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George Floyd Murder Trial

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by rocketsjudoka, Mar 11, 2021.

  1. deb4rockets

    deb4rockets Contributing Member
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    Wrong thread
     
  2. deb4rockets

    deb4rockets Contributing Member
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    Why has the Capitol siege debate continued on this thread. One thread is enough.
     
  3. StupidMoniker

    StupidMoniker I lost a bet
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    This is the moment he shot her.
    After she is already shot, the video shows one of her arms and a big blurry box. So no, it doesn't show her, it specifically edits her out.
    You picked a video that doesn't show the person when she was being shot to argue that the officer couldn't see if she was holding a weapon or that she was a female, and then call me dishonest? A video that explicitly edits out the one person you are saying it shows.
    The video pans over and then explicitly doesn't show her, it replaces her with a big blurry rectangle. What is even the point of showing screenshots, you just claim they are out of order or that screenshots that are on screen 1 second apart are really three seconds apart.
    I think it matters a great deal. As her family is suing, it may matter to a jury soon enough.
    I have already addressed JV's point repeatedly in this and/or other threads. There is an empty hallway with multiple police officers in it behind the barricade she is climbing through. There is another barricade guarded by multiple officers with guns in the chamber where the congresspeople are, and we don't even know how this hallway connects to that chamber. So, at a minimum there are these three in the hallway, plus another barricade, plus four more officers between Babbitt and the people to whom she is allegedly an imminent threat of death or great bodily injury. Not to mention the officers in tactical gear five feet behind her. No, I don't think her making it through that window is the breaking point that cannot be allowed to happen.
     
  4. jiggyfly

    jiggyfly Member

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    Ok.
     
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  5. StupidMoniker

    StupidMoniker I lost a bet
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    I was responding directly to another post in this thread, I'm pretty sure that makes mine in the right thread.
     
  6. JuanValdez

    JuanValdez Contributing Member

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    On topic, the Chauvin juror controversy looks like just grist for talk radio. I do find Mitchell's answer to the second question (have you ever attended an anti-police-brutality rally) to be a bit misleading. His excuses for why he was really being misleading also sound misleading. But the photos of Mitchell at the rally have been out there on social media all this time. They spent forever choosing the jury. If defense attorneys didn't find them then, that's on them. Do they get to ask for a do-over because they didn't do their homework?

    And, would it have changed jury selection had he said yes? It might give defense lawyers a reason to strike him, but they only get so many strikes. Would they have spent one on him? And, even if they had, this is a jury with 11 people going into the jury room thinking convict. Would it really have made any difference if there was a replacement player in there for Mitchell? Finally, if they did get a do-over, any reason to think it won't just be another conviction?
     
  7. StupidMoniker

    StupidMoniker I lost a bet
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    Juror misconduct is not waived if the defense didn't manage to discover it in the time between when it occurs and the end of the trial.
    We have no idea what effect, if any, this juror had on deliberations. He may have been the leader of people wanting murder where someone else only wanted manslaughter. Another juror might have been the lone holdout. A new trial may be tried in a different venue, it may have a radically different jury pool, it may have a sequestered jury that isn't subject to crowds baying at them for a conviction. A prosecution witness may be unavailable. The defense may abandon losing arguments like carbon monoxide poisoning that turn off jurors. The defense could gather evidence of additional cases to support it's theory that this is a common restraint technique. The defense can be better prepared for the focus to be positional asphyxia rather than a knee on the neck/blood choke. Ultimately, since they lost on every count, they really have nothing to lose and everything to gain by seeking a new trial. Polling has showed that more than half of Republicans think the jury got the verdict wrong, so if they can get it moved to a redder county, they have a pretty decent shot at an acquittal or hung jury.
     
  8. JuanValdez

    JuanValdez Contributing Member

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    So they do get a do-over despite their failure of due diligence? Just to be clear.

    Isn't that basically counting on a prejudiced jury, just like the allegation he had a jury prejudiced the other way in the first go-round?
     
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  9. rocketsjudoka

    rocketsjudoka Contributing Member
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    The misconduct in question, attending the march on Washington happened well before the trial started and the trial has now ended.
    Mitchell actually has spoken out. He said that the jury had immediately agreed on manslaughter and were pretty much in agreement about 2nd degree murder. The one charge that they took the longest to figure out was 3rd degree murder and that sounds like was because they weren't as clear on the charge.
     
