Verdict: Derek Chauvin Guilty on All Three Counts
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin Mug Shot. Photo by Hennepin County Sheriff.
It took ten hours for the jury in the trial of Derek Chauvin to render a verdict: guilty on all three counts.
BREAKING: Derek Chauvin found guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree unintentional murder and second-degree manslaughter https://t.co/FujjaDPld8 pic.twitter.com/f3zVD5ypv0
— CBS News (@CBSNews) April 20, 2021
Back when the charges were first announced, Em Carpenter broke down the charges:
The law differs from state to state. Minnesota has three categories of murder: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree. Most states have similar 1st degree statutes; they typically require premeditation and intent to kill. 2nd degree does not generally require premeditation, but the actual elements of what it does require differ widely. 3rd degree murder is unusual; Minnesota is one of only a handful of states who have such a category.
The initial charge against Chauvin was 3rd degree:
609.195 MURDER IN THE THIRD DEGREE.
(a) Whoever, without intent to effect the death of any person, causes the death of another by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life, is guilty of murder in the third degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 25 years.
This seemed appropriate, under the circumstances. Chauvin caused the death of George Floyd by perpetrating an eminently dangerous act–kneeling on his neck for 9 minutes–and evinced a depraved mind, with no regard for human life by ignoring the man’s pleas and not stopping even when the man lost consciousness and became unresponsive. Nevertheless, an angry public hearing the words “third degree” felt the charge was not severe enough for Chauvin’s actions.
Perhaps it was this outcry that moved AG Ellison to add a charge of 2nd degree:
609.19 MURDER IN THE SECOND DEGREE.
Subdivision 1. Intentional murder; drive-by shootings.
Whoever does either of the following is guilty of murder in the second degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 40 years:
(1) causes the death of a human being with intent to effect the death of that person or another, but without premeditation; or
(2) causes the death of a human being while committing or attempting to commit a drive-by shooting in violation of section 609.66, subdivision 1e, under circumstances other than those described in section 609.185, paragraph (a), clause (3).
Subd. 2. Unintentional murders.
Whoever does either of the following is guilty of unintentional murder in the second degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 40 years:
(1) causes the death of a human being, without intent to effect the death of any person, while committing or attempting to commit a felony offense other than criminal sexual conduct in the first or second degree with force or violence or a drive-by shooting; or
(2) causes the death of a human being without intent to effect the death of any person, while intentionally inflicting or attempting to inflict bodily harm upon the victim, when the perpetrator is restrained under an order for protection and the victim is a person designated to receive protection under the order.
The original charges have not been dismissed, so Chauvin is now charged with 2nd and 3rd degree murder and 2nd degree manslaughter (the manslaughter charge entails causing the death of another by “culpable negligence whereby the person creates an unreasonable risk, and consciously takes chances of causing death or great bodily harm to another.”) What he actually goes to trial for will be determined by the grand jury.
Note that the 2nd degree murder statute is divided into intentional and unintentional murder. Intentional 2nd degree murder includes drive-by shootings and intentionally causing the death of another, but without premeditation (such as a crime of passion). But subdivision two of the 2nd degree murder statute covers unintentional murder. When news broke yesterday that Ellison was going with 2nd degree, many assumed Chauvin would be charged with subdivision 1, section 1, which would require the state to prove he intended to cause Floyd’s death.
Many thought it was a set up for failure; proving intent to kill seemed a pretty steep climb. Some considered the decision not to play it safe as capitulating to mob; other, more conspiracy-minded people suspected Ellison was intentionally aiming too high to sabotage the case (though opinions varied as to whether he would do so for Chauvin’s benefit, or to stir up further unrest for the benefit of Antifa.)
As it turns out, Ellison had no plans of trying to establish intent; he was going with subsection 2, unintentional murder.
From NPR:
The charge against Chauvin is categorized as “Second Degree Murder – Unintentional – While Committing A Felony.”
Discussing that charge, Ellison said, “According to Minnesota law, you have to have premeditation and deliberation to charge first-degree murder. Second-degree murder, you have to intend for death to be the result. For second-degree felony murder, you have to intend the felony and then death be the result — without necessarily having it be the intent.”
When asked about the felony in question, he said, “We would contend that George Floyd was assaulted, so that would be the underlying felony.”
This type of charge is more often known as felony murder. It is used when someone commits a felony, and in the course of that felony, a person is killed. In most states, it is subject to the same penalty as first degree murder.
