Derek Chauvin trial begins today

They may be able to cast doubt on some of it, but contradict it? It's too solid, and any expert testifying on behalf of the defense must consider their professional reputation which could be ruined by speaking false or misleading testimony. Full acquittal won't happen, and Chauvin's lawyers should focus on minimizing his sentence.

 

Won't the jury be reminded of all that evidence in the Judge's summing up before the jury is asked to retire to consider their verdict ???

 

Yes, they will. That will include the facts that, what--nine trained law enforcement officers have said the level of force was way excessive under the circumstances, several medical experts have said it was the police, not the drugs or his health condition that caused the death, and that the scary mob that was intimidating the police were those nice, concerned citizens suffering from survivor guilt they saw break down on the witness stand in the early stages of the trial, including the nine year old child, the EMT offering medical assistance, the stressed out clerk who had taken the $20 bill, the old man who was counseling Floyd to cooperate, etc., and that the whole incident was a response to a non-violent crime of passing a $20 counterfeit bill. All confirming what normal people watching the videotapes would conclude with their own eyes.

 

My uncle pointed out the other day, and I agree that it may turn out there are one or two bigoted conservative right-wing geeks on the jury, it'll be hung, and he'll go free.

But the evidence is overwhelming, and I believe there should be a conviction; though Chauvin should be protected. He's not a genpop prisoner.

 

That's all the defense has to do. The burden of proof is on the prosecution, and the standard of proof is "beyond a reasonable doubt". The defense's job isn't to prove innocence; that's presumptive until a jury says otherwise. Their job is to cultivate "reasonable doubt" among the jurors, who historically are predisposed to giving police every benefit of the doubt in cases like this, no matter how egregious their crimes. Despite the evidence and testimony to date, I'll be utterly shocked and amazed if they vote to convict. Too many on the jury are just begging for any excuse, no matter how thin, to acquit.

Then there's the whole carte blanche of 'qualified immunity'....
Why officer who kneeled on George Floyd’s neck may never be held fully accountable

 

If nothing else I believe they'll nail him for manslaughter.

 

Qualified immunity requires "good faith and reasonable belief". With all those officers testifying otherwise, that might be hard to establish.

 

He doesnt deserve a fair ANYTHING,this idiot murdered someone!!!!!

 

If Chauvin gets any jail time at all, because of the publicity surrounding this case, he will have a 'very rough' of it in jail with his fellow prisoners, who will know he is a former Policeman.

 

‘Excited delirium’: the controversial defense that could be used in the Chauvin trial

Throughout the trial, the defense attorney Eric Nelson has made reference to the term “excited delirium”. He referenced it during opening arguments, has asked a number of witnesses about the term and will undoubtedly hammer the jury with it when the defense gets to present its case. But “excited delirium” is not recognized by the World Health Organization, the American Psychiatric Association or the American Medical Association, and is most frequently used in fatal cases of police violence, "disproportionately applied to Black men in police custody (APA)", and has been repeatedly used to justify a decision to not criminally charge police.

Despite having every bit as much validity as "female hysteria", it's a tried-and-true fig leaf sympathetic jurors are grasping for.

 

Has there been any proof Floyd knew the note was counterfeit yet?

 

I was hoping to watch the Red Sox vs. Twins but it's been postponed. It's being held in Minnesota and there's a curfew in effect due to fear of riots after another black man was shot by police in Minneapolis yesterday. 20-year-old Daunte Wright was shot dead during a traffic stop. He did resist, and the official story is a cop mistakenly grabbed his gun and fired when he meant to use his taser. Why am I skeptical?

 

And while the trail of Chauvin is going on, we have another potential one forming concerning an incident yesterday ten miles away, in which a senior police officer shot and killed an unarmed black 20 year old pursuant to a routine traffic stop. And why did this happen? The officer said she mistook her gun for her tazer and shot the kid whom she thought was trying to flee instead of tazing him. You can hear her saying on the bodycam video something like: Oh $%^. I shot him! At minimum, this sounds like gross negligence, which would be the basis for a manslaughter charge.

The judge in the Floyd trial has refused to sequester the jury to prevent them from hearing about this--probably a justifiable decision, but one which I'm sure would be the basis for appeal if Chauvin were convicted. The judge also denied the defense's efforts to have the passenger in Floyd's car at the time testify on fifth amendment grounds. The defense argued he could be asked to testify about non-incriminatory matters, but the judge thought it would be too difficult to maintain the boundary--another likely ground for appeal, should it come to that.

 

That's immaterial. Cops don't get to summarily execute people.

 

Minneapolis is a powder keg right now. This second police shooting has protesters in force on the streets right now defying the curfew. Riots could be imminent.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1381772578222661643

 

Officers typically carry their stun guns on their weak side, and their handguns are carried on their dominant side.

