Former Maryland chief forensic doctor who testified on behalf of the agent accused of killing George Floyd is a defendant in a federal lawsuit for the death of a man who died in Floyd-like circumstances
BALTIMORE: The former Maryland chief forensic doctor who testified on behalf of the agent accused of killing George Floyd is a defendant in a federal lawsuit for the death of a man who died in Floyd-like circumstances.
Dr. David Fowler was chief medical officer in Maryland for 17 years before retiring in 2019.
He served as a key witness in the defense of Officer Derek Chauvin. Fowler stated that he would have ruled the cause of Floyd’s death as “indeterminate” rather than homicide. He also testified that Floyd’s heart disease contributed to his death, in contradiction to prosecution experts who cited suffocation as a result of Chauvin’s knee being pressed to Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes. .
The case has similarities to that of 19-year-old Anton Black, who died in 2018 while in police custody on the east coast of Maryland. A federal lawsuit filed in Baltimore alleges that Greensboro Police Department agents and nearby agencies kept their weight on Black for several minutes, even after he was prone and handcuffed.
The lawsuit alleges that officers’ actions caused Black to die of suffocation. He alleges that Fowler and the forensic doctor who performed Black’s autopsy intentionally disguised police by ignoring evidence of suffocation and interpreting other factors that supported the police narrative.
The Maryland Attorney General’s Office represents Fowler and filed a motion earlier this month with the goal of dismissing the lawsuit against him. No hearing has been scheduled yet.