In this case, analyzing the charge requires a look at what constitutes a felony assault in Minnesota. It is pretty straight forward:
609.221 ASSAULT IN THE FIRST DEGREE.
Subdivision 1. Great bodily harm.
Whoever assaults another and inflicts great bodily harm may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 20 years or to payment of a fine of not more than $30,000, or both.
Elsewhere in the code, “great bodily harm” is defined as “bodily injury which creates a high probability of death, or which causes serious permanent disfigurement, or which causes a permanent or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any bodily member or organ or other serious bodily harm.” No matter how obvious it may seem to you or me that kneeling on a person’s neck fits this definition, it will likely require expert testimony to establish; chances are the defense will find an expert who will opine just the opposite. One can imagine that the official autopsy report, showing no harm to Floyd’s neck and making no finding of asphyxiation will be part of that defense. The murky and vague findings as to cause of death will no doubt be one of the most contentious points of dispute.
Let this be a lesson to police everywhere.Report
Yeah, that ain’t going to happen. They’ll see this as an outlier. At best, we may see MN change some policies regarding The treatment of detained suspects, etc.Report
Anything to shake them in their complacency is a positive. Suffice to say this verdict is good but not sufficient. Perhaps the start of the beginning of reform rather than the conclusion of it; at least I hope it is.Report
Welp, that didn’t take long.
(I’ve seen it argued that she was the one who called the cops because of domestic violence, she was the one who called the cops because people were fighting outside of her house, and that she called the cops because she was in a fight. I’ve seen it argued that she was holding a knife and went after the police when they arrived. I’ve seen it argued that she was merely holding the knife and she got shot. I’ve seen it argued that she did not have a knife at all. I’d suggest caution about the police reports until the bodycam evidence shows up.)Report
Well, the police have released bodycam footage and, apparently, it’s awful and chaotic and there is room to say “what did you expect?”
I have not watched it. I don’t really intend to.
But if you want to, the thread is here:
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And this quotation from NPR (which raises questions about Facts Theory) pretty much sums it up:
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Sometimes what is acceptable in one culture is unacceptable in other cultures. Figuring out whether one culture should absorb the other or whether the two cultures can merely live next door to each other without either changing the other is the debate at the heart of “Multiculturalism”.
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Black Lives that Matter™:
✅ Stabber
❌ StabbeeReport
Checkmate!Report
Huh. The comments on twitter are worth reading. There are three groups.
1) Cop was justified at shooting, that’s what we expect him to do. This is the most common group.
2) Cop should have done something else to stop it. The words “de-escalation” or “taser” come up.
3) No need for him to do anything, knife fights happen, it’s not a big deal.
Unlike #2 that’s not magic thinking, JB is right and it’s “different culture”.Report
Regardless, it’s not going to be a Floyd. Muddled issues like this just sink beneath the national consciousness because they don’t cleanly fit into anyone’s narratives.Report
This one isn’t even that marginal. If the cops hadn’t acted, and the girl had been stabbed, the police would get raked over the coals.
Could the cops have stopped the fight without firing a gun or taser? Probably.
Do we train cops to do that? No.
I mean, police academy is maybe 20 weeks. My training in the Navy was 12 weeks of basic, 20 weeks of gas turbine school, and 12 weeks of hovercraft school. All so I could be qualified to apprentice under the people who knew how to fix engines on ships and boats.
We kid ourselves that policing today is a career that we can train a person for in a semester. Maybe it was 40 years ago, but nowadays…?Report
This isn’t marginal unless we’re good with letting her stab someone.
The bodycam footage isn’t that great. Neighbor’s security cam had a better view and his was steady. https://www.foxnews.com/media/neighbor-with-footage-of-makhia-bryant-shooting-the-video-doesnt-lie
Stopping that mess without firing something would have been hard.
Supposedly from the time he got out of the car it was 9 seconds to shooting. Most of that time she wasn’t there. She came flying out in full attack mode and wasn’t listening to anyone.
Now this does make me wonder why she was in foster care.Report
Nine seconds in 7.2 seconds longer then Tamir Rice got.Report
If we count the actual time the cop and the person shot had to interact, it was about the same. Difference is this call seems to have been right.
The Rice case also had other system problems. Cops were told they had an active shooter without being told the gun was probably fake nor that it was probably a child.
