Some of the most disturbing testimony in Derek Chauvin’s trial so far came yesterday from renowned pulmonologist Martin Tobin, who told the jury that George Floyd died of “low level of oxygen,” not, as the defense has suggested, from ingesting fentanyl. Chauvin is on trial for second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the May 2020 death of Mr. Floyd.
Among other specialities, Dr. Tobin is an expert in acute respiratory failure, and he practices at Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital, as well as Loyola University’s medical school in Illinois. Though he was an expert witness for the prosecution, Dr. Tobin testified for free, as this was, he said, his first criminal case as an expert witness and he decided he didn’t want to be paid.
Dr. Tobin was meticulous in describing how Mr. Floyd, handcuffed and facedown on the pavement, tried to position himself — with one of Chauvin’s knee on his neck and the other on his back — so that he could draw breath. Restrained that way, Dr. Tobin said even “a healthy person” would have died. The compression on the trachea and the lungs would simply be too much.
In the last minutes of his life, Mr. Floyd tried to prop himself up on his handcuffed fingers to draw a breath. Dr. Tobin said:
"This tells you he has used up his resources and he's literally trying to breathe with his fingers and knuckles.”
Years ago, a Sunday school teacher spent the hour of class going into deep detail about what he thought were Jesus’ final moments. I was 10. Even at that tender age, I thought he went overboard, but I also at age 10 understood he was trying to impress upon us the horrible sacrifice. He explained that the men crucified with Jesus had their legs broken so that they could no longer push themselves up to breathe. George Floyd is not Jesus, but those torturous last moments — which in court Thursday included Dr. Tobin counting Mr. Floyd’s last breaths on the video — show the slow suffocation of an otherwise healthy man in full view of a traumatized neighborhood. If there is a defense of former officer Chauvin, careful watchers of the trial have yet to see it.
My bride thinks me obsessed with death as she wanders in and out of my multitasking, with the computer on the day's Americans For The Arts Advocacy Summit, my cellphone scanning its Agenda Book for the slides being presented, and our TV broadcasts the day's testimony from the trial of George Floyd's public executioner.
And while it sickens me to watch three men kneel on a civilian until his lungs can no longer exchange oxygen for carbon monoxide, and then for three minutes longer (even making the arriving medic reach for a carotid pulse around Chauvin's knee still driving into George's neck with such force his foot is off the ground.
Because attention must be paid...