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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 be questioned again George Floyd’s Herz as part of an appeal process after he was convicted of violating Floyd’s civil rights.
U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson ordered on Monday that Chauvin’s lawyers be given access to Floyd’s heart tissue and histology slides, photographs of his heart and samples of Floyd’s body fluids, as his legal team investigates the possibility that Floyd died of heart disease and not Chauvin’s actions.
In a 10-page motion for reconsideration filed Tuesday, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota argued that Chauvin “had no legal basis for (his) investigative requests, all of which came solely from an email he received from.” from an untested official.” The doctor offers a weaker version of the medical defense than the version the jury previously rejected in his state trial.
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In this image taken from video, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin speaks in court at the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis on June 25, 2021. (Court TV via AP, Pool, File)
Prosecutors also disputed Chauvin’s claim that he had ineffective counsel at trial, claiming his original defense team’s decision not to examine Floyd’s heart was a “strategic decision that courts have recognized as ‘virtually unappealable.’
However, Magnuson said the evidence would help Chauvin’s defense get information from Dr. William Schaetzel, who contacted Chauvin’s original trial attorney 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 tests were conducted to confirm it.
George Floyd died after an encounter with four Minneapolis police officers. (AP)
“Given the importance of the criminal case on which Mr. Chauvin was convicted and given the fact that the discovery sought by Mr. Chauvin was Dr. “Mr. “Let Chauvin make the discovery he seeks,” Magnuson ordered Monday.
Read the government’s submission
Experts told Fox News Digital that Chauvin’s defense has a right to the materials, whether or not they help him win on appeal.
“Chauvin, like any other defendant, should have every opportunity to exhaust his appeal options,” said David Gelman, a Philadelphia resident Criminal defense Lawyer and former prosecutor. “If this were any other case, the Justice Department certainly would not have objected.”
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Chauvin was also convicted of state murder charges related to Floyd’s death on Memorial Day in 2020, when he was seen on video holding his knee on the man’s neck for more than nine minutes, sparking unrest across the country led.
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A police body camera shows former Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd next to former MPD officer J. Alexander Kueng during the police custody incident in which Floyd died on May 25, 2020 in Minneapolis . (MPD/Hennepin County District Court/Handout via REUTERS)
Nelson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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After his conviction, another inmate at a federal prison stabbed Chauvin 22 times, an attack said to have been inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement that gained momentum thereafter Floyd’s death and has been criticized for violent demonstrations across 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 against his state murder charges was rejected by the Supreme Court last year.