If that wasn’t bad enough the guy who shot shouldn’t have been a cop at all. “an inability to emotionally function as an officer.” and “pattern of a lack of maturity, indiscretion and not following instructions” is really bad.
IMHO Rice showcased multiple areas for potential improvement (firing incompetent cops, not telling them they have an active shooter when they don’t and giving them more info).
This case… I’m not sure what “improvement” we can make. This one showcases we have cultural disagreements on what level of violence is appropriate.Report
Culturally white people would never tolerate the level of violence being inflicted on them that they tolerate being inflicted on people of color.
The girl in question could have been tackled from behind for crying out loud. There were options but we don’t train our cops to use them when they encounter black or brown people.Report
It’s dubious there was time and the knife wielder switching targets meant she put herself out of reach. I would also guess police training assumes a knife wielder is as strong or stronger than the cop, and bringing the cop’s gun within wrestling range might be a no-no.
Assuming his choices were shoot or let Pink be stabbed, what do you want him to do?
I don’t understand the claim here. Are you saying that if it were a white girl with the knife, the cop would have let Pink be stabbed? Or are you claiming the girl with the knife is the fault of white society?
If it’s the later, we’ve tried stuff over the years. The war on poverty. Ramping up the war on drugs. School busing. At the moment we’re claiming cultural choices, like how much violence to tolerate, are a result of “racism”.Report
“Assuming his choices were shoot or let Pink be stabbed, what do you want him to do?”
Why is this the assumption? Since we have countless examples of here and around the world of officers subduing knife wielding suspects without gunfire.
This is what we are getting at here, that when it comes to police, the default assumption is to allow them to kill, unless somehow it can be proven that it was unnecessary.
The burden of proof is entirely backward, where the value of a human life is assumed not to matter.Report
If you want to make the conversation broader, i.e. “do we shoot knife wielders too often”, then we can have that talk.
However in this situation the cop is less than a half second from Pink being stabbed and he’s too far away to do anything but shoot or watch. Worse, I don’t see what he was supposed to do and didn’t in the previous 9 seconds he was there. To the extent “something else should have been done” or “mistakes were made”, they were made by other people before he got out of the car. They’re options he doesn’t have.
It’s not a perfect world. We get to make the assumption that he can shoot or watch a stabbing because he is dealing with this picture.
https://media.tegna-media.com/assets/WBNS/images/0be71663-d369-490a-9d45-1cb0f54610e6/0be71663-d369-490a-9d45-1cb0f54610e6_1920x1080.jpg
So which do you want?Report
Do you think this girl was stronger then the cop who responded? I don’t. The cop probably didn’t. And cops have plenty of ways to keep suspects from grabbing their guns. Derek Chauvin managed to do it while cuffing George Floyd. None of those ways were deployed here. There was nothing thrown at her, there was no distraction attempted to mover off the other girl; no Taser was deployed.
I’m saying white people would not tolerate the level of violence that is routinely exerted against black people by the police. If white men were killed in a similar ratio to their portion of the population as black men then cops would have been disarmed decades ago. White people expect cops to deploy maximum violence initially against black people and minimal violence against white people.Report
No, but I think they’re trained for adult knife wielders and what to do with children isn’t separated out because it isn’t expected to come up.
These ideas seem to insist on more time than I observed.
We don’t get riots over “portion”. We get riots over single acts of injustice and a narrative. There are more white deaths to get spun up over than black deaths. We just don’t have the narrative.
We should assume the police can be just as incompetent when dealing with whites.Report
I agree with Dark that in this case, their were really only two options; either the cop shoots (Taser is very iffy for a target moving orthogonal), or he lets the girl with the knife get some attacks in while he closes the distance.
Columbus, OH did not train or equip the cop with any other options.
The question here is why were those the only options on the table for this officer?Report
Let’s define our requirements. We want a non-lethal take down in a lethal situation. The lethal situation is on a random person in a crowd (i.e. not the cop) and is out of reach. The situation popped up with a second or two’s warning and will happen in another half second.
The speed of this is a problem. “De-escalation” isn’t going to work because there’s no time. He tried giving an order and that didn’t work. “out of reach” means hand to hand isn’t available. “On someone else” means the cop’s defenses don’t lower the risk of the situation.
If the solution is a weapon, then he needed to get out of the car with it and he needs to have drawn it as his primary weapon because he doesn’t have time to switch.
A bolo gun, or net gun, or taser, or even impact stun gun might work. “Might work” is a serious problem because if it doesn’t then Pink gets stabbed.
