 The points that you're raising about sort of the similarity of the argument made by the documentary and made by Coleman, what I found persuasive about Radley's rebuttal to this was that both your argument and the documentary were a bit asymmetrical in terms of presenting the extent of training that Derek Chauvin likely was exposed to. And so like, you're raising these questions of like, could there have been other contributing factors to Floyd's death? Was there confusion about, what he was supposed to do in that situation? But then Radley goes into great detail about this issue of positional asphyxia, which apparently is a well-known problem among police departments. He embeds a 2013 NYPD training video, which we wanna play a little bit of just so our viewers can get a sense of what the mainstream theory is as to why George Floyd died in that position. Whether or not Derek Chauvin's knee was on his neck or between his shoulder blades, it's more about the position that he was put in for several minutes. So let me just play a little bit of that video. And then I'd like to get you to respond to the idea that you kind of left this out of the argument. I'm Dr. Charles Hirsch. I'm the chief medical examiner of the city of New York. We first have to have a basic concept of the mechanics of respiration. And I'm gonna show that to you with some graphic material. To begin with, the process of breathing in is accomplished by increasing the size of your chest. You do that in two ways. First, by raising your ribs, and secondly, by contracting your diaphragm. When a person is face down on the street, in order to raise their ribs, they have to lift the weight of their body. Furthermore, if you're face down and your abdomen is compressed, it raises the abdominal contents and makes it more difficult for your diaphragm to contract. If, in addition to your own weight, you have someone else kneeling or laying on your back that increases the amount of weight that you have to raise in order to increase the size of your chest. The greater the weight resting on the individual's back and the more severe the degree of compression, the more difficult it is for them to breathe in. What happens then occasionally is that the individual begins to have air hunger and oxygen deficiency. The natural reaction to that is to struggle more violently. The perception of those persons trying to subdue the individual is that he needs more compression to be subdued. You then enter a vicious cycle in which compression makes air hunger, air hunger makes a greater struggle and a greater struggle demands greater compression. So that kind of seems like the most straightforward explanation as to what happened here. And that was from more than 20 years ago, implying that this is a well-known problem among police departments. Isn't that fairly damning of Chauvin's behavior and why was that not included in your argument? So in my argument, I'll read it right here. I said, it's not unreasonable to think that Chauvin's actions caused the death of Floyd. That's close to, or rather, caused Floyd's labored breathing. I mean, that's close to an exact quote from my piece. I said, it's not unreasonable. And the reason I said that is because it's not the defense's burden to disprove that positional asphyxia kilton. It's the prosecution's burden to say that there is no other reasonable explanation other than explanations that implicate Chauvin's actions. Now, I'm going to give you a reasonable explanation that doesn't implicate physical pressure from Chauvin onto Floyd. And that would be Dr. Andrew Baker's explanation for his death. Now, before I get to that, let me just deal with the manner of death versus cause of death issue. So, Radley, you fault me for not mentioning that the manner of death Dr. Baker found was homicide and rather only talking about the cause of death. And you're saying your piece, I think that the manner of death is a legal determination and cause of death is medical. Baker actually says the opposite twice in his testimony, but you may be using those words differently. So I assume you're using those words differently than he is. But what Baker meant to convey by that is saying manner of death is irrelevant to the legal determination of homicide. He actually says they belong to two different worlds entirely, right? Cause of death, however, is entirely relevant because it's an element of the crime. In order for Chauvin to be convicted, Chauvin's actions had to be not just a but for cause, but according to the jury instructions, a substantial cause, which is a somewhat higher bar. And Baker's explanation of cause of death, which he explained multiple times in his testimony was that when you combined Floyd's preexisting conditions, 90% constricting of one artery, 75% constricting of another, you combine his already weakened system to begin with, with the adrenaline caused by the arrest, his heart and lungs stopped working. So that explanation does not include physical pressure from Chauvin as a but for or a substantial cause of his death. That is also a reasonable explanation of what killed Floyd. So in the context of a criminal trial, that is exculpatory or ought to be. That isn't what he says. What he says in the cause of death is, quote, that it was cardiopulmonary arrest, his heart and lungs stopped working. I'm talking about his testimony