Topic: Riots after Death of Man in Minneapolis Police Custody - page 4. (Read 4451 times)

This verdict confirms that the justice system is racist against white people. The murderer of Ashli Babbitt walks away, because he's Black.
George Floyd died because he ingested too much Fentanyl, had pre-existing conditions, and resisted arrest, but the white police officer is convicted of a non-existant murder.

Guilty on all counts.

Good.

That's not what he said, though. He said it was enough pressure to kill anybody, which is what is important. Regardless, I would take his word any day of the week, seeing as how he has the slightest inkling of what he is talking about and neither of us do.

The big tech companies routinely restrict the circulation of videos and posts. They can also attack a warning that it is misleading, or is lacking context.

Watching the video in May made me believe that Chauvin killedmurdered Floyd. However after additional information was made public, such as Floyd's drug levels in his system when he died, and his history of health problems, along with the fact that Floyd was saying that he cannot breathe while he was in the police car, and more recently, that Chauvin did not have his knee on Floyd's neck the entire ~9 minutes.

This is probably what Waters wants. Chauvin getting off would help Waters and her fellow Democrats push their talking points. There was a segment on Tucker Carlson Tonight last night that talked about Waters' decades-long history of promoting the use of mob violence.

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The jury has reached a verdict, and it should be read in the next 10 minutes. Some are saying that such a quick verdict is not beneficial to the defense. I would expect riots regardless of the outcome.

Edit: he was found guilty on all charges

Wasn't saying it was the judges responsibility.  Just saying if it did happen, I would be surprised if the judge didn't notice it and pause the trial to sort things out with the juror before moving on rather than wait for one of the lawyers to bring it to the courts attention.

Maybe they didn't ask about it because they agreed with his assessment, or else felt it wasn't worth disagreeing with? The defense did bring up the fact that the calculation was theoretical. But they didn't disagree with it like you are.


Did you miss the part when the doctor said anybody would have died had they been subjected to what Chauvin did to Floyd?


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56670912

Judge Cahill under some controversy for suggesting that if convicted, Chauvin has some grounds for appeal over Maxine Waters' comments about being more "confrontational"  if they do not get a murder conviction. Cahill called her comments abhorrent and said that he'd wish elected officials would stop talking about the case. https://www.reuters.com/business/legal/judge-blasts-us-rep-maxine-waters-abhorrent-comments-about-chauvin-trial-2021-04-19/

Imagine, Derek Chauvin convicted and Maxine Waters is Chauvin's get out of jail free card.

Who do you think should've stopped the video from circulating.  And how?

Think about the implications of citizens not being able to share footage of police.  This wasn't some magical camera or edited footage.  People saw what actually happened.

Do you not see a knee on his neck?

I think the term "homicide" in a medical sense is a poor choice of words because it is often used by propagandists who conflate the two meanings. It would be more appropriate to describe these types of deaths as "caused by a person who is not the deceased". 

It appears that even nutildah agrees with you.

The fact that the video taken by the bystander was allowed to circulate and go viral last summer, while the police department did not release additional footage showing Chauvin's knee on Floyd's shoulder is probably grounds for an appeal if Chauvin is found guilty. Whoever made the decision to not release the additional footage is also probably guilty of the manslaughter of the dozens of people who died in the resulting riots.

I think it is very common for the defense to ask for an acquittal after the prosecution rests their case.

Something that is technically legal, is legal. Period. If you don't like it, change the law. Hold the politicians accountable. There are plenty of laws passed by Democrats they should be held accountable for.

This part:


Explain what the issue is. Explain why you have a better guess as to what the pressure exerted was than a licensed intensive care physician who is providing testimony under oath in the most highly publicized trial of the year.

I thought it was usual to ask for an acquittal? People were saying that everybody expected it, that it was just procedural.

But I thought the defense was going to be a lot longer than it was. Maybe they thought they did a good job with Dr. Fowler, I thought they did, and figured they'd end on a high note instead of risking collapse like with their witness Barry Brodd.

Regardless, godspeed to the jurors.

What I don't understand is how either of you can believe you actually possess more knowledge about this issue than the experts and attorneys in the courtroom. The normalization of the questioning of experts when people don't like what they have to say will be one of Trump's longest lasting legacies.