I’m at a serious loss as to what we can do if we’re not willing to run a serious risk of Pink getting stabbed.
At the moment, all of the “other” solutions proposed fail because of unacceptable risk to Pink or lack of time.
So… are we willing to run a very high risk of Pink getting stabbed?
No one has been willing to say “yes” to that, but this looks like a binary choice. If shooting the girl with the knife is unacceptable then all we can do is have Pink take one for the team.Report
In the 1990’s, there was research into non-lethal options that included pheromones.
The idea was that these weapons could be used to turn enemy soldiers gay.
Maybe we could go back to researching these things and then give them to cops to use on unruly people?Report
1) This is junk science
2) We’ve got a half second before someone dies.
3) If technology like this existed we’d be seeing the military use it.
I read of military experiments with various things. Sonics. Microwaves. Lasers.
Now this isn’t my field and this kind of tech is really cool so I’d love to find out otherwise… but…
My impression is we’re pretty far away from anything that’s going to solve this as long as we’re unwilling to have Pink shoulder a huge risk.Report
I could see putting some kind of short range sonic on a squad car. Roll up on a scene that is chaos, blast the sonic for a second or two to get everyone’s undivided attention…Report
The military has experimented with this so maybe it’s workable.
However there wasn’t “chaos” until after the cop got out of the car and walked over.
When you watch the neighbor’s video even things like tackling her isn’t workable. She never got within arm’s reach and there were people between him and her.
Further “attention” isn’t the problem.
Highly likely she saw her first victim go to the cop so she switched to Pink.
We need a ranged way for someone on foot to shut things down with two seconds notice and it needs to work within a half second.Report
Rubber bullets would work. So do bean bag rounds.
Of course, the trick with all of this is an officer stepping out of the vehicle with some idea what kind of ammo/device they are going to need.
What we need are the goo guns from The Incredibles, in handgun caliber.Report
You give them rubber bullets as a default. They have real bullets in a separate clip.
This isn’t going to work as well as the real stuff. Ergo Pink might get stabbed. And some people shot with them are still going to die.
If we’re very unlucky giving the cops “non-lethal” bullets will result in more deaths because they use them more with less provocation (we currently use them for crowd control).
However I’m very in favor of giving these out to a city or four and seeing what happens in the real world.Report
Agreed.
As for over-use, that is what citizen oversight is supposed to be about, provided it has teeth.Report
Hard, yes.
Impossible, no?
It’s be easier if police had things like this:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50657989Report
That is so cool. Here’s a bodycam of it in use.
https://www.officer.com/tactical/less-lethal/press-release/21219553/wrap-technologies-inc-wrap-releases-new-bodycam-footage-of-successful-bolawrap-use-to-restrain-noncompliant-subject
Now I do think if the guy in the video were a half second away from knifing someone the cops would have been more aggressive. And agreed, we need better options.Report
This is the first minor black girl fatally shot by police since the Washington Post started collecting data in 2015. Previously, the youngest black woman in the data set was Janisha Fonville, killed while charging police with a knife four days after stabbing her girlfriend. The youngest girl in the data set was Ciara Meyer, 12, who was accidentally shot by police aiming for her father, who had threatened an officer attempting to evict him with a gun.Report
They missed one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Aiyana_JonesReport
As noted above, the data set starts on January 1, 2015. It’s not so much that they missed it as that it’s outside the intended scope of the project.Report
My bad, I misread a date.Report
How many minor white girls were fatally shot in the same time period?Report
Eight. Brandon left plenty of clues for you to be able to get this info yourself, but just to spell it out: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/Report
Since 2015, the police have killed…
125 Whites with toy weapons, 4 of them children.
29 Whites fleeing the scene on foot while unarmed.
168 Whites unarmed, 40 mentally ill.
35 White children.
4 White children unarmed, not fleeing the scene, no weapon.
So there’s lots of room for riots and to be traumatised by having their pictures in the news every day. The lack of a narrative does a lot to save us from that.Report
Will the police see this as any sort of wake up call?
Or will they simply dismiss this prosecutor and these jurors and this result as just a “few bad apples”?
The system is working: we need not adjust to anomalous occurences.Report
“The Police” is like referring to any given gimungous group of people.
Some of them will and some of them won’t. Some of them will be emboldened to blow whistles. Some of them will internalize how it’s Us vs. Them.
