The Derek Chauvin Trial

Slightly off topic, but not really.

I need to drive my two-year-old to daycare tomorrow morning. To ensure we arrive alive, we won't take public transit (Oscar Grant). I removed all air fresheners from the vehicle and double-checked my registration status (Daunte Wright), and ensured my license plates were visible (Lt. Caron Nazario). I will be careful to follow all traffic rules (Philando Castille), signal every turn (Sandra Bland), keep the radio volume low (Jordan Davis), and won't stop at a fast food chain for a meal (Rayshard Brooks). I'm too afraid to pray (Rev. Clementa C. Pickney) so I just hope the car won't break down (Corey Jones).

When my wife picks him up at the end of the day, I'll remind her not to dance (Elijah McClain), stop to play in a park (Tamir Rice), patronize the local convenience store for snacks (Trayvon Martin), or walk around the neighborhood (Mike Brown). Once they are home, we won't stand in our backyard (Stephon Clark), eat ice cream on the couch (Botham Jean), or play any video games (Atatiana Jefferson).
After my wife and I tuck him into bed around 7:30pm, neither of us will leave the house to go to Walmart (John Crawford) or to the gym (Tshyrand Oates) or on a jog (Ahmaud Arbery). We won't even walk to see the birds (Christian Cooper). We'll just sit and try not to breathe (George Floyd) and not to sleep (Breonna Taylor)." Author unknown

The Glock17, 19, or 26 service pistols that the officers carry weighs between 1 and 1/2, and 2 pounds. Their Taser weighs about a half a pound (8ounces). The Glock is black metal, and has a trigger safety that can be felt when a finger is placed on the trigger. The taser is made from high impact plastic or composite materials, and is typically bright yellow or orange.

I don't believe the defense has cancelled out the states experts, but even for arguments sake, lets say it does. What about Chauvin keeping up the pressure past the point where Floyd was not responsive. He did not at least turn him over in a recovery position (the terms we are learning) nor did he start to apply CPR in a timely fashion so Chauvin is still responsible for Floyd death.

Personally I think the defense is indefensible. Even if Floyd was high as a kite, if the same exact circumstances (without the drugs and Floyd's heart condition)was applied to anyone else, it would have posed a lethal threat to that person's life.

Just a quick sidebar about a different case. It has some connections to the case we’re discussing in this thread. Both involve black men being killed by white police officers under questionable circumstances. Both deaths occurred in Minnesota. If there is enough interest later, I’ll be happy to start another thread,

They just charged Kim Potter, the patrol woman that shot and killed Daunte Wright, with 2nd degree manslaughter. She alleges she accidentally grabbed the wrong weapon and had intended to Tase Wright.

Here are some pertinent facts about this case.



Police do special training specifically to avoid mistaking tasers with their police service pistols. The Brooklyn Center Police have to take an 8 hour Taser recertification course every year.

Brooklyn Center Police are supposed to draw and test fire, or “spark” their taser every day. Besides ensuring the weapon’s functionality, it also allows officers to stay familiar with how the weapon feels in their hands, to avoid mix-ups.

The Glock17, 19, or 26 service pistols that the officers carry weighs between 1 and 1/2, and 2 pounds. Their Taser weighs about a half a pound (8ounces). The Glock is black metal, and has a trigger safety that can be felt when a finger is placed on the trigger. The taser is made from high impact plastic or composite materials, and is typically bright yellow or orange.

The officers are specifically instructed to wear the two weapons on opposite sides on their gun belts. Typically the service pistol is worn on the dominant-hand side, the Taser on the other side.

Potter has been a police officer for 26 years.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/13/us/daunte-wright-taser-gun.html

https://abc7chicago.com/taser-gun-daunte-wright-brooklyn-center/10510908/

MINNEAPOLIS — From the beginning, the death of George Floyd disrupted the field of forensic pathology in much the way it challenged policing.

Days after Mr. Floyd’s death on May 25, prosecutors said it was caused not just by the police officer kneeling on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds, but also by his underlying health conditions and drug use.

Critics protested that the finding reflected racial bias — and served as a prime example of how forensic pathology has failed to do enough to counter its own subjectivity in decisions such as whether to classify a death in police custody as a homicide.

The public criticism helped expose long-simmering tensions within the small but influential world of medical examiners, drawing in some of the experts who consulted on the case and may be called to testify for the defense.

Some of them have vigorously objected to a study, published just before the trial began, that measured bias among forensic pathologists, taking the unusual step of asking that it be retracted.

The timing of the paper was “particularly alarming in the era of Black Lives Matter, critical race theory, riots and so forth,” wrote Dr. Brian L. Peterson, the Milwaukee County medical examiner, in one of several emails to a private forensic pathology email list obtained by The New York Times. “What is woke today is fodder tomorrow.”

Medical examiners say that of course they, like everyone else, have biases — but that they already have ample systems in place, including courtroom scrutiny of their decisions, to curb them. In fact, Dr. Peterson wrote, the notion that cause-of-death determinations are objective and science-based is “basically nonsense.”

“Is there anyone in our profession that has not, at one point or another, quipped about ‘spinning the wheel of death’ and picking one?”

After the Journal of Forensic Sciences published the study, which showed that medically irrelevant information like the victim’s race can sway the decisions of forensic pathologists, Dr. Peterson, along with Dr. David Fowler and Dr. William Oliver, signed a letter asking that it be retracted, calling it “fatally flawed.”

The Journal of Forensic Sciences, which published the paper, declined to retract it.

Dr. Fowler, who testified on Wednesday for Mr. Chauvin’s defense, is the former chief medical examiner of Maryland, and Dr. Oliver is a professor at the Brody School of Medicine in North Carolina. Dr. Fowler is named in a civil rights lawsuit filed by the family of Anton Black, an unarmed Black teenager who died in Baltimore in 2018 after officers held him down in the prone position for about 6 minutes. Dr. Fowler’s office classified the death as an accident.

Complaints of bias have long hung over the Floyd case. Four days after Mr. Floyd’s death, the county prosecutors listed what they said were preliminary autopsy findings in a criminal complaint that many said undermined their own case against the officers involved.

An opinion piece written by 12 doctors and published in Scientific American called the complaint “a weaponization of medical language” that “reinforced white supremacy at the torment of Black Americans.”

“They took standard components of a preliminary autopsy report to cast doubt, to sow uncertainty; to gaslight America into thinking we didn’t see what we know we saw,” they wrote.

The state attorney general, Keith Ellison, soon took over the case.

By then the Floyd family had hired two forensic pathologists, a white man and a Black woman, to conduct their own autopsies. Both of them, Dr. Michael Baden and Dr. Allecia Wilson, said that asphyxia, or deprivation of oxygen, was the cause of death and placed the blame squarely on the police officers involved.

The Kenosha, Wisconsin cop who shot Jacob Blake seven times and paralyzed him for life is returning to work and will face no discipline

Looks to me like the frequency of these murders is picking up