And now we can add witness coercion to the charges against the prosecution in the Floyd trials
Attorneys for one of the three accused police officers in the pending trials concerning the death of George Floyd have made the following claim:
According to a 9-page court document filed Wednesday, May 12, Thao’s attorneys, Robert M. Paule and Natalie R. Paule, are accusing Dr. Roger Mitchell, the “former Medical Examiner of Washington D.C.,” of leveraging [Hennepin County Medical Examiner] Baker by placing a phone call sometime between May 29, 2020, when Baker released a preliminary statement about George Floyd, and June 1, 2020, when Baker signed his findings as to the cause and manner of Floyd’s death. (The full autopsy was released publicly on June 3, 2020.) During the supposed call, Baker is alleged to have said that “he didn’t think the neck compression played a part” in Floyd’s death. Mitchell is alleged to have suggested that Baker “should fire his public information officer” for issuing the May 29 preliminary statement which said, in part, that the medical examiner’s autopsy “revealed no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation.”
“After the phone conversation between Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Baker, Dr. Mitchell decided he was going to release an op-ed critical of Dr. Baker’s findings in the Washington Post,” Thao’s court document alleges. “Dr. Mitchell first called Dr. Baker to let him know.”
Mitchell is alleged by Thao’s legal team to have said the following to Baker in a subsequent conversation:
“[Y]ou don’t want to be the medical examiner who tells everyone they didn’t see what they saw. You don’t want to be the smartest person in the room and be wrong. Said there was a way to articulate the cause and manner of death that ensures you are telling the truth about what you are observing and via all of the investigation. Mitchell said neck compression has to be in the diagnosis.”
In other words: nice reputation you’ve got there. You wouldn’t want to see it destroyed, would you?
More:
“The final autopsy findings included neck compression,” the Thao motion states. “This was contrary to Dr. Baker’s conclusion before speaking with Dr. Mitchell twice,” the motion alleges…
One of Chauvin’s defense experts, Dr. David Fowler, testified that Floyd’s manner of death was undetermined, Thao’s defense motion pointed out. As an alleged result of Fowler’s testimony, Mitchell subsequently penned letters to various federal and state officials asking, among other things, for an investigation into Fowler‘s medical license, the motion says. “Less than 24 hours after receiving the letter, the Maryland Attorney General’s Office announced that there should be a review of all in custody death reports produced by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner during Dr. Fowler’s tenu[r]e,” Thao’s attorneys stated.
I wrote a post about the post-trial investigation of Dr. Fowler. The investigation affects not just Fowler but any future expert witness for the defense in these pending cases or any similar cases. If a person has the guts to testify in defense of any of these police officers, that person should be prepared to be destroyed in the public eye.
More from the court documents filed by Thao’s lawyers:
The State – specifically prosecutors Lola Velazquez-Aguilu, Joshua Larson, Matthew Frank, Erin Eldridge, and Corey Gorden – knew that a potential expert witness had coerced the State’s main expert witness/the only expert to perform the physical autopsy in the case of State v. Thao. The State did nothing in response to this coercion. Instead, the State knowingly allowed Dr. Baker to take the stand in State v. Chauvin and testified to coerced statements…
Under Minn. Stat. § 609.27 subd. 1(3) Dr. Mitchell’s conduct meets the elements to be found guilty of committing the crime of coercion. Dr. Mitchell orally made the threat to unlawfully injure Dr. Baker’s trade unless Dr. Baker changed his autopsy findings. Dr. Mitchell told Dr. Baker to include neck compression in the final findings and warned Dr. Baker he was going to publish a damaging op-ed in the Washington Post. After Dr. Baker changed his findings, Dr. Mitchell did not publish the op-ed. Moreover, Dr. Mitchell unlawfully injured Dr. Fowler’s trade by penning an open letter which resulted in an investigation into every death report in Maryland during Dr. Fowler’s tenure.
