Verdict: Derek Chauvin Guilty on All Three Counts

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast.

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91 Responses

  1. Jaybird says:

    Let this be a lesson to police everywhere.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Jaybird says:

      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

      • North in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

        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

    • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

      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

      • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

        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:

        Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

          And this quotation from NPR (which raises questions about Facts Theory) pretty much sums it up:

          Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

            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”.

            Report

            • Brandon Berg in reply to Jaybird says:

              Black Lives that Matter™:

              ✅ Stabber

              ❌ StabbeeReport

            • Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird says:

              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

              • North in reply to Dark Matter says:

                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

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Dark Matter says:

                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

              • Dark Matter in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                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

              • Philip H in reply to Dark Matter says:

                Nine seconds in 7.2 seconds longer then Tamir Rice got.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Philip H says:

                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

              • Philip H in reply to Dark Matter says:

                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

              • Dark Matter in reply to Philip H says:

                The girl in question could have been tackled from behind for crying out loud.

                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?

                Culturally white people would never tolerate the level of violence being inflicted on them that they tolerate being inflicted on people of color.

                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

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Dark Matter says:

                “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

              • Dark Matter in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Why is this the assumption? Since we have countless examples of here and around the world of officers subduing knife wielding suspects without gunfire.

                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

              • Philip H in reply to Dark Matter says:

                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.

                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.

                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?

                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

              • Dark Matter in reply to Philip H says:

                Do you think this girl was stronger then the cop who responded?

                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.

                There was nothing thrown at her, there was no distraction attempted to mover off the other girl; no Taser was deployed.

                These ideas seem to insist on more time than I observed.

                If white men were killed in a similar ration to their portion of the population as black men then cops would have been disarmed decades ago.

                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

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Dark Matter says:

                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

              • Dark Matter in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                Columbus, OH did not train or equip the cop with any other options.

                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

              • Jaybird in reply to Dark Matter says:

                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

              • Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird says:

                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

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Dark Matter says:

                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

              • Dark Matter in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                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

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Dark Matter says:

                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

              • Dark Matter in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                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

                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

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Dark Matter says:

                Agreed.

                As for over-use, that is what citizen oversight is supposed to be about, provided it has teeth.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Dark Matter says:

                Hard, yes.

                Impossible, no?

                It’s be easier if police had things like this:
                https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50657989Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                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

      • Brandon Berg in reply to Jaybird says:

        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

    • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

      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

      • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

        “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:

        From 2014 to 2019, Campbell tracked more than 1,600 BLM protests across the country, largely in bigger cities, with nearly 350,000 protesters. His main finding is a 15 to 20 percent reduction in lethal use of force by police officers — roughly 300 fewer police homicides — in census places that saw BLM protests.

        Campbell’s research also indicates that these protests correlate with a 10 percent increase in murders in the areas that saw BLM protests. That means from 2014 to 2019, there were somewhere between 1,000 and 6,000 more homicides than would have been expected if places with protests were on the same trend as places that did not have protests. Campbell’s research does not include the effects of last summer’s historic wave of protests because researchers do not yet have all the relevant data.

        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

        • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

          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

          • Dark Matter in reply to Kazzy says:

            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.”

            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

            • Jaybird in reply to Dark Matter says:

              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

            • Chip Daniels in reply to Dark Matter says:

              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

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                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

              • Dark Matter in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                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.

                Your credulousness regarding crime statistics is itself an example of cherrypicking,

                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

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to Jaybird says:

          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

          • Jaybird in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

            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

  2. North says:

    This is good news for the country and very good news for Minneapolis.Report

  3. Greginak says:

    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

  4. Chip Daniels says:

    Good.
    Not enough of course, but good nonetheless.Report

  5. Jaybird says:

    And just because I’m a big fan of “wait, what?”

    Remember that he was also busted for tax fraud?Report

  6. InMD says:

    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

  7. Jaybird says:

    Please enjoy the title given to the original police report:

    Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

      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

  8. Dark Matter says:

    Not to be a stick in the mud, but what are the odds this is overturned on appeal?Report

  9. Burt Likko says:

    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

    • LeeEsq in reply to Burt Likko says:

      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

    • Jaybird in reply to Burt Likko says:

      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

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Burt Likko says:

      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

      • North in reply to Chip Daniels says:

        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

    • Pinky in reply to Burt Likko says:

      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

    • Philip H in reply to Burt Likko says:

      Was I the only one who had pessimism about the verdict here?

      No, you weren’t. A good many of us joined you in your pessimism.

      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.

      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

  10. Saul Degraw says:

    Fox News is apparently freaking out and Ben Shapiro is insufferably smugReport

  11. Jaybird says:

    Here is an interesting take that I agree with:

    Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

      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

      • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

        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

        • InMD in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

          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

          • Philip H in reply to InMD says:

            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

            • InMD in reply to Philip H says:

              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

            • Oscar Gordon in reply to Philip H says:

              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

  12. Jaybird says:

    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