The Department of Justice filed a motion Tuesday asking a federal judge to reconsider his order that would allow Derek Chauvin to examine heart tissue and conduct additional testing on fluids preserved from George Floyd.
U.S. District Court Judge Paul A. Magnuson ruled in an order filed Monday that Chauvin’s defense team demonstrated “good cause” to carry out the testing.
Chauvin contends his former attorney, Eric Nelson, failed to act on critical medical evidence that could have influenced the outcome of the federal case.
According to the order, Dr. William Schaetzel contacted Nelson before Chauvin’s federal indictment and offered a medical opinion that Chauvin did not cause Floyd’s death.
“Dr. Schaetzel’s opinion is that Mr. Floyd died due to a catecholamine crisis when his paraganglioma secreted excessive levels of catecholamines,” the order states. “These excessive levels of catecholamines led to Takotsubo’s myocarditis (a type of acute heart failure, or heart attack), resulting in pulmonary edema and death.”
The order claims that Nelson didn’t share Dr. Schaetzel’s opinions with Chauvin or follow through on recommended tests that could have backed this alternate cause-of-death theory.
Chauvin contends that this oversight amounts to ineffective legal representation and is the foundation of his effort to overturn his federal civil rights conviction, according to the order.
“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’s order states.
The DOJ’s motion
However, on Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota asked Magnuson to reconsider his order, saying there is “no legal basis” for Chauvin’s requests, 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.”
According to the DOJ’s motion, Chauvin cannot “show unreasonable performance by counsel.”
“Counsel made a choice, based on his prior consultation with other experts and his experience defending Defendant’s state trial, not to order certain forensic testing or further discuss with Defendant a variation of an expert defense that had already failed at that trial; this is precisely the type of strategic decision that courts have recognized as ‘virtually unchallengeable,’” the DOJ’s motion says.
The DOJ argues that additional testing “may well have harmed Defendant’s potential medical defense if they contradicted his theory that the paraganglioma (among other factors) contributed to [Floyd’s] death.” The DOJ claims that Dr. Schaetzel “focused on the paraganglioma as the cause, in combination with Defendant’s actions [emphasis in original].”
“In addition, it would be riskier for Defendant, in his federal trial, to rely on one specific cause (the paraganglioma), rather than the cumulative causation presented at the state trial. It is therefore not credible that Defendant would have chosen trial again—facing overwhelming evidence and a Guidelines life sentence—based on a weaker theory than the one a jury had already rejected,” the motion says.
If Magnuson doesn’t grant the motion to reconsider, then the DOJ is asking for “appropriate procedures and protections for the involved samples.”
Chauvin was convicted in 2021 in Minnesota state court of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter for the 2020 death of George Floyd. He later pleaded guilty to violating Floyd’s federal civil rights and is currently serving a 21-year federal sentence.
Chauvin also plans to ask for his state convictions to be overturned, Alpha News recently reported.
Jenna Gloeb contributed to this report.
Anthony Gockowski
Anthony Gockowski is Editor-in-Chief of Alpha News. He previously worked as an editor for The Minnesota Sun and Campus Reform, and wrote for the Daily Caller.
