Chauvin’s lawyer seeks new trial, hearing to impeach verdict

[SavannahMann]

I disagree. You are asked to be a juror, the protests and riots were very much in the open. You are in their town breathing their air. Do you actually expect me to believe that you would vote to acquit if you really believed that after the testimony, he was not guilty of anything?

Nobody wants to live the next several months if not the next few years with a target on their back. Especially with covid, people are yearning to go out and freely be part of society without fear. Even if you didn't care about yourself as much, certainly you'd have to worry about family members living in the area.

Move it far away to a different location, and if those jurors not under threat found him guilty of anything, at least we could all be convinced it was a fair and constitutional trial.

But wouldn’t those jurors be equally frightened? When bus loads of protestors showed up and were audible inside the courtroom just outside? Wouldn’t that fear be greater when there are more protestors than townspeople? When the National Guard has to be called in to build a perimeter around the courthouse?

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

But wouldn’t those jurors be equally frightened? When bus loads of protestors showed up and were audible inside the courtroom just outside? Wouldn’t that fear be greater when there are more protestors than townspeople? When the National Guard has to be called in to build a perimeter around the courthouse?

I don't think so. These are lowlifes. They are not about to ride 70 miles or more to the middle of nowhere to protest or start trouble. It's more likely they will have a public gathering outside in the city and start a riot there if the verdict is against their wishes.

We held the last Convention for Donald Trump in our city. They were making threats all over social media on how they were going to be coming in by the bus loads and it's going to be a blood bath. By the end of the event, three arrests, and two of the suspects from the Cleveland area.

They can't pull their shit here like they do in their commie cities. Try to block the road and pull an innocent out of their car to beat the hell out of them, it may be your last day on earth because our Castle Doctrine extends to our cars for licensed carriers. Breaking into my car is no different than breaking into my home as far as the law is concerned. It gives me permission to use deadly force. Furthermore there is no restrictions on how we carry our guns. You can keep a loaded un-holstered gun right on your passenger seat and have it ready to shoot in a half-second.

The lowlifes did the smart thing and stayed home.

 

[JoeB131]

Not a single piece of evidence went by without being challenged. The most famous of course is the gloves.

But the chain was weakened at every step. The cop who found most of the evidence and led the investigation was Mark Furman. The defense got to cross examine him. After he had testified about how he found the glove. The blood. All of the evidence was introduced by him.

He was the picture of cool, calm, professional detachment. He had no personal interest other than doing a fantastic job.

Then the Defense asked him if he had ever used the N word. He denied it. More than once. Absolutely sure he had never used it. They played the tape of him saying the word.

Actually, I fault Judge Ito for every allowing the question to be asked. It was irrelevant.

Then they attacked how he handled the evidence. Was he sure he had found the glove where he said? Oh yes. He was sure. The Defense didn’t have to ask if he was just as certain about this as he was about never using the N word.

In the minds of the Jury Furman was now possibly a liar.

It became possible that he mishandled the evidence. Contaminated it. Perhaps even planted it.

The Prosecution tried to convince the Jury that yes Furman lied. But it was unintentional and you can totally believe everything else that he said.

Except he would have to have planted the evidence in the full view of dozens of other cops, without even knowing from the start if OJ had an alibi for the time the murder happened. And what would have been his motive? If he really hated Black people, he could have run Simpson in a couple of years earlier when he beat Nicole.

NO, the conspiracy theories only really make sense if you are inclined to believe them to start with.

Then we got the first use of DNA. This was practically Science Fiction for the era. It was new. And here the Prosecution spent an entire day describing how DNA testing worked.

Science Majors were bored to tears before the day was over.

And it picked up the next day. Finally the Defense got to cross. And it was blessedly short. The odds of a match were one in ten million or so. The defense point? About three people had the same genetic markers in the Los Angeles Basin based upon those odds.

Again, this wasn't the Dream Team being brilliant as so much as Darden and Clark being dumb. They should have had a much simpler presentation of the DNA evidence.

The Jury Pool was restricted to people who didn’t read newspapers or watch the news. So they specifically wanted people who were unaware of their society and current events. That is where the Defense made their biggest win.

People like that will have a short attention span. They’ll be apathetic. And a full day plus of DNA testimony is hell on earth for them. They probably zoned out after ten minutes.

Even if they believed the DNA and believed that Furman was telling the truth about where and how it was found. Even if. The Defense was able to show that it could have been someone else.

Now I think OJ did it. But I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But based upon the trial I’d have my doubts.

I think this is an argument of why we need to replace juries with tribunals of people who are educated in science and forensics and law.

But the Dream Team was not all it was cracked up to be. It was a bunch of celebrity lawyers who lucked into two inept civil servants and jury of mutants who were looking to stick a finger in the eye of the LAPD.