but we will upgrade it from a code 2 to a more urgent code 3:
Thao: Do you have EMS coming code 3?
Lane: Ah code 2, we can probably step it up then. You got it? [crosstalk]
Floyd: Please, man!
Thao: Relax!
When Floyd states that he cannot breathe, Officer Kueng points out that his talking just fine, which he could not do if his airway (trachea) were blocked:
Floyd: I can’t breathe.
Kueng: You’re fine, you’re talking fine.
Lane: You’re talking, Deep breath.
Floyd: I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. Ah! I’ll probably just die this way.
Thao: Relax.
Floyd: I can’t breathe my face.
Lane: He’s got to be on something.
Thao: What are you on?
Floyd: I can’t breathe. Please, [inaudible] I can’t breathe. Sh*t.
Onlooker: Well get up and get in the car, man. Get up and get in the car.
Floyd: I will. I can’t move.
Onlooker: Let him get in the car.
Lane: We found a weed pipe on him, there might be something else, there might be like PCP or something. Is that shaking of the eyes right is PCP?
Floyd: My knees, my neck.
Lane: Where their eyes like shake back and forth really fast?
Floyd: I’m through, I’m through. I’m claustrophobic. My stomach hurts. My neck hurts. Everything hurts. I need some water or something, please. Please? I can’t breathe officer.
Chauvin: Then stop talking, stop yelling.
Floyd: You’re going to kill me, man.
Chauvin: Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk.
What follows is a key exchange because it shows that the officers believe they are dealing with a case of excited delirium. Lane suggests moving Floyd, but Chauvin vetoes the idea. Lane replies, “I just worry about the excited delirium or whatever,” meaning that he is worried Floyd will die suddenly, as so many with ExDS do. Chauvin replies, “that’s why we got the ambulance coming:
Lane: Should we roll him on his side?
Chauvin: No, he’s staying put where we got him.
Lane: Okay. I just worry about the excited delirium or whatever.
Chauvin: That’s why we got the ambulance coming.
The officers clearly believed Floyd had ExDS and knew he was at risk for sudden death, and they upgraded the urgency of the EMS call.
To be clear and candid, excited delirium syndrome remains controversial. Not all the authorities think it is a thing; some believe it is just an excuse to deflect from possible police misconduct when a person dies in police custody.
I am not saying that Floyd died of ExDS; a la LaPlace, I have no need of that hypothesis. Based upon the tox screen, the autopsy report, and the ME’s subsequent statements to prosecutors, it is clear that Floyd died of opioid-induced pulmonary edema.
What I am saying is that, just as Floyd’s Fentanyl overdose explains his erratic behavior, and his inability to breathe before he was under a neck restraint, the officers’ belief that Floyd was in excited delirium explains why they placed him on the ground—that is the recovery position for ExDS cases—and Chauvin employed a knee restraint on Floyd’s neck: this is what they were trained to do. Chauvin’s neck restraint technique is exactly what was pictured in the PowerPoint photograph.
The Neck Restraint was Not Life-Threatening and Did Not Kill George Floyd
Minneapolis police are trained to use a neck restraint technique, which is defined in the official training literature as “compressing one or both sides of a person’s neck with an arm or leg, without applying direct pressure to the trachea or airway (front of the neck).” When done with an arm, the forearm and upper arm form a “V” and the subject’s trachea is protected from compression because it is in the elbow at the bottom of the V. Officers are trained to do this even when the subject is handcuffed and on the ground. They know not to block the subject’s airway.
Officer Chauvin placing his knee on the side of Floyd’s neck appears to be a textbook application of the technique. Although Floyd is saying that he cannot breathe, he said that repeatedly prior to restraint, so Chauvin had no reason to believe Floyd’s breathing difficulty was related to the restraint, and indeed it was not.
Likewise, the other officers hear Floyd talking and know that his trachea is not being compressed, or he could not talk; they know his breathing difficulties preexisted the neck restraint. Moreover, they’ve seen the training PowerPoint slides on ExDS and they know that Chauvin is doing exactly what was pictured therein.
Officer Chauvin knew he was being camera-phone recorded by onlookers standing just a few feet away (close enough that their comments were picked up by the officers’ body cameras and appear in the transcription of the recordings). Does it make any sense whatsoever that Chauvin would be murdering Floyd on video for the whole world to see? Doesn’t it make much more sense that he continued the restraint, knowing that he was being filmed, because he knew he was following his training?