  10. StupidMoniker

    StupidMoniker I lost a bet
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    It is more a question of what diligence is due. Can you be expected to find every social media post of every potential juror before they are reached in jury selection? That is probably an unreasonable standard to impose when you are talking about someone's right to a fair trial and due process. If the man was George Floyd's brother, that is probably something you would expect them to figure out. That he lied about being a BLM protester? That is where it is fair to depend on disclosure.
    It is the prosecution's duty to seek justice. It is the defense attorney's duty to do anything within the bounds of ethics that will result in a better outcome for his client. Moving the trial away from a jury pool that is 90% against your client to an area that is more like 60/40 in favor is just good lawyering.
    The misconduct is actually lying about attending the march and concealing bias. Obviously a guy wearing a BLM t-shirt specifically referencing the trial he is a potential juror for and attending a speech by the brother of the victim is not an impartial juror. Surely you would not expect them to start looking for information about the jurors before the potential jurors were called. That would be the earlies possible time to try to investigate jurors. Once the juror is seated, you are not going to keep investigating them during the trial, you have other concerns at that point. So it really isn't unbelievable that they didn't find out about it during that window.
    Yes. So everyone was in agreement on manslaughter, they were "pretty much" in agreement on second degree murder (that means not everyone was in agreement immediately on that, yes? Hence the different language?) and clearly not everyone was immediately in agreement on 3rd degree murder. Could replacing him with another juror not have lead to that new juror being a lone holdout? So how is that different than what I said? And this coming from the very juror who committed the misconduct and was biased from jump. Yes, I think there is at least some reason to believe a retrial could have a different outcome. Also, what does the defense have to lose from doing a retrial?
     
  11. rocketsjudoka

    rocketsjudoka Contributing Member
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    My understanding is that more time was also given to the voir dire because of the potential difficulty of getting an impartial jury.
    The defense certainly is going to try to get a retrial but it's not guaranteed the judge will grant it. Given what we know about the deliberations the differences may not be that large and it sounds like there wasn't disagreement regarding guilt on the charges but just making sure the jurors understood the charges.
     
  12. JuanValdez

    JuanValdez Contributing Member

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    I might be a little jaded now from serving on too many juries. Not that I've done a ton of them, but each time I leave feeling dirty and abused. Society puts a lot of the weight of responsibility on juries for the outcomes of cases, but they aren't given control commensurate with that moral responsibility. They don't volunteer for the role, the don't get to control what they hear about, they don't get to ask questions (they do, but the judge never gives a fruitful answer), the judge makes the determinations of law, they're given instructions on how they must think about mapping facts of the trial to the charges they must apply. So I might reflexively get my back up a bit whenever I hear the idea that it is a juror that somehow screwed up a trial. I find it a little insulting that the dozen slaves in the jury box that must ask permission to go the bathroom have to also carry the moral responsibility of failures in the process.

    They want to say that it is simultaneously true that (a) his attendance at a rally was so important it would have changed their decision about his inclusion on the jury, and (b) it wasn't so important that the attorneys should bear the responsibility of surfacing this publicly-available information on their own.

    To your later point: maybe it would have been okay for him to have attended a BLM rally, but for him to have lied about it during voir dire may indicate something prejudicial about his intentions for the trial. I can respect that argument. Though I don't think it really should be enough to have to re-do the whole dang thing.

    Sure they can ask. But should the court grant it?
     
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  13. jiggyfly

    jiggyfly Member

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    Spoken like a true prosecutor.

    Justice be dammed let's just get it in front of jury that is biassed for my side.

    The curtain has been lifted.
     
  14. deb4rockets

    deb4rockets Contributing Member
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    What did he lie about?
    A Martin Luther King rally in DC is not the same as a BLM protest in Minneapolis.

    The first question asked: “Did you, or someone close to you, participate in any of the demonstrations or marches against police brutality that took place in Minneapolis after George Floyd’s death?” The second asked: “Other than what you have already described above, have you, or anyone close to you, participated in protests about police use of force or police brutality?”
     
  15. StupidMoniker

    StupidMoniker I lost a bet
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    Psst, before becoming a prosecutor, I was a criminal defense attorney for years. I know how to do both sides, and what the responsibilities are for each.
     
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  16. deb4rockets

    deb4rockets Contributing Member
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    Just wondering, were you a defense attorney for whites only and a prosecutor against blacks or people against color only? You seem to take the stance of the white boys at the Capitol and the defense of Chauvin.
     
  17. KingCheetah

    KingCheetah Contributing Member

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    Apparently not.

    HO HO HO
     
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  18. jiggyfly

    jiggyfly Member

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    [​IMG]
     
  19. JuanValdez

    JuanValdez Contributing Member

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    I remember the MLK rally in the news. I was alive back then. In 2020. I'd call it a creative take on history to not characterize it as a protest of police brutality against minority communities.

    But, to your point, if the defense really wanted to plumb this subject in voir dire (and not rely on their research team), they could have asked more than two questions. They could have listed the top dozen or 50 protests and asked if any one of those were attended. Having one question and then a catch-all question really leaves it up to the juror to make an interpretation of what should count and what shouldn't. Sounds like a lie to me, but he was left with plausible deniability and he used it.
     
  20. deb4rockets

    deb4rockets Contributing Member
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    Then again, is it really a jury of the people if they are only looking for people who have not attended any rallies or protests against police brutality, or those who haven't had friends or family members attend those protests? After all, if his defense is that he is innocent of extreme force leading to murder, any rallies other than those pertaining specifically about the George Floyd murder shouldn't matter.
     
    JuanValdez likes this.

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