The case against Mr. Chauvin moves into a new phase, with medical testimony addressing the cause of George Floyd’s death — the most contested issue of the trial.
Dr. Martin J. Tobin, a world renowned expert on breathing, was a key witness for the prosecution Thursday when he testified that George Floyd “died from a low level of oxygen and this caused damage to his brain that we see and it also caused a P.E.A. arrhythmia that caused his heart to stop.”
The testimony was an attempt to discredit defense arguments that Mr. Floyd’s drug use contributed to his death. Using video from the arrest, Dr. Tobin described how Derek Chauvin’s knees on Mr. Floyd’s neck and side and his hold on Mr. Floyd’s arms prevented Mr. Floyd from being able to breathe. He also added, “He’s jammed down against the street, and so the street is playing a major role in preventing him from expanding his chest.”
He also showed two photos of Mr. Floyd’s finger and knuckles digging into the street and the police car’s tire. “To most people this doesn’t look terribly significant. But to a physiologist this is extraordinarily significant because this tells you that he has used up his resources and he is now literally trying to breathe with his fingers and knuckles,” adding that he was “using his fingers and his knuckles against the street to try to crank up the right side of his chest. This is his only way to try to and get air into the right lung.”
Dr. Martin J. Tobin, a pulmonologist and critical care physician from the Chicago area, was the first witness prosecutors called to the stand in the Derek Chauvin trial on Thursday.
When prosecutors asked if he had formed a medical opinion on what had caused George Floyd’s death, Dr. Tobin said, “Mr. Floyd died from a low level of oxygen, and this caused damage to his brain that we see, and it also caused a P.E.A. arrhythmia because his heart stopped,” referring to pulseless electrical activity, or cardiac arrest.
The low level of oxygen was caused by “shallow breathing,” he said. Mr. Floyd’s prone position and being handcuffed and Mr. Chauvin’s knee on his neck and back, he said, contributed to the shallow breathing.
Dr. Tobin added that the position in which Mr. Floyd was handcuffed, with the force of the officers compounding with the asphalt street, ultimately prevented him from being able to breathe fully.
“It’s how the handcuffs are being held, how they’re being pushed, where they’re being pushed that totally interfere with central features of how we breathe,” he said.
Mr. Chauvin’s knee placed on the left side of his chest would have limited the amount of air being able to enter the left lung, Dr. Tobin said, as if “a surgeon had gone in and removed the lung,” he said.
Dr. Tobin attended medical school at University College Dublin and is an expert in acute respiratory failure, mechanical ventilation and neuromuscular control of breathing.
He is certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine and the American Board of Internal Medicine Subspecialty Pulmonary Disease.
, Staff, April 8, 2021
🚩 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us:
deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.
Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!
"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
