I'm not sure what else the defense can continue to claim here. The testimony from April 8th was pretty damning.
Dr. Martin Tobin, world renowned pulmonologist, established very succinctly that George Floyd's cause of death was a low level of oxygen as a result of 4 factors: Floyd's prone position on the street, his hands being handcuffed behind his back, Chauvin's knee on Floyd's back, and Chauvin's knee on Floyd's neck.
George Floyd's actions while pinned on the ground show that he was actually struggling to breathe. Struggling so much so that he was pressing his knuckle into the tire of the police car in attempt to prop the right side of his body up in order to breathe. Using his shoulder in attempt to pull his right side off of the ground. Propping himself with his face, chin, forehead, etc. at one point.
Tobin was able to show the exact moment Floyd experienced a fatal brain injury due to low oxygen levels with video from another officer's body camera.
Dr. Tobin also said that if fentanyl was to cause someone to have trouble breathing, they would have a slowed fate of breathing. Dr. Tobin was able to show with video that Floyd's breathing was within a normal range. Also that a fentanyl overdose would cause someone to go into a coma. Floyd didn't go into a coma before he died.
Dr. Tobin also brought up the fact that Floyd's carbon dioxide level was 89 at the time it was measured. This is a fatal level, with normal being in the range of 35 - 45.
The toxicologist also showed that Floyd had 11ng/ml of fentanyl in his blood at the time it was measured. He looked at data from thousands of previous cases in which fentanyl was found in someone's blood. He found numerous cases where someone was arrested for DUI and lived with higher amounts of fentanyl in their blood. 53 cases where people in this scenario had more than 50ng/ml of fentanyl in their blood.
The toxicologist also stated that with a fentanyl overdose, you would expect to see little or no norfentanyl in the blood. Norfentanyl is what the body produces when it eliminates fentanyl. Floyd has around 5ng/ml of norfentanyl in his blood. Floyd's fentanyl / norfentanyl ratio was much lower than reported cases where fentanyl was found in the blood of dead people.
