Saugerties, New York – A Saugerties High School teacher has sparked controversy over a school assignment suggesting George Floyd didn't die at the hands of Minneapolis police.

Derek Chauvin, the ex-Minneapolis police officer who knelt on George Floyd's neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds, was convicted of murder in April.

Nevertheless, one high school teacher in New York decided to give students an assignment calling his verdict into question, NBC News reported.

The students were tasked with writing "a bold topic/thematic sentence," providing evidence and addressing counterarguments. The assignment included two examples.

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"George Floyd did not die because Chauvin's knee was on his neck. He died from a heart attack and drug overdose," the first example read.

The second example expressed the view that one of Chauvin's jurors, Brandon Mitchell, misled the court when answering whether he had any past involvement with Black Lives Matter. The assignment suggested "he could not have been forthcoming in his statements" and asked students to answer whether "the Chauvin case [should] be retried because of Brandon Mitchell. Why or why not?"

Sakinah Irizarry, a middle-school teacher in the same district, shared the assignment on Facebook. "Even if we were not talking about this case, specifically, it takes the death of a person, I'd say, from a very cold and distant point of view," she said.

"I keep coming back to empathy. It is not an empathetic point of view of a person who died, it is blaming a person who's died for their own death. That chips away at empathy," Irizarry continued.

Saugerties Central School District Superintendent Kirk Reinhardt said the assignment is currently under review after at least one student reported feeling upset by it.

In his statement, Reinhardt said, "In this instance, when the teacher realized that a student felt uncomfortable with the assignment, the student was immediately contacted in order to acknowledge and discuss the student’s concerns."

He added that "racially conscious curriculum and equity" would be a priority for instructors, but declined to speak on the factual errors at the heart of the assignment.