Dr. Mitchell has set the stage that he will threaten the trade and professional reputation of any physician who suggests that Mr. Floyd’s death could be labeled as “undetermined”…
The prosecutors say it’s all lies. I wonder what evidence the defense lawyers have for their allegations. I’m assuming they have some, perhaps from a whistleblower? I wonder whether Baker himself could be the source, although I doubt it. Could there be a recording of the call? Perhaps, but I doubt that as well. Mitchell’s subsequent role in sparking an investigation of Fowler makes it more likely that these allegations regarding Mitchell and Baker are true, although we have no way as yet of knowing for sure.
I’m somewhat confused as to how Mitchell, who was the Medical Examiner of Washington D.C., ended up on a phone call with Baker, who was the Chief Medical Examiner of Hennepin County, Minnesota. Does the DC examiner have some sort of power over all the medical examiners at the state level? I can’t find anything indicating that would be the case, and I very much doubt it is. If so, what is Mitchell’s involvement and motive? If he was in on the call with Baker so early in the case, it is logical to assume that Mitchell is connected somehow to one or several of the prosecutors, or perhaps to someone in the Minnesota Medical Examiner’s office.
By the way, it might be helpful at this point to refresh our memories on the role of these three officers concerning Floyd’s death. That article I just linked is from September of 2020 [emphasis mine]:
Thao’s decision May 25 to help two rookie officers on what seemed a routine call involving Floyd would be his last for the department. He and officer Derek Chauvin, his partner for the evening, could have skipped the call from a Cup Foods employee who reported that Floyd had tried to pass a fake $20 bill. As they headed to the scene, a dispatcher canceled the plea for help, saying the officers appeared to have the situation under control.
But Thao continued on. He and Chauvin found officers Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng, each in their first week on the job, struggling to move Floyd into a cruiser. Chauvin, a 19-year veteran, stepped in to pin Floyd, stomach-down, by kneeling on his neck. Kueng knelt on his back and Lane restrained his legs as Floyd pleaded that he couldn’t breathe, eventually falling silent.
Thao stepped toward a growing, agitated crowd and waved along passing vehicles. He later told investigators with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension that he couldn’t really see what his fellow officers were doing.
Thao told the BCA he was too focused on guarding the scene. “I could have been more observant to Floyd,” he said.
In a Facebook Messenger exchange believed to be with Thao, he told the Star Tribune that he got a degree in law enforcement out of a sense of duty to help protect people and be a community resource.
“Especially to younger, low-income families because that’s where I came from,” Thao told the Star Tribune.
Everything about the Floyd case is terrible, and I think it’s actually getting even worse.
[NOTE: Thao is a member of an ethnic group known as the Hmong. You can read about them here.]
Everything about the case is indeed terrible, perhaps nothing more so than the plan, widely reported, that the DOJ was fully prepared to arrest Chauvin on federal charges had he, by chance (although it was never really possible), been acquitted. With the truly ghastly triumvirate (Garland, Monaco, and the insanely wealthy Gupta) running the Department of (In)Justice, and with the odious Kristen Clarke likely to be confirmed rather soon, no-one should be expecting anything but the ideologically-motivated perversion of justice from a department seemingly obsessed with, and only with, the wholly imaginary threat of “white supremacists” and “right-wing domestic terrorists”, i.e. conservatives and Trump-supporters.
The Hottest Places in Hell Are Reserved for democrats and anyone who voted for joe biden.
What are these people trying to do anyway? Make everybody think the legal systen is corrupt and dishonest?
We learned with the Freddie Gray case that forensic pathologists can be intimidated. We’re learning again. It’s an aspect of the corruption of professional associations, academe, and the bar. Judge Cahill is schooling us on the character of the Minnesota judiciary.
It was predetermined Chauvin has to be put down hard, any means to make that happen was used without care to rule of law.
The DOJ is now run by people “obsessed with, and only with, the wholly imaginary threat of “white supremacists” and “right-wing domestic terrorists”, i.e. conservatives and Trump-supporters” because conservatives and Trump-supporters are the main threat to the Left’s seizure of power.