So is she right-handed or left-handed, because she did shoot him with her right hand

If she’s right-handed she’s either a great actress, or she broke under the stress and pressure of the situation.

The problem is the situation wasn't particularly stressful, they were going to arrest him on a non-violent misdemeanor warrant and while
it was a bit chaotic, If she can't handle a simple situation like that why is she even a police officer?

 

I think they've already decided and this is just for show, they're trying to find a way to balance wild rioting, against a miscarrage of Justice, he was a horrible dude and pretty much got what he deserved, he was a career criminal, heavydrug user, and a VIOLENT felon at that, he beat a pregnant woman with his gun during a home invasion when she said she didn't have any money. They don't want their cities burned down so the cop going to be a sacrificial lamb somewhat anyway to try to quell the destruction.
The real fault is with the judges that let him out of jail in the first place, after what he did just to reap more havoc on the city.

 

Actually from the police stop point of view, the man could have been a victim of a crime and a protentional witness if he had been passed a counterfeit note rather than a criminal. Hence me asking asking the original question, as i haven't heard anything about it other than some other notes being in the car. They should have established some evidence instead in jumping in at the deep end and trying to arrest him. I don't think police go around handcuffing and restraining little grey haired old ladies when they accidently pass on counterfeit notes. That's why I think it's relevant, the police management of situations from start to finish are racist. Allowing members of the public to racially profile people and call 911 for next to nothing, to the police over reacting, to the criminal courts handing out tougher sentences, it's all related imho.

 

Derek Chauvin Trial Live Updates: Prosecution rests, defense launches case (cbsnews.com)

 

Yesterday, at about 2:00 in the afternoon, a white police officer in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, shot and killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright, a Black man, after what seems to have been a routine traffic stop turned up an arrest warrant. Today, the Brooklyn Center police chief told reporters that the arresting officer intended to fire her Taser at Wright, but instead fired her gun.

Wright’s death took place about ten miles from where Derek Chauvin is on trial for killing George Floyd in Minneapolis last May. Then a police officer, Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds while bystanders implored him to stop. Chauvin, a white officer, was arresting Floyd, a Black man, on suspicion of using a counterfeit bill.

In the three weeks of Chauvin’s trial, the former officer’s defenders have noted that there was fentanyl in Floyd’s blood, and suggested he expired not because of the knee on his neck but because he abused opioids. After Wright’s death, those defending the police officer who shot him argued that Wright had brought the deadly outcome on himself by resisting arrest.

But here’s the thing: Mr. Floyd and Mr. Wright are not on trial. Whether they abused drugs, or passed bad bills, or did something that warranted arrest, or did all of those things or none of them simply does not matter. They are not on trial.

What is on trial is the fundamental American principle of equality before the law. Our law enforcement officers are supposed to use the force of the state to deliver suspected lawbreakers to our criminal justice system. And yet, in both of these cases—and so many others in which a Black person has died at the hands of police—the officers apparently killed suspected offenders instead of delivering them to the legal system guaranteed under our Constitution. Individual police officers appear to have taken the law into their own hands and become judge, jury, and executioner.

Either Floyd and Wright had the right to due legal process, or police officers could condemn them to death without the due process of the law. If the former, it is imperative to defend the principle of equality before the law against those who would undermine that principle. If the latter, Floyd and Wright are not equal to white Americans, and we need to revisit exactly what sort of government we have.

On this day in 1861, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, the United States fort located in Charleston Harbor, launching a Civil War that would take more than 600,000 lives and cost the United States more than $5 billion. The leaders of the Confederate States of America believed that the government of the United States of America had a fatal flaw: it declared that all men were created equal.

The men who framed the Constitution had made the terrible error of believing in equality, Georgia’s Alexander Stephens, the newly-elected vice president of the Confederacy, told a crowd on March 21, 1861. Northerners, he said, stupidly clung to the outdated idea that “the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man.”

In contrast to the United States government,” Stephens said, “the Confederate government rested on the “great truth” that “the negro is not equal to the white man; that… subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.” Stephens told listeners that the Confederate government “is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

Abraham Lincoln rejected this radical attempt to destroy the principles of the Declaration of Independence. He understood that it was not just Black rights at stake, but also democracy. Arguments like that of Stephens, that some men were better than others, “are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world,” Lincoln said. “You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden…. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent….”

Lincoln warned that “it does not stop with the negro. I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it where will it stop. If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?” He told an audience in Chicago, Illinois, that Americans must stand with the Declaration of Independence or, he said, “If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it and tear it out!”

“NO! NO!” his audience cried. And when the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, they took up arms to defend their government.

Almost four years to the day after the firing on Fort Sumter, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia, marking the defeat of the Confederacy and its attempt to create a nation in which some people were better than others.

And yet, on January 6, 2021, insurrectionists brandished the Confederate battle flag in the U.S. Capitol.

Heather Cox Richardson, 4/12/2021