How do you know this?
All of who? I’m talking about one ME.
I never insisted it was obvious. I have, however, said there’s no reason to rule it out.
How much weight would be needed and did Chauvin apply that much weight with one knee?
There’s a million questions that are not being answered here and to me, some of these answers might very well mean the difference between guilt and innocence.
No doubt Chauvin at the very least should have been reprimanded for using an improper procedure. But I cannot discount the tremendous political, public and social pressure to hang Chauvin.
As pointed out to Xchaos, Maxine Waters and other politicians and celebrities were screaming for a guilty verdict even before the trial started. Half the country wanted to lynch Chauvin and you don’t think that could have been an influencing factor?
Have you ever heard of the case of the West Memphis Three?
If you haven’t, let me tell you; if you have, let me remind you: Three young men were wrongly convicted for the rape and murder of three little boys and were sentenced to life plus forty years; life in prison and to death, respectively.
Guess whose flawed autopsy and testimony helped get these guys wrongly convicted? That’s right, the medical examiner’s.
The point is, no one - not even medical examiners - is immune to outside pressure and the pressure and emotions in this case were especially weighty.
Chauvin’s weight was calculated by the Cardiologist who testified in the trial, and how much pressure was on the neck. It was more than enough to restrict blood flow according to the testimony. Testimony that the Defense did not present a witness to challenge, and didn’t do much to counter during cross.
Mistakes do happen. And I am all for correcting mistakes. However, I can’t get worked up that someone missed something in a case like this. The Defense Coroner said he would rule the death undetermined. No clear cause. That was his direct testimony when called by the Defense. His Cross Examination was death to the entire case for Chauvin. He sank Chauvin.
I’ve watched a lot of trials. A few in person, and more than a few online. I’ve read books about them. The best outcomes for the defense always come when the Defense actively challenges every piece of evidence. It worked for many public defendants over the years. OJ for one, Rittenhouse, and even the Bundy’s.
But in none of the cases did the Defense win when they did a half hearted job. Some cases were half hearted because the evidence was so strong. Others were that way because they just didn’t have the funding. Chauvin had the funding. The evidence against him was just that strong.
Team Chauvin put forth a couple experts who tried to throw doubt on the Prosecution’s case. The Coroner we’ve discussed to death. The other was a Use of Force expert. The expert was just as bad for Chauvin as the Coroner was. The expert testified that Chauvin was using a common technique. Used hundreds of times a day.
Defense attorneys in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin on Tuesday called an expert witness who testified that the former Minneapolis police officer was justified and reasonable in his use of force during his arrest of George Floyd.
www.reuters.com
The cross examination was again brutal. The Prosecution asked the expert to identify the resistance when Floyd was unconscious. The expert couldn’t.
So the Defense Experts couldn’t spin the story that Chauvin was justified. They tried, God bless them, they tried. But they came off as weak and sort of mealy mouthed.
The question came down to this. Would Floyd have died if Chauvin didn’t kneel on him? The answer was a resounding almost certainly not. While anything is possible, Floyd dying without the actions of Chauvin, is an extremely remote possibility.
That’s where our Legal System comes in. To convict, the jury has to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt. After hearing the evidence, I don’t have much in the way of doubts, much less any I would consider reasonable. I can see where the Jury didn’t have any reasonable doubts either.
The first round of Appeals has run, and nobody, including the Supreme Court, has found a reason to overturn the verdict. Now, if you doubt the conclusions of experts, then you have paths to explore. Those paths are the appeals process. And round one has been done, and denied. This isn’t always the case.
One of those cases I mentioned I read about, was the trial of Jim Williams in my own local area, Savannah. Jim Williams was first tried for Murder and got a hung jury. He got a second trial, and was convicted, but the conviction was overturned and returned for a retrial by the Appeals Court. The third trial, where local legend lawyer Sonny Seiler took the defense, was an acquittal.
Seiler created doubt in the minds of the Jurors, by challenging every piece of evidence. He showed the scientific evidence, like residue on the hands, was contaminated by sloppy police work. He showed that the evidence at the scene had been collected poorly as well, as evidenced by the Police’s own photographs and reports.
Sonny Seiler created a reasonable doubt that the story told by the Prosecution was true. Jim Williams was acquitted.
Now. I’m in favor of acquittals. I’m one of those who was taught, and firmly believes that it is better for a thousand guilty men to go free, than one innocent man go to prison. So I wholeheartedly support acquittals. I even supported the acquittal of the Bundy’s, people who I have called asshats many times.
I watch the trials, and when I can’t watch, I read the synopsis, and sometimes even watch the summaries of important testimony. I can usually get a feeling before the trial is over what is going to happen. Sometimes I know the outcome before the trial is held. One example of that is the McMichaels of Brunswick Georgia.
To Chauvin again. I knew he would be found guilty. And I knew why he looked like a deer in the headlights through the whole process. People claim he was sacrificed to the BLM, Leftists, ANTIFA, and whatever groups. That’s not true. Oh Chauvin was Sacrificed. But not to the Left. Chauvin was sacrificed to White Middle Class America.
The Police were not about to explain that Chauvin had many complaints, of which most were upheld for violating policy. They were not going to explain that Chauvin had knelt on people until they passed out before. They were not going to explain why Chauvin was still a cop. They were not going to admit that while they “reprimanded” Chauvin they had patted him on the back. Thus encouraging his brutality as a good thing while teaching him the rules were bullshit that had to be mouthed, but not taken seriously.
Chauvin was set up. But not by BLM, or any of the others. He was set up by his superiors and peers. People who ran from him as this story broke. People who abandoned him to the wolves.
But that is always the case when someone knowingly breaks the rules because they think the rules are stupid. Look at Racing. NASCAR has long been the example of this. Cheating to win, and coming up with ways not to get caught. Want a bigger fuel tank? Put a basketball in the tank, inflate it, and then fill it up. When the Stewards and officials drain the tank to check the volume they find it meets the rules. Then the crew chief deflates the ball, removes it, and has an extra gallon of gas, or more, inside. Adjustable deflectors, and the list is almost endless.
Cheating is done all the time. And we celebrate the winners who don’t get caught. And all those patting the winner on the back are suddenly absent when their luck runs out. They rush to the microphones and declare they can’t believe that good old Bob would do that. They’re shocked. Sometimes you can mistake their press conferences as Cartoons when they go all Foghorn Leghorn.
In this, and nearly every case, the guy did it. He got caught finally, and it couldn’t be swept under the rug. It was too big. Too many people knew. So the guy is thrown to the wolves, but not to placate the obvious enemies. To placate the middle class white folks.
The people the Police need to keep thinking they’re the good guys who would never imagine cheating like Derek did. The people who are sitting on the jury and refusing to even consider that the cops might be lying when they say they found drugs in the car. That is who Derek Chauvin was sacrificed to placate. To keep up the illusion that the disturbing view of Chauvin kneeling on a man as he died, doesn’t happen with the rest of the cops.
Chauvin was never a hero. He was a thug with a badge. He never should have been a cop. They should have fired him a long time ago, and handed him a card to truck driving school. But they kept him in the department and on the street. And eventually his luck ran out. Chauvin did what he had done many times before, and this time, it killed someone.
The end was not inevitable. It was however a result of not taking reform and enforcing the rules seriously on the cops who worked for the bosses. If you can’t offer the policy your full throated and whole hearted support, you can’t expect your officers to obey those rules. When they break the rules, which you think are Liberal bullshit, you turn a blind eye. You minimize it. You downplay it, doing just enough to cover your own ass. Why yes I reprimanded Chauvin for it. He knows not to do it again. Wink wink and a pat on the back.
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