OK, let's break it down. You started each sentence in the first paragraph with the word "If". So you're already assuming certain conditions are present in order to make a point. In your second paragraph you use the word "may" in both sentences -- again, you don't know if these things are true or not. You didn't actually supply any evidence whatsoever, which is why your post is 100% speculation.

Also, it's not entirely honest to post in the same thread using two different accounts. Because you insist one of them is not yours, it appears as if you are attempting to bolster credibility for your previously espoused viewpoints by introducing a different account that shares them. If it were hilariousandco and hilariousetc posting in the same thread, I wouldn't mind so much.

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I really don't know how the trial will turn out, but I am for due process. Trying to put myself in the shoes of the jurors, just for the exercise: on one hand, you don't want to sentence a man to prison if it turns out he didn't actually do anything wrong; on the other hand, you don't want to cause riots by letting a guilty man off scott-free. How do you handle the gray area between technically legal and common sense?

Maybe he'll get some kind of mid-level sentence. Who knows.

One interesting tidbit I heard on the Adam Carolla podcast (see, if I was truly a big lib I wouldn't have listened to his show for the last decade) was that Mark Geragos, a LA trial lawyer, claimed that the defense must have thought they did a good job as they motioned to sequester the jury, three days ago. According to Geragos, if the defense thought they were losing, they would have motioned for acquittal.

https://www.newsnationnow.com/banfield/attorney-mark-geragos-discusses-the-defenses-opening-in-day-12-of-chauvin-trial/

Well, two days later, guess what happened? The defense motioned for acquittal, and it was denied, obviously.

https://kstp.com/news/defense-continues-presenting-case-april-14-2021-derek-chauvin-trial/6074716/

Not sure what changed between now and then but something tells me you won't catch Geragos doing a 180 here.

Defense just rest their case, meaning that all the evidence has been presented. Jury will listen to closing arguments on Monday and then deliberate. Trial is essentially over.

My personal thoughts on the defense "star" witness, Dr. Fowler by the defense.

WaPo, Pathologist testifies for Derek Chauvin defense there were too many conflicting factors to call George Floyd’s death a homicide -https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/04/14/derek-chauvin-trial-2/.

On Dr. Fowler's credibility, he served as the Chief medical examiner for Maryland for a number of years (so basically what Dr. Baker does), and has served as a forensic pathologist for decades. Dr. Fowler saved the defense after the miserable performance yesterday by defensive tactics experts Mr. Bodd.

I highly recommend anyone that has doubts of the cause of death watch Dr. Fowler's testimony because it almost completely corroborates what Dr. Baker was able to testify about Floyd's cause of death. There is one major difference which I will get into in a sec.

But not only did Dr. Fowler corroborate Dr. Baker's findings, Dr. Fowler covers at least a dozen research papers examining positional asphyxia and in custody deaths. Bottom line according to Dr. Fowler, in custody deaths of positional asphyxia are exceedingly rare to almost nonexistent because the pressure required by someone to asphyxiate a normal person is about 225 pounds of pressure, barring other factors. Most striking studies to me was a use of force review/analysis of a jurisdiction (forgot what area this was) where *over 1000 uses of the prone restraint technique** were used and not one had resulted in a positional asphyxia death. Not one.

You'll also remember Dr. Thomas was asked about a Canada study where the maximal restraint technique was used in real world police interactions, not just a simulation study using some gym mats and people kneeling on each other to collect a participation check. Thousands of prone positional restraints were analyzed out of over 1 million police interactions, no significant clinical deviations were found from these real world police interactions compared to the stimulated interactions. This disputes the prosecution's point that you need to throw out these simulated studies because they aren't real world. What was Dr. Thomas's reaction to this Canadian study where not a single in custody death was reported from the maximal restraint technique? She had nothing to say, no rebuttal, see this 2 minute clip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtXTG6_qmjs

Mr. Blackwell on cross examination did refute a couple of the studies regarding the pressure put on someone during the maximal restraint technique, saying that all the studies Dr. Fowler mentioned did not include a knee to the back of the neck, and furthermore did not include restraint being held for 9+ minutes. Dr. Fowler reluctantly agreed. I also kind of agree as well. I tried looking, no studies were done on an individual that was being restrained, hand cuffed, and held down on concrete for over 9 minutes. So it's possible that throws in some variable factors into the mix when we start looking at studies.

