Dear Editor,

In a notable trial of a policeman in the USA, man has copied nature.

As an engineer who has a patent on a spacesuit for allowing astronauts to breathe in high “g” situations which occurs during launch and re-entry, where the rocket’s acceleration has to be kept low (in the region of 5g’s) limited to a survivable level, I recognise a similar situation where it is difficult to breathe.

In nature programmes on TV we often see pythons killing prey. The python sneaks up on its prey, grabs it, and quickly wraps itself around the animal, then squeezes (constricts) maintaining a constant pressure. The animal is killed because, every time it breathes out, the snake wraps tighter to keep up the pressure taking up the contraction of the chest like a ratchet making it impossible to take in a breath, while also making it easy to breathe out and consequently it eventually dies of suffocation, and is swallowed whole.

In the trial, the policeman is reported to have pressed his knee, backed by his body weight, down on the back of the deceased mimicking the effect of the constricting python. If another knee was rested on the deceased’s neck and squeezed his carotid artery and seriously restricted blood flow to the brain, he would have probably expired much sooner, probably under a minute. (See ‘Circulatory Arrest, Brain Arrest and Death Determination’, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › articles › PMC5890102)

This would have been the python prosecution and, in my engineering opinion, the most likely cause of death.

Howard Chin

hmc14@cwjamaica.com