Medical Examiners Aren’t Always Trustworthy

 The BBC headline on the arrest of Marine veteran and subway hero Daniel Penny got everything typically but grotesquely wrong: “Ex-Marine charged with New York subway chokehold death of Jordan Neely.” The whole thing, though, is a reminder that medical examiners are often more political, than they are alert.

The reality is that all the available evidence says that Penny didn’t kill Neely; he died from a cardiac arrest, not a chokehold that can disable a violent perp but can be released when the person is subdued—no death. In the case of Jordan Neely, his death is more likely due to a cardiac arrhythmia that was brought on by excitement, agitation, exertion, all combined with the drugs he had on board, particularly K2, a synthetic marijuana stimulant drug that causes agitation and manic behavior, sometimes even psychosis.

The leftist politicization of Neely’s death is very much a replay of other well-publicized events. In 1992, after the police aggressively subdued a juiced-up, violent Rodney King in a long struggle, that sparked a storm of protests. In July 2014, the morbidly obese Eric Garner died after resisting arrest in Staten Island, New York. The takedown was described as a chokehold but Garner was awake and talked to the ambulance attendant when he was taken to the hospital. Garner was black. The cop who subdued him was white. Again, riots and protests followed.

In May 2020, George Floyd, resisting arrest, crying out for his mother, and claiming he couldn’t breathe, died suddenly in a prone restraint used globally and nationally to subdue resisting prisoners. Massive local and national riots followed, and all four officers involved were sacrificed to appease the mobs. The lead officer was white. Floyd was black. No other racial combination would have even made the news.

In these and myriad other cases—Manny Ellis in Tacoma, Elijah McClain in Aurora, multiple cases in Tucson, Frank Tyson in Canton—the medical examiners rolled over the facts in response to the mobs’ and media’s demand. All these death cases involved black males who were juiced up and agitated, but medical examiners choose the homicide, anti-cop diagnosis, instead of a death from natural causes, augmented by drugs.

The reality is that medical examiners see sudden deaths all the time, predominantly cardiac. The only other choices for nonviolent sudden death are sudden hemorrhage from a ruptured blood vessel and lethal stroke, both easily identified on autopsy. Sudden death is not a mystery to a medical examiner, but a medical examiner with a political agenda sometimes lies for social justice.

Daniel Penny is on trial now for subduing Jordan Neely, who was threatening passengers on a subway car. Neely had a mental health problem with 12 hospitalizations and dozens of arrests. He self-medicated his mental health problems with street drugs, including K2, a potent marijuana mimic that is a stimulant and can, in fact, make problems like his worse. In sum, a drug addict with obvious mental health issues and multiple arrests died after Penny restrained him.

I’ve studied still shots from the subway, and after the initial subdual, Neely was in a headlock, not a chokehold. A chokehold, an extremely aggressive maneuver, takes two hands. Video shows that Penny initially applied a chokehold but then released to restrain Neely in a headlock. The former cuts off circulation to the brain; the latter restrains a person. As a former high school wrestler and an emergency room physician of 50 years, I know the difference, as do professionals who use the holds as Penny did: chokehold to gain control; headlock to maintain control.

I have already elaborately explained that George Floyd was not murdered but died of a cardiac arrest while he was resisting arrest and agitated. He had major heart disease and was intoxicated with a stimulant, methamphetamine, and fentanyl, his favorite drug of abuse. With these drugs, he was set up for cardiac arrhythmia when he resisted arrest. He wasn’t asphyxiated by the standard restraint hold Officer Derek Chauvin applied; he was killed by his bad heart (three-vessel disease and hypertensive cardiomyopathy) and his excitement.

Likewise, Neely wasn’t asphyxiated; he died because he was juiced up and excited, and he got restrained by a Marine who knew how to take down a perp.

That being the case, why is Penny being accused of homicide? Could it be racial politics? Of course, it is. Could racial politics invade the province of medicine and, in particular, the specialty of forensic pathology, medical examiners? Not only yes, but hell, yes.

If you think physicians in official positions betrayed the public by failing to speak honestly about COVID, imagine how medical examiners, charged with determining the cause of death, might be corrupted by racial politics when asked to rule on a case in which the “victim” is a member of some “oppressed” racial or ethnic group and the “killer” is a white man. That problem is amplified by the media and “woke” politicians.

The medical profession has been compromised by leftist racialist nonsense. Those biases are on display in the testimony of the Jordon Neely medical examiner, Dr. Harris, who was in the bag for the racialist cause.

Thankfully for Daniel Penny, who will probably lose before a New York City jury, but will still have an appeal, a medical examiner expert for the defense testified to what I have discussed above. MSN news reported that Dr. Satish Chundru, who has performed 9000 autopsies as a medical examiner, testified that Jordan Neely’s death was not due to the chokehold, which was released before it caused his death. He testified that Neely died from “the combined effects” of synthetic marijuana, schizophrenia, his struggle and restraint, and a blood condition that can lead to fatal complications during exertion.

When you read about the next black perp who died while resisting arrest and is being portrayed as a poor victim of evil coppers, stop and consider.

John Dale Dunn is an emergency physician, corrections physician, and an attorney for 40-plus years.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/11/medical_examiners_aren_t_always_trustworthy.html