The former Maryland chief medical examiner who testified on behalf of the officer charged with the murder of George Floyd is a defendant in a federal lawsuit over the death of a man who died in similar circumstances to Floyd.
BALTIMORE – The former Maryland chief medical examiner who testified on behalf of the officer charged with the murder of George Floyd is a defendant in a federal lawsuit over the death of a man who died in circumstances similar to Floyd.
Dr. David Fowler was a senior medical examiner in Maryland for 17 years before retiring in 2019.
He served as a key witness in Agent Derek Chauvin’s defense. Fowler testified that he would have considered Floyd’s cause of death “undetermined” rather than murder. He also testified that Floyd’s heart disease contributed to his death, contradicting prosecution experts who mentioned choking as a result of Chauvin’s knee being pressed into Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes.
The case bears similarities to that of 19-year-old Anton Black, who died in 2018 while in police custody on Maryland’s east coast. A federal lawsuit filed in Baltimore alleges that officers from the Greensboro Police Department and nearby agencies kept their weight on Black for several minutes, even after he was prone and handcuffed.
The lawsuit alleges that the officers’ actions caused Black to die of asphyxiation. It alleges that Fowler and the medical examiner who conducted Black’s autopsy intentionally obscured the police by ignoring evidence of asphyxiation and playing other factors that supported the police story.
The Maryland Attorney General’s office represents Fowler and filed a motion earlier this month to dismiss the lawsuit against him. A hearing has not yet been scheduled.