when he elaborated. Law enforcement, subdural restraint and net compression. He talks about restraint and net compression in the cause of death, in the actual autopsy report. Also, I wanted to bring this up earlier. I do think it's deeply misleading to talk about Baker's autopsy as the only complete autopsy to contrast it to the one done by the Medecuzans hired by Floyd's family, which I agree was flawed, but then not to include in your piece that Baker himself determined that the cause of death, or excuse me, the manner of death was homicide and that he testified for the prosecution. Both of those things don't, neither of those things appear in your piece. You sort of build him up as the sort of reasonable, sensible antidote to public hysteria about Derek Chauvin but you don't mention that he did say it was a homicide and he did testify for the prosecution. Baker explained in his testimony, as I said, that manner of death is irrelevant to the legal determination of homicide. He said they belong to, quote, two different worlds entirely. Okay, so. Okay, I understand you said that. Whereas the reason I talked about cause of death and didn't include manner of death is because cause of death is literally an element of the crime. That's what's germane here. And when you- We also say that positional asphyxia is mentioned in the autopsy report, which is also irrelevant. Sorry? You also say that positional asphyxia is not mentioned in the autopsy report, which pretty strongly suggests that you are arguing that positional asphyxia was not a potential cause of death here. No, that's not an accurate inference at all. Again- Why would you say it wasn't mentioned in the autopsy report if you didn't want people to think it wasn't a possible cause of death? Okay, why would I want them to draw that inference but then elsewhere say in my essay, it's not unreasonable to think that Chauvin caused his labor breathing? You're failing to understand again that my whole piece is from the perspective of reasonable doubt. I'm not claiming definitively that I know what killed Floyd. I'm not claiming to have a truth here. I'm claiming that in the context of a criminal trial, the presence of a reasonable explanation is itself exculpatory because of the asymmetric task assigned to the prosecution and defense. So- Your piece is a counter narrative piece though, right? Like the entire concept of it as I see it is to challenge two components of the traditional media narrative about George Floyd's death. I feel like you're doing a little bit of this like throwing your hands up, plausible deniability type thing. No, no, can I clarify this because- Yeah, please. I've talked to, most people who have been to law school who read my piece understood it completely differently than how many others understood it because they're trained to think in terms of reasonable doubt. So when I say things like, it's not unreasonable that Chauvin caused his breathing, but it's also not unreasonable that his breathing was caused by this, people who are sensitized to think in terms of reasonable doubt understand exactly what I'm saying. I'm not actually definitively ruling between these two things, but the presence of multiple explanations can accept multiple reasonable explanations is itself exculpatory in our system. Whereas other people take me to be arguing for the second of those two interpretations as a definitive truth, which is not the defense's burden. I think it's close to the standard of self-reversing to say most people who went to law school read your piece differently. I talked to a lot of lawyers who were not at all happy about your column. Also, there's the other component here, which is- They may not have been, but they certainly didn't, they certainly wouldn't fault me for coming from a perspective of reasonable doubt. The other thing that's a little bit ironic here is that I don't think the free press exactly brands itself as the publication only to be read by those who have attended law school and successfully received their JD, right? That's not what I'm arguing. I'm not saying that it is, but I am saying that you're writing to a general audience. And so, I wonder whether people should be faulted for taking it as one thing. And you're saying, well, really, there's a misunderstanding here where a general audience, yes, they're not quite getting what I'm after, but those who have attended law school do understand what I'm getting after. And it's like, well, wait a second, and it's possibly not a successfully done piece if the vast majority of people perceive it as one. I wouldn't say the vast majority of people perceived it in the way that you're perceiving it. I guess I don't know what percentage of the free press's readers have gone to law school, but I thought it was a little bit more of a general audience publication. In fact, I thought it was a little bit of an antidote to sort of the elitism of the mainstream media, right? So again, my pointing out that positional asphyxia, I don't think I've said positional asphyxia wasn't in the autopsy, right? I said asphyxia in general. My reason for pointing that out, which is the genesis of this sidebar here, is that obviously asphyxia doesn't need to necessarily have signs on a corpse, right? Someone can die of asphyxia without there being signs of asphyxia, but in the context of a criminal