Police Are Using Implications of Drug Use to Justify Killing.

The implication that had Floyd been in better health and not using “intoxicants” he would have survived asphyxiation drew outrage throughout the U.S., including from Floyd’s family, who hired their own pathologist to conduct an independent autopsy. The results of this autopsy, released June 1, asserted that George Floyd’s death was a result of “asphyxiation from sustained pressure.” Michael Baden, one of the independent medical examiners, stated, “There is no other health issue that could cause or contribute to the death…. Police have this false impression that if you can talk, you can breathe. That’s not true.” Floyd family lawyer Antonio Romanucci similarly called out the attempted redirection to drug use: “Whether or not he was intoxicated or had medications in his system is irrelevant to the cause of death, which is homicide, which is death by the hand of another. The end result, which is George Floyd’s death, would not be any different.”

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