It’s been a hectic but enjoyable week.

Monday morning I was a guest on The Michael Smerconish Program on the SiriusXM POTUS Channel. The topic was my American Spectator article titled  “Who Killed George Floyd?”. Years ago, when Michael had a local radio talk show in Philadelphia, I was his regular “go-to” legal analyst.

So it felt like old times to be back on air with Michael. He’s smart, quick and a good interviewer, and I enjoyed explaining to his audience why George Floyd died of a drug overdose and not because of anything the police did.

Judging by the listener comments posted on Michael’s Twitter feed, my analysis of Floyd’s death apparently caused quite a few heads across America to explode. As usual in such instances, those objecting resorted to ad hominem attacks and name calling instead of discussing the facts of the case. Nevertheless, it made me appreciate the courage shown by Michael Smerconish in having me appear on his show.

Then I spent the rest of Monday and all of Tuesday with an equally courageous film maker (who shall remain nameless for now) and his crew taping an interview to be used in an upcoming documentary about Floyd’s death.

Then, very late Tuesday night, as I was packing for a two day escape with my bride of 52 years, I received word that, in connection with the criminal case against former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin,  the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office had just released a memorandum of a meeting between prosecutors and Hennepin County’s Chief Medical Examiner. As you will see below, the memorandum is thermonuclear.

This caused me to pull an all nighter in order to write and forward the below article to my friends at The American Spectator. I hit the “send” button Wednesday morning just before my wife and I jumped in the car for two days of rest and relaxation in what used to be Jackie Kennedy-style Northern Virginia horse country and, to our surprise, has become just one more paved-over insta-burb of Washington, D.C..

While we were there, the below article was picked up by Real Clear Politics and by my friends at Powerline. After the article appeared in Powerline‘s “picks” section, John Hinderaker gave it a nice write-up which you can access by clicking on this link. The Powerline reader comments are interesting as are the comments of The American Spectator readers which you can read  by clicking on this link.

George Floyd died as the result of a drug overdose. As you will see below, the Hennepin County prosecutors learned that within two days of criminally charging Derek Chauvin with murder.

Minnesota v. Derek Chauvin et al: The Prosecution’s Dirty Little Secret | The American Spectator

On May 29, 2020, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office charged former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin with third-degree murder (later raised to second-degree by Minnesota’s attorney general) in the death of George Floyd. Former Officers Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng, and Tou Thao were also charged with aiding and abetting the murder of Floyd.

These charges were based on the autopsy performed by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office and a private “re-autopsy” performed at the request of the Floyd family’s attorney. Based on those procedures, the medical examiner issued a revised autopsy report stating that Floyd had died of “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint and neck compression.” In short, Floyd’s death was allegedly caused by the manner in which the police had restrained him.

But the police defendants were charged before the medical examiner had received the report of Floyd’s toxicology screen by NMS Labs of Horsham, Pennsylvania.

Then, on May 31, 2020, NMS Labs forwarded Floyd’s toxicology report to the Hennepin County Medical Examiners’ Office.

And that’s when the proverbial fecal matter hit the fan.

At 7:30 p.m. on May 31, 2020, prosecutors “met” online with Dr. Andrew Baker, Chief Medical Examiner of Hennepin County, to discuss Floyd’s toxicology report. Take a look at this recently released June 1, 2020, memorandum by Assistant County Attorney Amy Sweasy of that discussion.

So there they were, staring at the just-received and damning toxicology report that blew to smithereens the whole prosecution theory that the police had killed Floyd. To their undoubted dismay, Dr. Baker, the chief medical examiner, had to concede that at 11 ng/mL, Floyd had “a fatal level of fentanyl under normal circumstances.” He also conceded that the fentanyl overdose “can cause pulmonary edema,” a frothy fluid build-up in the lungs that was evidenced by the finding at autopsy that Floyd’s lungs weighed two to three times normal weight.

This is consistent with Officer Kueng’s observation at the scene that Floyd was foaming at the mouth and, as found at autopsy, that his lungs were “diffusely congested and edematous.”

In other words, like a drowned man, Floyd’s lungs were filled with fluid. And that was the obvious and inescapable reason why Floyd kept shouting over and over again that he couldn’t breathe even when he was upright and mobile.

The memorandum ends with Dr. Baker’s devastating conclusion that “if Floyd had been found dead in his home (or anywhere else) and there were no other contributing factors he [Dr. Baker] would conclude that it was an overdose death.”

Translation: this toxicology report drives a stake through the heart of our murder case. How do we justify criminally charging these police officers and explain away our colossal screw-up?

It is quite telling that this explosively exculpatory June 1 memorandum was not released by the prosecution until August 25, 2020. All of which prompts these questions:

First, why did the prosecution wait three months to release this memorandum?

Second, if the prosecution had released this information in a timely fashion, would that have helped to quell the anti-police outrage that has fueled the nationwide orgy of rioting and looting?

Third, in light of Floyd’s toxicology results and the medical examiner’s assessment that Floyd’s fentanyl overdose caused him to essentially drown in his own bodily fluid, why haven’t the charges against all of the police defendants been dropped?

The handwriting is on the wall. Through all of the rioting, looting, and burning, the prosecution has kept secret its knowledge that George Floyd died as the result of a self-administered overdose of fentanyl. The Chief Medical Examiner of Hennepin County said as much way back on May 31, 2020.

But, now that the truth has finally emerged, it’s well past time to call a halt to this illegal and unfounded “murder” case and to let these wrongfully accused men go free.

George Parry is a former federal and state prosecutor. From 1978 to 1983 he was Chief of the Police Brutality/Misconduct Unit of the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, which investigated and prosecuted use of deadly force by police. He blogs at knowledgeisgood.net and may be reached by email at kignet1@gmail.com.