Intimidation, canceling those who speak out, prosecution and execution (as a message) are the means being used to cow the opposition.
Related:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-ongoing-politicization-of-the-doj_3813379.html
It seemed, last summer, that someone had put pressure on the medical examiner. His first report said there was no sign of injury caused by the knee hold, and then he added it. If this defense team has evidence, this would have some effect on the Chauvin appeal as well, wouldn’t it?
this would have some effect on the Chauvin appeal as well, wouldn’t it?
If you’re appellate judges had any integrity. Integrity’s what’s been in short supply in this case.
Well it’ll be a pretty poor showing for Whitey if the Hmong have to show how it’s done by being first to rise up in open revolt when their guy gets railroaded.
Politicization of the DOJ started In the Clinton years. A friend of mine worked during the Bush 41 years but couldn’t stand it under the Clinton Administration and quit. She had loved working there before. The Bush 43 Administration never bothered to undo the damage so it was ripe for even worse under the O administration. And Trump was hamstrung are every turn: Jeff Sessions was useless. Barr didn’t care.
And now, it’s a den of cockroaches.
Kate:
If true, it probably would have more of an effect on the upcoming trial of the three officers, because appeals have a higher bar for reversal than the presumption of innocence in an initial trial. In an appeal the presumptions are somewhat reversed.
Official power? No. Empowered by a phone call from an appointed official at the DoJ? Likely.
The charges being leveled are surprisingly detailed and explicit. This suggests to me that they have recordings or the direct testimony of Baker himself.
I wonder why Thao has this alleged evidence, but Chauvin’s lawyer didn’t, as he surely would have presented it at the trial.
well it’s easy to believe. Dr. Mitchell sent a letter concerning Dr. Fowler and his testimony to US Attorney General Merrick Garland, Director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention Rochelle Wollensky, Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, and Director of the Maryland Department of Health Allison Taylor. In the letter, Dr. Mitchell asked for investigations into Fowler’s medical licensing and past work as a forensic pathologist. Less than 24 hours after the letter, the Maryland Attorney General’s Office initiated a review of all in-custody death reports produced while Dr. Fowler served as a Chief Medical Examiner in Maryland. Evidently Dr. Mitchell thinks he is a member of the prosecution.
James Bowman sums things up well in the May issue of New Criterion.
I read earlier that Baker was coerced into changing his testimony but didn’t know why Nelson didn’t bring this up–think he wanted to stay on Baker’s good side to get him to say the “neck compression” did not cause the death–which he did. Had no influence on the jury though. They should call Mitchell to the stand now that this has been brought up and make him testify under oath.
Also, Federal case makes it easier for Supreme Court to come in. Also case of 14 years old makes it easier for Chauvin to say they should be suing the dept. for not sanctioning Chauvin, and to call whoever approved this use of force to testify as to why. If Chauvin is sentenced to any more than 20 years, which is already egregiously long when the worst he should have been convicted of is manslaughter, and the entire system is intimidated to give him an ounce of mercy, my suggestion would be for him to disappear to a country where there is no extradition or go into hiding like the 60s radicals. I don’t usually advocate that, but he is clearly a political prisoner. (I don’t know when that could happen unless some guards were enlisted to spirit him away and he somehow got over the border). It is a case of cruel and unusual punishment, especially if he will be in solitary confinement, and I know of no other case where a death in custody due to police restraint received any time at all. So much more animosity has been leveled at this one individual far in excess of what he did (or did not do)–defies logic, morality, and due process.
Lynn at 1:06 pm above.
Expressed perfectly: Chauvin is a political prisoner.
agree completely with above.
Chauvin was imprisoned by politicians who either cravenly obeyed or eagerly embraced the lynch mob. The nationwide wave of relief following the verdict was telling, as was the sentiment expressed even by some who had hoped for acquittal that “the greater good” was achieved—lives were saved by the lack of provocation for bloody protests. It’s simple—the mob won. That’s what American justice is now.