The old guys will say “I remember what it was like in the early 90’s. You guys wouldn’t believe how bad crime got. You wouldn’t believe how bad the politicians fell over themselves to give us stuff. Well, look at the murder numbers. Just buckle down and let this wave pass.”
I don’t know if the middle or young guys will listen or will be emboldened to Protect and Serve Correctly this time or if they’ll think about finding a new line of work.
Hey. Maybe they’ll actually take the training to heart this time.
But we’ve got a handful of exemplary police departments right now. I imagine that they will continue to be exemplary. And, as they continue to be exemplary, people will point to them as examples. “LOOK AT THIS POLICE DEPARTMENT! THEY DIDN’T KILL THE GUY THEY WERE ARRESTING!”
And they’ll see that as an indictment of the system, I guess.
And we’ll go to a different city, in a different state, and we’ll see the cops shoot a teenager in the chest and then say, on camera, “Blue Lives Matter Too”.
Vox had a story recently about a grad student who researched and concluded that Black Lives Matter Protests probably saved the lives of 300 people from 2014-2019. That is: 300 people who would have been shot by police were *NOT* shot due to the prior restraint that cops were now employing.
Here’s a couple of paragraphs from the middle of the story:
How long would you be willing to make that trade?
Anyway, I don’t know how the cops will respond to this. I would *HOPE* that the worst actors would resign or become private security or something, leaving room for the good ones.
I expect the cops to experience Blue Flu and say “oh, you want us abolished? Here. Practice.”
And we can see whether the 1000-6000 number is closer to 1000 or closer to 6000.
If it’s closer to 6000, we’ll see stuff like this:
That’s *OAKLAND*. You think Des Moines will hold out longer than Oakland did?
Anyway, I have no idea. I suspect that we’re going to have more enthusiastic protests over the summer.
People have been shut in the house, you know? Might be nice to go out and get some fresh air.Report
Hey man, I wholeheartedly welcome any positive change that might come of this and all the efforts surrounding this tragedy and others like it.
My point was that, cops have shown a remarkable ability to look at things — like the shootings of unarmed Black men — and say, “Nothing to see here. It means nothing. Either the system worked as it ought to have OR the system failed but it was a one-off.”
How many will look at this and think the same? “See? We don’t get away with everything? The system worked!” or “Well, Chauvin was an animal. None of us are like that.”
It won’t be all of them. But it will be some of them. And maybe that is true of any ginormous group confronted with a problem. Time will tell.
But, thank you for sharing reasons for some optimism.Report
Part of this is trying to convince cigarette companies that cigarettes cause cancer.
Another issue is because of media attention we have a very distorted view on how common this is.
We looked up how many unarmed blacks were shot in a year and found the number was 13. The media will of course cherry pick the worst.
Another issue is JB’s 50 saved lives cost 1000 lives.Report
Please, they are not mine. They are Travis Campbell’s. (Maybe, in a stretch, they’re also Vox’s.)
While I can understand why some might mock how Vox is downplaying the whole “murders” thing (read that tweet again! Black Lives Matter protests resulted in 300 fewer police homicides*!), there are a handful of theories about why that is notable.
For one, the idea is that we’re talking about the Police. We’re not talking about anything else. And Black Lives Matter Protests resulted in restraint on the part of the cops and that restraint manifested itself in 300 fewer police homicides*.
Which means that the police *CAN* hold back and if they do actually hold back, then they kill fewer people.
And that’s worth looking at.
*over the period of 2014-2019.Report
How many other Eric Garners and George Floyds had a “medical incident” and died during an arrest?
Is there some statistic that you can find for that?
How many other black men were unnecessarily brutalized during arrests, yet didn’t die? Is this tracked somewhere?
How many other black people were arrested for pretextual crimes for which the rest of us would be ignored? Is there a database you can search for that?
Your credulousness regarding crime statistics is itself an example of cherrypicking, like consulting the Chinese authorities on the criminality of Hong Kong protesters.Report
As far as we can tell, a non-zero number.
Is “zero” the only acceptable answer?
It’s okay if it is! But, to get to zero, there will have to be changes. The changes will not only be to funding but policy.
The article touches on at least one potential unintended consequence. There could well be others. (One of them includes remembering why the 1994 Crime Bill had strong bipartisan support.)Report
The information you’re asking for is here:
https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=82
I don’t have the time to do a deep dive on it, but from the titles and our ability to count corpses, I would guess that yes, both of them would be in there.
