Tag: David Fowler

Maryland officials to launch review of cases handled by ex-chief medical examiner who testified in Chauvin’s defense

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Top Maryland officials are launching an investigation of all deaths in police custody that were overseen by the state’s former chief medical examiner who testified in Derek Chauvin’s defense, the Maryland attorney general and governor’s offices announced Friday.

Raquel Coombs, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Brian E. Frosh, said the office has been in internal discussions about launching a probe for the past couple of weeks and recently reached out to Gov. Larry Hogan’s office about how to proceed.

David Fowler, who was Maryland’s chief medical examiner from 2002 to 2019, served as a key witness for Chauvin, whose high-profile trial ended this week with a jury convicting the former Minneapolis officer of murder and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd. Continue reading.

Derek Chauvin’s witnesses include former Maryland medical examiner being sued over ‘chillingly similar’ case

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When the video of George Floyd gasping for air under the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin emerged last year, it told a story that was painfully familiar to Anton Black’s family.

Black encountered police on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in the fall of 2018, when officers responding to a call about a possible kidnapping wrestled the 19-year-old to the ground. Video footage released later showed the officers in Greensboro, Md., struggling with Black before pinning him down. Black died, and no officers were charged in his death.

Then came Floyd’s death last year, another video of a Black man being held down by police and dying. The cases, Black’s family said in a court filing, were “chillingly similar.” Now they are connected in another way: Among the experts Chauvin’s defense called this week was the former Maryland medical examiner who deemed Black’s death an accident, a determination his family pilloried in a federal lawsuit filed in December. Continue reading.