So far the defense has been pretty piss poor. Chauvin 's gonna go down. It might not end up 2nd degree murder, but he will not be set free. I just can't imagine that happening. The evidence is far too damning.
I see they’re going with the “his actions were reasonable, he was scared and distracted by the crowd” defense
That huge crowd. LOL. If that is their defense, then they are literally saying police can put a neck to anyone's neck until they kill them on almost every street in America. Those few bystanders were about as non-threatening as it gets, especially considering what was going on.
It sounds like the prosecution is doing a good job addressing the defense's arguments on cross examination. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/04/13/us/derek-chauvin-trial In his cross-examination, Steve Schleicher, the prosecutor, effectively dismantles Barry Brodd’s testimony that what Derek Chauvin did to George Floyd wasn’t even a use of force. He gets Brodd, the defense expert, to admit that Chauvin's actions did not conform with Minneapolis Police Department policy, and that a reasonable officer would abide by his department’s policies.
Why can police use "scared", "nervous" and other reasons for acting the way they do, yet citizens are held to a higher standard?
can't blame the defense too much, this is a pretty hard case to defend so of course the arguments and the experts are going to sound weak. i'm actually surprised some here are struggling to see how the prosecution meets their burden with the facts and evidence that have already come through. i guess everyone sees what they want to see.
Maybe because police encounter individuals everyday that can be a threat to their lives while good lawful citizens don't encounter police often and when they do they hardly ever pose a threat to their lives.
This is fair, Police are put in risky situations. At the same time, any concept taken to an unaccountable degree can be abused. In the end of the day, we need policing and the damn suits who make the rules need a better transparency and accountability to make sure that we know public servants are a part of and working for the community. Cameras on all the time, no blanket union protection rules for officers who do abuse the trust they hurt the trust of the entire institution for all the good ones who serve right, transparency and accountability and having a community liaison or two in each precinct let alone not having them pursue silly laws that will just be a waste of time for our tax payer dollars and put them against the people they are serving. If prohibition had persisted, there would be riots each day bc people don’t want to be held to unjust laws. Didn’t work a long long time ago, shouldn’t work now. There are multiple angles to make this work, yet the tv and emotions make it some binary pro cop/anti cop thing that works great for tv, works great to divide and conquer...0 sensible legislation comes from this
Yes LEO are put in risky situations and that is part of their job. They also deal with all sorts of people. This is why their are standards, training and a professional duty of care that even Chauvin's own superiors are saying he violated. LEO that panic, that cannot follow even their own training, that act out of fear and show little concerns for people in their custody are a danger to everyone. We wouldn't trust pilots, doctors or fire fighters who get distracted, make basic mistakes, and don't follow their training. There is no reason we should expect less of LEO.
It would be beneficial to require for those wanting to become LEOs to get an associates in human psychology. Maybe it would help them be able to be more conscious of human psychology and not escalate the situation when it's unnecessary.
And who is going to pay for that extra training? Removing the finances from it how can we even begin to expect to have a high number of cops on the streets when one of the the requirements is an associates in psychology? Even then a psychologist would be extremely infective in being able to control certain situations. No every single police call is a fake bill or expired tags with an arrest warrant for an illegally purchased gun and even those as we have seen have resulted in resisting arrest and ended up with the suspect dying. Sometimes there is no time to asses someone's emotional state where every second could potentially turn into a tragedy for either party. There is no easy answer to the problem, it is a problem. There are good cops, bad cops.... There are experienced cops and inexperienced cops, racist cop and reasonable cops who are accepting of everyone. But how can we remove certain aspects of policing without affecting and possible endangering the lives of the good cops due to the actions of bad cops or unprofessional cops?
defense being absolutely shredded. their witnesses wilting on cross and contradicting themselves and key positions held by the defense (Dr. Fowler today after Barry Brodd got dismantled yesterday). prosecution is the harlem globetrotters and defense is the washington generals. NY Times Live: Cross-examining the witness after the lunch break, prosecutor Jerry Blackwell gets in the first zinger for the prosecution, forcing Dr. David Fowler, a defense medical expert, to acknowledge that he failed to factor in the gear that Derek Chauvin carried when he calculated the weight of the officer on George Floyd’s body. Second zinger on the witness’s theory that Floyd was exposed to carbon monoxide by the exhaust of the squad car he was restrained next to: Dr. Fowler acknowledges that he never saw the car, or emissions data from the car. The position of Derek Chauvin’s left knee has been an issue throughout the trial. The defense lawyer, Eric Nelson, has suggested that it was on George Floyd's shoulder, not his (more vulnerable) neck. But Dr. Fowler, the defense’s own medical witness, just acknowledged that it was on Floyd's neck.
So... the defense puts a "expert witness" who opined a few different theories, the prosecution wants to rebut them, but the defense wants to stop that since their witness left the area?