Recall last summer’s publicity stunt, in which two dozen Democrat lawmakers, most of them wearing African Kente Cloths, knelt for eight minutes and 46 seconds in the Capitol in honor of Chauvin's knee being on Floyd's neck for that length of time. (Prosecutors have since cut a minute off that time, settling on 7:46.) Floyd was unconscious for the last two minutes and fifty-three seconds, meaning that he was conscious, talking, and moving for almost five minutes of that time (4:53).
But this very statistic, intended to prove Chauvin’s depraved heart, indicates that he did not kill George Floyd. Had he blocked off both of Floyd’s carotid arteries, Floyd would have lost consciousness in 20 seconds at most, not five minutes. Likewise, if Chauvin had blocked Floyd’s windpipe, Floyd would have lost consciousness within two to three minutes, and he would not have been talking during that time. When he said he couldn’t breathe, the officers reply, “you’re talking, aren’t you?”
Floyd’s autopsy revealed no evidence of any injury to his neck, and Dr. Baker looked very closely, even sectioning the neck tissue looking for telltale signs of trauma:
“NECK: Layer by layer dissection of the anterior strap muscles of the neck discloses no areas of contusion or hemorrhage within the musculature. The thyroid cartilage and hyoid bone are intact. The larynx is lined by intact mucosa. The thyroid is symmetric and red-brown, without cystic or nodular change. The tongue is free of bite marks, hemorrhage, or other injuries. The cervical spinal column is palpably stable and free of hemorrhage.”
There was no injury to Floyd’s neck of the type we would expect had Chauvin really mashed down hard enough to either cut off his trachea for a sufficient time to strangle him, or block both carotid arteries. Even the prosecutors’ charging document stated that the autopsy “revealed no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation.”
Contrast Floyd’s immaculate neck with that of Jeffrey Epstein, procurer of under-age girls for the rich and famous. Epstein’s hyoid bone was broken in several places; the hyoid is often broken in cases of strangulation, but more rarely in suicides. Epstein was found with a bedsheet around his neck; supposedly he was able to strangle himself and break his hyoid bone by anchoring the sheet to the bunkbed and then, on his knees, leaning toward the floor.
What about the Autopsy Conclusions?
On May 29th, Dr. Baker issued preliminary autopsy findings that support a mixed causal theory in which Floyd’s bad health combined with the police restraint caused his death:
“the autopsy revealed no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation. Mr. Floyd had underlying health conditions including coronary artery disease and hypertensive heart disease. The combined effects of Mr. Floyd being restrained by the police, his underlying health conditions and any potential intoxicants in his system likely contributed to his death.”
But this was before he got the toxicology report from Pennsylvania on May 31st. Dr. Baker did not know what the “potential intoxicants” were. When he received the toxicology report, it became clear to him, and he explained it to prosecutors Lofton and Sweasy, that the massive Fentanyl overdose was sufficient by itself to account for Floyd’s death.
The Floyd family’s lawyers, who were pursuing a civil wrongful death case against the City of Minneapolis, hired Dr. Michael Baden, the former Chief Medical Examiner of New York City, as a sort of celebrity ME, and Dr. Allecia Wilson of the University of Michigan, to re-autopsy Floyd.
Baden and Wilson were essentially expert witnesses for a civil suit. I have some experience with this aspect of the justice system. Expert witnesses are paid handsomely to say what the lawyers paying them want them to say; if they won’t, they become “consulting experts” whose opinions and identity are protected by the attorney work-product privilege, so no one ever discovers their opinion. They typically charge at least $500.00 per hour, or in some cases $250.00 per hour to review documents and $1,000.00 per hour to testify in court or in deposition. (These prices are about 20 years out of date.) In this case, I would imagine that Baden was hired for his name and paid a round sum, like $100,000, and Allecia Wilson did the $1,000/hour grunt work.
Needless to say, Baden and Wilson concluded that Floyd was killed by Officer Chauvin, but they rendered their opinion without having considered Floyd’s toxicology screen. The Floyds settled their claim out of court for three million dollars, and no one scrutinized anyone’s opinion (or anyone’s invoice) very closely.
After Baden and Wilson concluded that Floyd’s death was “a homicide due to the way he was being subdued,” Dr. Baker, amended the title of his autopsy report to “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression,” but, yet again, Dr. Baker’s final conclusions, after having considered the results of the toxicology screen, are clearly indicated in the Sweasy memo:
“This level of Fentanyl can cause pulmonary edema. Mr. Floyd’s lungs were two to three times their normal weight at autopsy. This is a fatal level of Fentanyl under normal circumstances.”
Whither the Criminal Prosecutions?
It is clear to a moral certainty that George Floyd was the author of his own demise and that the police officers are guilty of nothing more than following their training. The case against them should be dismissed, but no one has had the courage to dismiss it, and it is set for trial on March 23rd, six weeks hence.
