George Floyd, the black man killed by a white cop who pressed a knee to his neck in Minneapolis is scheduled to get an “independent” autopsy from a former New York City medical examiner, his family’s lawyer told New York Daily News on Friday.
The private exam is required because video makes clear George Floyd was walking around “just fine” before he was pinned to the pavement, pleading “I can’t breathe” in the eight-minute assault on his airway, lawyer Benjamin Crump said.
“We’ve just spoken recently with the district attorney. We’re going to take custody back of George Floyd’s body, and we’re bringing in Dr Michael Baden to perform an independent autopsy because we saw in the Eric Garner case and so many other cases where they have these people who work with the city come up with things that are such an illusion,” Crump said during a press conference.
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Garner is the black man who uttered the same final words — “I can’t breathe” — before dying on Staten Island in 2014 due to a police chokehold caught on video.
Baden, meanwhile, was the chief medical examiner of New York City from 1978 to 1979 who recently conducted a private autopsy on Jeffrey Epstein at the behest of Epstein’s brother.
He testified for the defense at O.J. Simpson’s murder trial and investigated the deaths of model Anna Nicole Smith, comedian John Belushi and actor David Carradine.
Crump said Friday he has to anticipate someone might ultimately try to blame Floyd’s death on something other than what was seen in the video.
“We don’t want to begin to speculate about what their narrative is,” he said, cautioning it could run the gamut from “You didn’t know he had a heart condition?” to, “Oh, he had asthma.”
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