First, if you don’t like my numbers you should find your own. Second, not liking my numbers doesn’t mean they’re a result of cherrypicking (although they may still be wrong).
Cherrypicking is when you have vast amounts of data (say tens of millions of arrests), and you pick out the worst of these results (say, white cop, black suspect, unarmed, killed), and try to claim that your carefully picked datapoints say something about the entire dataset.
(From wiki) …the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position while ignoring a significant portion of related and similar cases or data that may contradict that position.Report
Oh, man, so much correlation/causation confusion. I mean, I could spend all day thinking up mechanisms for causation that support and shoot down those assumptions.
The one implied correlation that we, as citizens, should question, is that police somehow cannot control crime without being able to bust heads or worse as they see fit.Report
I have not read the paper and do not know what controls he put in place but the Vox article has a section called “A few notes on methodology” where they talk about stuff like unknown hidden variables and a complete inability to do randomized remote trials.
As such, I’m willing to say “okay…” and go with the findings in the short term until given reason to do otherwise.Report
This is good news for the country and very good news for Minneapolis.Report
This is good. Happily surprised.
Cop cams do work. They never were a cure all but even more important is ubiquitous video cams. Without video evidence I wouldn’t bet on this same verdict.
There is no magic bullet for reforming complex problems. This could be one brick torn down as part of that. Let’s hope so. Can’t wait to read the whining from people who say cops will leave the profession. Good.Report
Good.
Not enough of course, but good nonetheless.Report
And just because I’m a big fan of “wait, what?”
Remember that he was also busted for tax fraud?Report
Curious if any jurors will give an interview. I wouldn’t if I were them but I wonder how much (if at all) the police testimony for the prosecution figured into the decision.Report
Please enjoy the title given to the original police report:
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This is an example of what I mean when I say that the base empirical data of all crime statistics, the police report, is itself unreliable data.
Had it not been for the video, there would be no way to tell the story accurately of what happened. The police report would dryly explain that he resisted, suffered some sort of medical incident, and then died.
And this would be compiled into a vast pool of incidents labeled “Non-Abusive Police Interactions” and no one would be able to say otherwise.
The pronouncements of any police department should be given as much credibility as the pronouncements of the Chinese Communist Party security apparatus or the Kremlin when it informs us of how a dissident somehow fell out of an open window.Report
Not only the police, but the media that reports on it for being so credulous.
I continue to love the bizarre
way these things are written. As if anyone would ever write ‘Man dies in bear-related large mammal attack.’Report
No bears were harmed in the incident, and no weapons were found at the scene. However, toxicology reports indicate the presence of sweets, possibly honey, in the victim’s blood.Report
Court records show a citation for jaywalking and several unpaid parking tickets. Neighbors say he was periodically seen leaving his home after dark for unknown purposes.Report
Man dies of overly enthusiastic ursine display of affection.Report
Are bear hugs an approved tactic?Report
You go tell a bear his hugs are not an approved tactic, get back to me on how that goes for ya.Report
Not to be a stick in the mud, but what are the odds this is overturned on appeal?Report
On what grounds?Report
We just had a high level politician effectively call for riots if the wrong verdict was given, and then we had this trial’s judge say this was grounds for appeal.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/us/maxine-waters-comments.htmlReport
I love Maxine Waters and give her immense respect, but only in the fevered minds of Fox News watchers is the Congresswoman from Los Angeles a “high level” politician.
I think she is currently the Fox Nation Two Minute Hate object, since they weren’t getting much traction with AOC.Report
My somewhat cynical view is an older African American lady is easier for the Fox News audience to hate than a young attractive Latina woman.Report
Had her comment come prior to the jury starting deliberations, perhaps some grounds would be found. But that is pretty thin.Report
First, on what grounds? Second, given how unwilling the judiciary is to overrule a jury verdict with out a serious legal misstep, is the grounds you imagine likey to overcome that tendency?
Better question, what are the odds he gets his job back through mediation, with backpay?Report
The conviction is going to be appealed no matter what and it would not surprise me if Water’s remarks make the cut for issues raised. That said it’s very unusual to get a new trial for any reason, though it does happen.Report
It’s good for Chauvin that he lost so quickly, because his case will get to the Supreme Court faster.Report
Was I the only one who had pessimism about the verdict here? Those of us who were pessimistic about the jury’s ability to determine that you don’t get a “get away with murdering a black man” card when you’re issued a badge, I think, had a lot of reason to be pessimistic.