As a practical matter, the case cannot be prosecuted, because the defense would need only to call Dr. Baker and solicit his opinion that the Fentanyl was sufficient to account for Floyd’s demise. If he denies it, he could be impeached with his prior inconsistent statement as memorialized in the Sweasy memo. Either way, the case is blown; there is no way to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Chauvin’s neck restraint was even a contributing factor in Floyd’s death.
No responsible judge would submit this hot mess to a jury, considering the publicity surrounding the incident, and the pressure to convict given the very real fear that a “not guilty” verdict might lead to widespread rioting, property damage, and more loss of life (Governor Walz has already called out the Minnesota National Guard in anticipation of violence). We like to think that our courts will be courageous enough to render “justice, though the heavens fall,” but too often men of policy reason that “it is better that one man should die rather than the whole nation be destroyed.” (John 11:50)
This case should already have been dismissed and the officers compensated for the false arrest and false charges made in a rush to judgment under threat of mob violence. As we daily witness more and still more of America’s institutions creak, groan, shudder, and collapse before the remorseless onslaught of Leftist totalitarianism, one wonders if justice is any longer to be found in our courts.
No one has ever been able to explain to me how this case has anything to do with race. One of the first two officers on the scene, Alexander Keung, is black; is it still racism if a black police officer arrests a black subject? The supposed villain of the piece, Derek Chauvin, has a Hmong Partner, Tou Thao, and a Hmong wife; the Hmong are a race from Southeast Asia with strong Asiatic features. Chauvin never seemed a likely candidate for racist of the year.
Which is not to say that racism is not involved in this case.
On May 31, Minnesota’s Leftist governor, Tim Walz, requested that Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison take over the Chauvin case as a special prosecutor. Three days later, Ellison charged Chauvin with second-degree murder, a more serious crime than the third-degree murder that Hennepin County DA Mike Freeman had alleged. Ellison also charged Lane, Keung and Thao, whom Freeman had not charged, with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and manslaughter.
Who is Keith Ellison? He is a black Muslim who is also a garden-variety scofflaw. He failed to pay $25,000 in income taxes; he ignored parking tickets and moving violations so numerous that his driver's license was suspended more times than he can remember; he was fined for willful violation of Minnesota's campaign finance reporting law. Two different women have alleged that he abused them, and he is divorced from the mother of his four children.
More troubling is Ellison’s involvement with the Nation of Islam, an explicitly racist, quasi-Muslim group founded in Chicago in the 1930s by Wallace D. Fard, who taught that blacks were the original people of the world, and that white people were a race of "devils" created by a scientist named Yakub (Jacob) on the Greek island of Patmos. Fard’s successor, Elijah Muhammad believed that students must learn that the white man is "Yakub's grafted Devil" and "the Skunk of the planet Earth."
Even the Southern Poverty Law Center, itself a Leftist hate group, classifies the Nation of Islam as a hate group. The current leader, and the leader of the group back in the 1980s and 90s, when Ellison was actively defending them, using the aliases Keith Hakim, Keith X Ellison, and Keith Ellison-Muhammad, is Louis Farrakhan.
Farrakhan has made outrageously racist and anti-Jewish statements, such as, “that nation called Israel never has had any peace in 40 years and she will never have any peace because there can be no peace structured on injustice, thievery, lying and deceit and using the name of God to shield your dirty religion under His holy and righteous name.”
In a 2006 run for Congress, Ellison disclaimed the Nation of Islam and stated that he was never a “member” of the group, although he clearly was an active advocate for the group and for Louis Farrakhan for about a decade, from the late 1980s to the late 1990s. In 2016, Ellison denounced the Nation of Islam and Farrakhan, stating, “I wrongly dismissed concerns that they [Farrakhan's remarks] were anti-Semitic. They were and are anti-Semitic and I should have come to that conclusion earlier than I did."
All well and good, but ask yourself this: Would a white politician who had actively defended the Ku Klux Klan 20 years ago be allowed to prosecute a black cop accused of killing a white man? To even articulate that question is to laugh out loud; the media would be turning cartwheels.
George Floyd as Symbol
Speaking of the media, one important lesson of the George Floyd fiasco is that the media are not trustworthy. They have an agenda, a Leftist, anti-American narrative to promote. Whatever the media says, you can pretty much count on the truth being otherwise, usually the exact, 180 degree opposite.
The media were never interested in getting to the bottom of the George Floyd case, only in Floyd as a symbol of America’s ineradicable racism, and the illegitimacy and evil of the entire American nation and its experiment in self-government under law going back (as they would have it) to 1619. That is what the George Floyd case means—that’s the significance of it—to America’s media, and to essentially all of our cultural institutions.
