The medical expert who testified for the protection in convicted ex-cop Derek Chauvin’s murder trial goes below the microscope himself.
Seventeen years’ value of demise reviews produced by Dr. David Fowler, Maryland’s former chief medical officer, will probably be reviewed within the wake of complaints over Fowler’s testimony that Chauvin was to not blame for the in-custody demise of George Floyd in Minneapolis final yr.
“Impartial specialists” will “overview reviews issued by the Workplace of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) relating to deaths in custody” from 2003 to 2020, when Fowler headed the workplace, the state legal professional normal’s workplace advised the Baltimore Solar Friday.
The choice got here lower than a day after greater than 400 medical examiners — Fowler’s former colleagues — issued an open letter criticizing Fowler’s opinion that Floyd’s demise was triggered not by police restraint, however by exhaust fumes from the cops’ squad automotive and Floyd’s poor well being.
“We consider the unsubstantiated opinion … is way outdoors [the] normal and is grounds for a direct investigation,” the letter declared.
Fowler, who retired from the workplace in 2019, defended its “giant group of forensic pathologists” who “at all times did large work” — and tried to shrug off the approaching overview.
“Folks must do what they should do,” he stated.
Chauvin was discovered responsible of murder Tuesday within the demise of Floyd throughout an arrest final Could.
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