Medical Examiner on Stand at Officers’ Trial in Floyd Death

The chief medical examiner who ruled George Floyd’s death a homicide will return to the stand Tuesday at the trial of three former Minneapolis police officers charged with violating Floyd’s civil rights.

Federal prosecutors say former Officers J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao violated their training by failing to act to save Floyd’s life on May 25, 2020, when fellow Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on the Black man’s neck for 9½ minutes while Floyd was handcuffed, facedown and gasping for air. Kueng knelt on Floyd’s back, Lane held his legs and Thao kept bystanders back.

But defense attorneys have sought to show that the Minneapolis Police Department’s training was inadequate.

Dr. Andrew Baker, the Hennepin County medical examiner, testified Monday that Floyd died after police “subdual, restraint and neck compression” caused his heart to stop. Baker said heart disease and drug use were factors but not the “top line” cause.

His testimony came after the former head of training for the Minneapolis Police Department, Inspector Katie Blackwell, testified for a third day. She has said that Kueng, Lane and Thao acted in a way that was “inconsistent” with department policies, including by failing to intervene to stop Chauvin, not rolling Floyd onto his side when he stopped resisting and not providing medical aid when he stopped breathing.

Floyd struggled with officers when they tried to put him in a police vehicle and after they put him on the ground. He repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe before going motionless. The videotaped killing triggered worldwide protests and a reexamination of racism and policing.

Blackwell testified that officers are told that if they use a knee to handcuff someone, they must put the person on their side and call emergency medical services because of the danger that their airway will be blocked.

Thao’s attorney, Robert Paule, challenged Blackwell on whether the officers received adequate training, including on the use of neck restraints. He also presented department training materials from in-service training that Thao would have received on how to handle someone experiencing “excited delirium” — a disputed condition in which someone in an agitated state is said to sometimes have extraordinary strength that could trigger a more forceful restraint.

In videos, people were not stopped by Tasers and sometimes got away from police restraint. Also, officers sometimes used a knee to restrain people. But the training materials had just one sentence in a slide that said officers should put a person in the side recovery position.