The Derek Chauvin Trial

Oh that’s good

Good

They both said what their expertise was. The MMA fighter told them that he has trained in martial arts with some police officers. He said that Chauvin was putting a ‘blood choke’ on Floyd, and that Chauvin knew better. He said that at the scene in real time. The EMT told them she was an off duty fire person. Those officers were told that they were hurting that man.

In fact, the MMA fighter ( his name is Donald Williams)repeatedly shouted to both Chauvin and Officer Thao that “you are killing him right now, bro!” and “y’all are killing him and enjoying it!” and even “ you are going to look at yourself in the mirror and kill yourself!”

The EMT was shouting “he’s not breathing! Check his pulse! What are you doing?”

You may be right that the defense will be able to raise doubts that the officers were unaware there was serious damage being done to Floyd’s health. But I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be easy to raise that doubt.

The EMT identified herself and pleaded with them to allow her to assist. They wouldn't let her near him and one officer told her if she really worked for the Fire Dept. she would know better than to interfer.

The absolute only thing I think keeps the 3, especially the rookies, from being convicted is if they had a direct order to keep any and everyone out of the picture from Chauvin.

Yes. The defense has to raise doubt that those three officers knew Floyd was struggling for life and chose not to interfere.

To raise that doubt it seems to me the defense will have to show those officers to be either deaf and dumb, or just stupid.

Because to me it’s obvious they knew exactly what was taking place.

ESPECIALLY after they saw Floyd was unconscious, unresponsive, and without pulse.

That still should not excuse the fact that they knew Floyd was struggling for life and did nothing.

I fully agree, an illegal command is still illegal. But, it depends on the jury, unanimous. They have a name for that in the Army, can't remember what It was called. Came after My Lai, I believe. Seems like I remember getting an hour of class in Basic, maybe AIT covering it. If you accepted the order you accept the penalty.

Hi Sno0d - yep, that is pretty damning to any officer that heard the expertise being declared + the hold risks. Prior to reading your post, I tried looking for a complete video of the incident, but wasn't able to find one as youtube has since become drowned in snippet style videos.

Honestly I was going from my memory of sitting through all that testimony and videos. I will try to find some videos or reprints of testimony.

It was the Nuremberg defense - German Soldiers tried to use it to excuse war crimes, particularly those committed against the Jews.

I was referring to what we called it in basic training. I went in right after My Lai and it was a big thing in training!

They murdered hundreds including women, children and INFANTS. There was mass gang rape, and mutilation. Twenty-six soldiers were charged. Only Calley was convicted - of murdering 22 people.

He served 3 and 1/2 years - of house arrest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%E1%BB%B9_Lai_massacre

Ugh. I didn't think anyone would be stupid enough to use the defense after Nuremberg. I don't think I've ever heard this particular matter before. It is incredible that soldiers would be called traitors by their own politicians for trying to stop such....and even if they got a different report...why they wouldn't question why 3 soldiers 'turned' on their own troops.

I know other horror stories of the war from GIs I know or knew that didn't make the news. I refuse to describe any of it. Calley was not so unique.

I hear you Ed. It know of several people who saw (and unfortunately, participated in) atrocities and they could never speak of it.
I met one soldier when I was working at the Army Hospital at Ft Polk who had just come back from Afghanistan - his PTSD was so bad he hadn’t slept for FOUR days straight. He was scared of what he’d see if he went to sleep. When I talked to him he was so disoriented wasn’t sure whether he was awake or asleep. I think he got some help from the psych people.

I remember reading of a US study on 'Battle Fatigue' done in WW2. It described how 90% of soldiers who served on the front lines for 6 months or more suffered battle fatigue. The remaining 10% were found to be sociopaths. The interesting thing was - they estimated that only 2-3% or so of the population are sociopaths - meaning sociopaths managed to find their way to the front lines in 3-5 times the numbers of normal people.

But on that 90% - I don't think the human mind was made to kill other people, (except in self defense / rage / revenge situations, which have genetic drives associated with them). Killing for other reasons (eg. politics), and particularly regarlarly killing, tends to break peoples minds. I'm not particularly surprised at the attrocities committed. They aren't right...and at the same time, neither is asking somone else to go kill as many people for you as they can (ie. war) - then expecting them to maintain their humanity inside it.

I thought we were being denied access to this thread. Glad to see us back.

She was right. It is reasonable for the police to protect themselves from violent attack.

The lynching of those poor cops is the reason why more suspects are shot instead of clubbed these days.

What was illegal was Rodney King's violent assault against the police officers who were defending themselves.