No, I am quite confident I was not. There were armored trucks and personnel carriers and riot police armed with all kinds of weapons deployed in downtowns across the country. A lot of people expected an acquittal, and they expected violence to follow. Many have expected violence to occur even in the event of a complete conviction; as of the time I write that appears to not be happening and let’s hope that continues to be the case.
This state of affairs, on its own, ought to be all the indication anyone needs that things gave gone deeply wrong with the way the police interact with the citizens they are supposed to be protecting and serving. One justified verdict, though it is good, is not going to be enough to fix this.Report
I was expected a hung jury but the Prosecution put on a solid case and the Defense seemed to have sensed they were in a bang on the table scenario. It helped that the Minneapolis Chief of Police decided that throwing Chuavin under the bus was a good idea.Report
My guess, a few moments before the jurors left the deliberation room, was that they wouldn’t find for 2nd but they would find for 3rd.
So the fact that they found for 2nd was interesting to me.
Yeah, we’re going to need to revamp how policing is done. And it ain’t gonna be a “we just need to legalize pot” situation. It’s going to require a few things off of a long list before we see minor improvement and several things off that long list before we see major improvement.
And that sucks. Because we’re going to want it *NOW*.Report
No, you are not the only one.
Many of the buildings here in Los Angeles were boarding up their windows in the past few days.
I’m hoping it was a waste of good plywood.Report
Yeah Minneapolis was hunkering down. I’m very happy to report that so far the urban core is quiet. A few opportunists have been zipping around but without valid and large protests to suppress law enforcement their ability to indulge in douchebaggery is limited.Report
Are you the only one who was pessimistic? Yesterday, Saul made four predictions:
“I think it will probably take a while for us to have a verdict. The cynic in me states that the shorter deliberations are likely to mean acquittal. There is a reasonable chance of a hung jury. Perhaps the jury will find a compromise verdict on a really lesser charge.”Report
Not sure “shorter” is the word.
This was no disagreement out of the box.Report
No, you weren’t. A good many of us joined you in your pessimism.
Agreed. This was accountability, and it is welcome. But its not justice. And we have only begun to scrape off the scab of the impact of police brutality. We have many more protests and many more acquittals ahead of us.Report
Fox News is apparently freaking out and Ben Shapiro is insufferably smugReport
Be sure to get a detox shower for exposure to Fox News.Report
So, nothing unexpected.Report
Here is an interesting take that I agree with:
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How does this work exactly, that he “had to” be found guilty?
Did someone order the jury to comply with the Department’s directive?
Or did they pay them a bonus or something?
And why didn’t they manage to silence this Alex Vitale?Report
Police crossed the blue wall to testify against him. If the police had eagerly joined the defense, the trial may have gone very differently.Report
That’s what I was getting at with my comment above about the jury. It can cut a couple of ways. On the one hand, the brass could have just decided Chauvin was worth sacrificing to protect the core systems keeping them unaccountable. On the other it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if departments decide the politics have gotten so difficult they can’t stand up for officers involved in high profile outlier incidents anymore. There are many, many things that doesn’t fix but maybe it makes officers think twice before letting their worst instincts take over.Report
It will be interesting to see how the trial of Daunte Wright’s killer plays out. I suspect a good many prosecutors want to recapture the lightening in a bottle that just occurred in Minneapolis, and yet won’t be able to for a lot of reasons.Report
I am actually not convinced the prosecution knocked it out of the park here. What we may (and I emphasize may) be seeing is a bit of a sea change in how juries look at LEO defendants, at least when the department decides not to support them. If I’m Kim Potter’s attorney that’s what would worry me more than anything the prosecutor is going to do.
And that’s the dynamic most defendants already face and why most plea out. The state can mount charges carrying heavy sentences. The defense’s leverage is the headache of a trial and possibility of acquittal but most jurors believe that the accused would not be there if they didn’t do something wrong. It’s a hell of a risk for the defendant to bet this is the time they won’t.Report
The problem with the Wright case is going to be mens rea. If they try to charge her with anything above manslaughter, they are going to lose.Report
She’s been charged with second degree manslaughter.Report
I had it pointed out that schadenfreude fans would enjoy Chavin’s facial expressions during the CBS footage of the verdict being read (tweet with the footage is in the OP). (I hadn’t watched the footage before being told.)Report