trial again, where it's not a 50-50 debate and the defendant is presumed innocent, then it is relevant in the context of a criminal trial that the only complete autopsy ever done turned up no evidence of it. The entire burden is on the prosecution to prove that things happened beyond a reasonable doubt. So here's the context. Here's the thing, positional asphyxia does not leave signs. I didn't say positional asphyxia, I didn't say positional. I know you didn't, because my guess is that you weren't aware of positional asphyxia before you wrote this. No, I very much was. You emphasize the fact that Chauvin's knee was not on Floyd's neck, which implies that you think that you have to restrict airways in order to die of asphyxia, which is common. It's what's promoted in the documentary. It's what lots of Chauvin promoters have said online over and over again. I only centered on that because it was the center of the media narrative. Okay, but that isn't what was argued at trial. Why wouldn't, if the point is that Chauvin didn't give it a trial, why wouldn't you argue that it was also about the public conversation and public understanding of what happened? Okay, well, you're really interacting between the two. Bradley, could you explain that? Because I found your kind of historical digression into this term called Birking, very revelatory or illuminating in terms of understanding why putting pressure on someone's back or neck in that way would not necessarily show up in an autopsy. Could you explain that a little bit for the people who haven't read your piece? Yeah, so positional asphyxia is this idea that you can die of suffocation or of lack of oxygen or of a spike in CO2 without someone pressing on your windpipe or without someone physically sort of restricting your airways, if your diaphragm is restricted in a way that you can't inhale deep enough for the air to get deep into your lungs or the sacs called the alveoli exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide, you can die of suffocation relatively quickly. And so when I, I mean, you can't cover police issues and not be aware of positional asphyxia. So I knew about that, but I didn't know about the history. And there's a term called Birking that's used to describe this process. And it goes back to 19th century Scotland. These two guys were selling cadavers to medical schools for dissection. And originally they were doing it by digging up graves, which is also illegal, but the medical schools kind of looked the other way. But then they discovered that they could, it was a lot easier to just kill people and sell them the bodies. And the way they did it is, they would wait for the bars to close and wait for drunk people to come stumbling out. And one, they would tackle them and then one would sit on the victim's back while the other person sort of put their hand over their mouth. And within a few minutes, the person couldn't breathe. Now, when the hand's over your mouth, you can still sort of suck in air. But if you have that combined with the pressure on your back, you can't inhale deep enough to actually get oxygen into your system. And so this term called Birking has become kind of shorthand for this type of positional asphyxia. And by the way, I mean, positional asphyxia is not controversial outside of a police custody context. Kids have died of positional asphyxia in car seats, people in accidents or falls. If you fall in a way that your diaphragm is restricted and you can't dislodge yourself from that position, it's not an uncommon way to die. What's happened in police custody issues, and this is one of the things that really, I think columns like Coleman's can be destructive is that there's been this concerted effort on the part of law enforcement groups in particular acts on the company of the mixed taser to kind of wave away positional asphyxia as a possible cause of death for in custody deaths. And instead, excuse me, they promoted this condition called excited delirium, which has no real basis in science. And it's been long disputed, it's never been endorsed by the American Medical Association or the World Health Organization. But there's this concerted effort from this network of researchers paid by acts on to excuse in custody deaths by positional asphyxia as excited delirium. And excited delirium is this really broad condition that includes dozens of symptoms that you can sort of just pick and choose from. And it's become really destructive. And it's not just that it excuses officers like Chauvin after the fact, it's that it's sort of a preemptive way. They're trying to sort of get to the point where police don't even have to guard against these deaths, they don't have to move people into the recovery position because these people argue that positional asphyxia isn't a thing that it doesn't, it isn't a way that people die in police custody. And so it's basically a recipe for more deaths, more deaths that could have been prevented. And that's where I think, this documentary is particularly dangerous because it advances this idea. And I mean, look, I know I'm rambling here, but if you look at, for example, the excited delirium training that MPD gave its officers, it includes a photo of the incredible Hulk, right? Because excited delirium, two of the symptoms are superhuman strength and imperviousness to pain. Now that is an invitation