That is why they are completely uninterested in the truth of the Floyd case. The facts I’ve related in this article have all been public since late last August, but the media have no interest in the facts, only in George Floyd as a symbol of white oppression, only in perpetuating the false myth of George Floyd as a race martyr.
Avoid Evil Surmising
This is not just a problem of the secular media; many within the Adventist Church react emotionally when I tell them George Floyd died of a drug overdose, or that Breonna Taylor or Jacob Blake are not examples of cops hunting blacks for sport. They seem to feel that if the narrative of the white race’s permanent, unchanging, ceaseless, never-ending, never-improving oppression of the black race is ever challenged in the least, something precious has been taken from them. I have two comments for those people.
First, the objective reality is that the racial situation in the United States has improved. We outlawed race-based chattel slavery. We ended Jim Crow and “separate but equal.” We extended civil rights to blacks. We have many black mayors, police chiefs, police officers, sheriffs, deputies, elected officials, etc. All this really happened. Aside from the Leftist need for an anti-American narrative, why should it be difficult for ordinary people to accept that policing is now much more racially equitable?
Second, if you are constantly looking for and expecting injustice and race hatred, you have a problem. It is a spiritual problem called “evil surmising.” I Tim. 6:4. Those who have cultivated in their characters a spirit of Christian charity which "thinketh no evil" (1 Cor. 13:5) will avoid the imputation of evil intentions and motives to others until forced to concede them by indisputable evidence.
Ellen White has some choice counsel about evil surmising:
“That which Satan plants in the heart—envy, jealousy, evil surmising, evil speaking, impatience, prejudice, selfishness, covetousness, and vanity—must be uprooted. If these evil things are allowed to remain in the soul, they will bear fruit by which many shall be defiled. Oh, how many cultivate the poisonous plants that kill out the precious fruits of love and defile the soul!” My Life Today, 179.
“The church will never as a whole receive the latter rain unless they shall put away all envy, evil surmising, and evil speaking. Those who have cherished hatred in the heart until it has strengthened and become part of their character, must have a different experience if they would share in the latter rain.” The Home Missionary, August 1, 1896.
“To those who are inclined to suspect others of wrongdoing and to charge their brethren with evil, I would say, ‘Please read in the book Great Controversy the chapter entitled “The Origin of Evil.” ’ Bring home its truths to your individual hearts. Remember that it was the spirit of envy and evil surmising, cherished in the heart of the rebel angel, that began the evil work that opened the floodgates of woe upon our world.” The Upward Look, 114.
Back to the George Floyd Scholarship
Let’s circle back (a recently overused phrase) to where we started: the George Floyd Scholarship at Andrews. I am very worried about the message sent to black students by naming a scholarship reserved for a black student after George Floyd. What message is really being sent? That you will always be a victim of white racial oppression? That the cops are out to kill you?
That’s a terrible message, because it is a limiting, crippling message, and it is not true. Black students in America can achieve whatever goal they set for themselves, can be whatever they want to be, including a business leader, church leader, writer, artist, entrepreneur, elected official, mayor, congressman, even president of the United States. You can succeed, but it depends on you, on your passion, your motivation, and your work ethic. The limiting factor is you, not some racist system that no longer exists, and hasn’t for a long time. That is reality, and that is the empowering message we should be sending to black young people, not this garbage about George Floyd and supposed police brutality.
An even worse aspect of the negative messaging is that naming a scholarship for black students after a black nightclub bouncer, recreational drug user, and small-time criminal whose greatest achievement in life was to die in police custody, is that it sends a terrible and horribly racist implicit message, “George Floyd is who you are, George Floyd is what black people are.”
In his book, “People of the Lie” Scott Peck tells of a respectable, upwardly mobile couple with two sons, one of who has committed suicide with a firearm. Incredibly, the next Christmas they give the suicide weapon to the other son as a Christmas present. What was that boy supposed to think? “Here, go and do likewise”?
Here’s a good guideline for naming scholarships: “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
Wouldn’t it be neat if there was a really accomplished black Adventist we could name a scholarship after, say, someone whose mother was an illiterate domestic servant, but who through dent of hard work and perseverance graduated from medical school and became a world famous pediatric neurosurgeon, writing several books and receiving countless honorary degrees, running for president, and serving as a cabinet secretary in a presidential administration?
Or maybe even a black Adventist who served in the U.S. Navy for 27 years, rising to the rank of two-star admiral and retiring as Chief of Navy Chaplains, then serving as Chaplain of the United States Senate for almost 20 years?
Too bad we don’t have anyone like that to name a scholarship after.