Prosecution ever-elusive cause of death...

This is starting to become troublesome and the defense is still not presented their side

Well all know that there are competing concepts of how Floyd died

• That he died of cardiac arrest
• That he died of strangulation
• That he died of an Opioid overdose
• and the newly introduced death by positional asphyxia

But ultimately the prosecution must actually pick one and prove it beyond a reasonable doubt to get the conviction that they want (at least if the jury plays by the rules). In their case, they rejected the original autopsy by the Hennepin County medical examiner that suggested cardiac arrest, obviously rejected the toxicology reports that point to a drug overdoes, and settled in on the strangulation aspect.

At least that is what they argued in their opening statement.

But they were hit hard when their first use of force witness Johnny Mercil declared under oath that the knee restraint based on the position on Floyd's body was not "lethal". 

In layman's terms, that means that what Chauvin did could not have actually strangled or killed Floyd. At least not according to the witnesses own expert opinion. Yeah, that expert also said Chauvin didn't play by it by the book, was excessive in his use of force, could have done things differently,  yada, yada, yada, but on the question of whether or not he killed him?

Apparently this witness couldn't testify that Chauvin did kill him. 

In fact, the question was not even flat out asked of him. Isn't that strange? That in a murder trial, you don't ask your star witness in use of force whether the use of force caused the death? Rather that question, ultimately, was asked by the defense. File that under things that make you go hmmmm.

Their next use of force witness (a paid prosecution mercenary from California named Jody Stiger) also made the same observation under sworn cross examination testimony in regards to the knee position. But while Mercil seemed caught off guard, Stiger seemed prepared. In fact the state sort of abandoned their position that the knee was resting on the neck of Floyd, and referred to the knee being on the "neck area". So by the time the defense got around to asking about the position of the knee and questioning whether it could cause strangulation, it seemed almost anti-climatic.

But, of course, that would seem to be giving away a key element of proving strangulation if your star use of force witnesses are admitting that the knee (as positioned) would not cause strangulation. However, it appears that the prosecution might be attempting to shift into plan b so to speak, and the term "positional asphyxia" is starting to get tossed around. 

Obviously we are in the early infancy of the "positional asphyxia" theory at this point. But I will be curious to see if this is really the direction that the prosecution is going to go. I am not an attorney or legal expert per sea, but I generally believe that it's bad protocol to change your position on cause of death in a murder trial. It might not technically even be allowed. So we'll see where this all ends up.

One thing is for sure. The prosecution have to get around to calling someone who will actually say that Chauvin killed Floyd. Because so far, not only has nobody really flat out testified that he did, but two of the prosecutions own expert witnesses have basically stated under oath that while he may have done some things wrong, he did not actually use lethal force.