for police to use more and more excessive force. I don't know what is. Now they also taught that suspect should be rolled over under their side and they also do teach positional asphyxia. But when you have these two competing theories of excited delirium and positional asphyxia, and police can sort of choose from one and one's clearly legitimate and one isn't, I think it's dangerous to spread the idea that positional asphyxia is not a common way for people to die in police custody. Okay, I think I have one point in here. So as I've said before, it is not unreasonable to think that Floyd died of positional asphyxia. But it's also not unreasonable. And I want, I'd like to get a really direct response about this to think that he died of Baker's full explanation. So yes, the top line cause, Baker says, you know, law enforcement, subdual, so on and neck or strain and so forth. And when asked to expand on what that meant, multiple times in his testimony, he said that he believes the arrest led to an adrenaline surge, right? The arrest and the struggle led to an adrenaline surge which taxed Floyd's cardiopulmonary system and led him to expire. The adrenaline was the sense in which the law enforcement subdual caused as a, and he used the analogy of, you know, taking heart medication and being allergic to it. So caused in that sense, in the sense that it wouldn't cause in a normal person the death. So this is an explanation. This is another reasonable explanation that does not include the physical, the level of physical pressure being applied by Chauvin. Except when Baker was specifically asked about positional asphyxia, he said that he would defer to pulmonologists on that matter, that he wasn't qualified to make that diagnosis, which, you know, I think is a very humble and good thing for a medical examiner to admit. And this is one of the things I point out is that this, you know, I think Coleman and other people are right and that Chauvin was treated differently than most police officers are in these cases. But he was treated differently in the sense that they did bring in pulmonologists. They did bring in experts beyond the medical examiner. They consulted with people because they, there was a lot of public pressure to get to the truth in this case. Okay, but was there, what was there, it should get that doesn't, what's relevant when the bar is raised to reasonable doubt is, is there another reasonable explanation? Okay. And was there evidence, persuasive evidence presented at trial that ruled out as a reasonable explanation, the idea that the arrest and the struggle caused an adrenaline surge, which killed Floyd. I don't think there was. Well, one, yes, one medical examiner mentioned the adrenaline surge. He also did not rule out positional asphyxia and other witnesses said, again, that's not the standard in a criminal trial. In a criminal trial, when you have multiple reasonable explanations and you've concluded that they're all reasonable, you have the guy, the only guy that did the autopsy saying it was the adrenaline from the struggle mixed with the underlying conditions. Well, that is supposed to be a set of facts, which is exculpatory on the issue of causation, which was not just but for causation, but substantial causation. Okay, so I don't think there's a, I don't think that there's a great counterargument to this point. The fact that he wasn't an expert in positional asphyxia doesn't rule out that his explanation was also reasonable and did not involve physical pressure and physical weight as a but for a cause from Chauvin. But he didn't say that was a but for a cause. What he said was that in his, but for what he found in the autopsy, but he also said he wasn't qualified to make a determination on what actually killed him, that he would defer to a pulmonologist on the issue of positional asphyxia. You're interpreting Baker's refusal to diagnose positional asphyxia as him ruling it out. I'm not, I'm not, no, no, no, no. It's not for the defense to rule out positional asphyxia. That's not the defense's burden. The defense can admit positional asphyxia is reasonable. I'm saying the medical examer that you're quoting didn't rule it out. I'm talking about from the perspective of a jury, not from Baker's perspective. The jury has now received a reasonable explanation from the guy that did the explanation. No, you're saying it's a reasonable explanation. You don't think it's a reasonable explanation that the adrenaline taxed the cardio. You don't think Baker's explanation was reasonable? I mean, medical examer, well, first of all, I don't think he's saying that that is what killed Floyd. I think he's saying that that was... Well, that's his leading theory. That is his leading theory. Oh, he was explaining what he found in the initial autopsy report. But then after he read, he looked at the videos, he determined that it was a homicide. And so you're taking one very, just like you did with the training on the MRT, you're taking one point of his testimony that came during defense questioning and sort of giving it much more... No, no, I'm not. Well, the jury... I'm really not. Which really gave it more, it didn't find it reasonable. Oh, well, that's a circular argument. Juries can get things wrong. Of course they can. Or else I wouldn't be arguing this. 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