Worth noting on redirect, Nelson pointed out that one of the studies *did in fact* examine restraint being held for over 9 minutes, and refreshed Dr. Fowler's memory by presenting him the study. So Mr. Blackwell was wrong.

Just a note on the whole homicide thing, see this slide presented by Dr. Fowler - https://i.imgur.com/ZoEpNF9.png. This slide is taken from https://www.thename.org/ guidelines of death classifications. Just to be clear, homicide in the medical sense is not homicide in the legal sense.

That being said, Dr. Fowler classified Floyd's death as undetermined because there were so many contributing factors involved, it is hard to pinpoint what exactly would have caused Floyd to experience cardiac arrhythmia (all cardiac arrhythmia means is your heart stops working). Meaning was it the drugs? Methamphetamine acting as a vasoconstrictor and stimulant increasing heart rate (both something the defense and state witnesses have corroborated)? Fentanyl causing a potential depression in respiration rate? His heart condition which had coronary artery blockage of near 90 percent in one artery, which Dr. Baker testified could cause sudden death. Was it having an enlarged heart which would require his heart to work harder under stress? Or was it a combination of all these factors creating a recipe for disaster following subdual, restraint, and neck compression by law enforcement? Whatever you think the answer is, we have gone so far from positional asphyxia due to Chauvin's neck which was the original point of contention.

Today, the state recalled Dr. Tobin to refute some portions of Dr. Fowler's testimony. The rebuke was extremely ineffective, lasting a mere few minutes.

All in all after listening to everything? Should be an acquittal. There is reasonable doubt that is painted all over this case and almost an infinite number of holes the prosecution left on the table. But I'm not sure if the jury will agree.

I don't think you can possibly control whether jurors are paying attention to one part of the trial or another even if they're not visibly asleep. It's 50:50 defense's and prosecution's fault for picking inattentive jurors and/or - I can't believe I'm agreeing with Quick7 here - not bringing the matter up with the judge. I don't get why you're so upset about this specific issue... I mean if the defense lawyer is shit and doesn't know or take advantage of details like this, that's a much bigger problem for Chauvin than just a sleeping juror.

It is not up to the judge to notice a sleeping juror. if opposing counsel does something that is not allowed per the rules of evidence, it is up to the other side to object, and if they do not raise the objection, the resulting testimony will be allowed.

What exactly do you think I am speculating about? Be specific.

I knew from the start it was during the prosecution's side of the case, but I don't know if it was during the direct or the cross examination because the courtroom reporter didn't say that part (well, they could've, I just don't remember reading it so correct me if I'm wrong). The point is the same.

Imagine - juror falls asleep during direct questioning of a state witness, but then they are awake for the cross examination. What's that do? That puts a bias in favor of the defense. And of course, the flip situation applies.

What is not common sense about what I said? Is it not unreasonable to ask a juror to stay awake for obvious reasons?

Can't imagine that judge not noticing or not doing anything about a sleeping juror.

Im guessing someone closed their eyes for a minute, which is normal,  and a reporter decided to make a story out of it.

Also possible someone was sleeping and the judge yelled at the juror and/or lawyers brought it up during a side bar to be handled when the press wasn't there.

Hypothetical, what if a sleeping jury member caused Chauvin to get acquitted or a mistrial? Would you not be upset that a killer just got loose because someone was passed out being lazy? This goes both ways. Even if it's common, with how much is on the line, it's disrespectful. And let's take it further than that, if someone fell asleep during the trial, does a reasonable person expect this person to have been paying attention to everything presented? This case is extremely complicated, it's not cut and dry.

If a juror is sleeping, the burden is on the defense to bring this up in court as soon as it is noticed. If the junior is sleeping while testimony favorable to the defense is being given, it may be grounds for a mistrial, but it is up to the defense to bring this up. If they were sleeping today, it may be beneficial for the defense as you described the day as bad for the defense.

Sleeping during trial by a juror is apparently fairly common and this may be an attempt to get off the jury/get out of jury duty. The juror may be having second thoughts about their ability to be impartial after hearing some of the testimony and realizing just how weak a case the prosecution has.