George Floyd trial,could you make a case for the defendant not being guilty of the charges?

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Seattle, Mar 30, 2021.

  1. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Presented as part of the prosecution's closing arguments:

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    Note that in second and third degree murder, ''the fact that other causes contributed to the death (of George Floyd) does not relieve the defendant of criminal liability." But, in order to convict under those charges, the entirety of the charge has to be met beyond a reasonable doubt - for all of the ''elements.''

    Based on this, what would your verdict be?
     
    Last edited: Apr 20, 2021
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  3. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    I didn't change the subject, you did. I've always pointed out that cops shoot more unarmed white people than black person but that of course there are more white people percentage wise but when you consider that 58 % of all violent crimes are committed by black people when it shows that race is not what is at stake here.

    You didn't acknowledge that I said any of that and then went off on your rant. You are the racist here.
     
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  5. Thus Spoke Registered Senior Member

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  7. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Manslaughter 2nd degree

    Surprised Failure to provide Medical Assistance in a timely manner or some such charge

    That could be ?proven? the first time Floyd said I can't breath OR even I have swallowed some drugs

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    Last edited: Apr 20, 2021
  8. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    If you look at how the jury is to deliberate over the charges, they have to look at all the elements of each charge - for second and third degree murder, it doesn't really matter if other factors contributed to Floyd's death, Chauvin would still be criminally responsible. (providing all of the elements have been met beyond a reasonable doubt) That's how I'm understanding the chart I've posted above?
     
  9. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Yea, I can see manslaughter 2nd degree, although third degree murder could be possible. By ''intentional'' act, it doesn't mean that Chauvin intended to kill Floyd; he intentionally acted in a way that was considered dangerous (and should have known better kind of thing, that death might be possible given the level of force). The prosecution had mentioned in closing ''if someone knows better, then they should do better.'' But, one could also say that Chauvin was following what he thought in that moment, were acceptable procedures, and he wouldn't have dreamed that Floyd would have died. There's reasonable doubt there, I guess.

    Equally possible, is a hung jury. Just one or two jurors might hold out...if this drags on all week, that will likely be the outcome.
     
  10. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    I feel
    • murder in second and
    • murder in third
    • BOTH
    • fail at the
    • second element
    • SUBSTANTIAL
    for me rule out SUBSTANTIAL

    Again call for Medical Assistance at first mention of
    all charges go away

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  11. Bells Staff Member

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    You really cannot accept that a person with Syrian ancestry would be considered "white" legally in the US? And isn't it interesting how you believe the law should be ignored if it goes against your own racial prejudice.

    That's kind of telling, don't you think?

    Legally, Syrian Americans are considered white in the US. I get it.. Red blooded Americans like you can't understand how a Muslim would be considered "white", given your previous response:

    But he is actually white.
    Tell me... Would he have been shot in the leg if he had been black? If a black man shot so many people, would it have been a simple leg shot in the end?
    Deliberately obtuse. How totally unexpected..

    Why weren't they charged? They killed him and Farah.

    Which is probably why the same civil rights lawyer involved in Floyd's case, is going after the police in Florida. It defies logic that police in the US can keep getting away with killing people in this way.

    And it still does not take away from the over-policing and higher rate of killing of black males by police in the US. You have police departments and officers who are getting away with absolutely crap and killings and add another layer of racial bias to the mix. It's why black males are twice as likely as white males to be killed by police. It's not acceptable, whether you are white or black or of any ethnic background. It is absolutely unacceptable and I cannot for the life of me understand how you or anyone can defend it.

    Why not? Why weren't they charged? Do you think it's acceptable that they weren't charged?

    And then he used his hands and dragged him out of the car. No one has been able to explain why he did that. Given he refused to testify, we'll never know. Maybe he's waiting for a book deal.

    And which part of the 'the officers did not tell them that the patient had already left' didn't you understand in any of it?

    And again, he warranted the motorcyclist to be enough of a threat that he pulled his weapon out. Despite the guy sitting on his bike in a drive way with his hands up in the air.. But then he realises he's being filmed and the guy with the phone on his front porch is suddenly the bigger threat that he leaves the guy he deemed dangerous enough to draw his weapon on was left forgotten as he launched his verbal and then physical attack on a guy sitting on his own front porch filming the officer who had entered his front yard with his gun drawn?

    Oh, so now you're going to argue that they were helping him with his claustrophobia by dragging him out of the car and kneeling on his neck until he died.

    Could you be more ridiculous?

    I guess you can be.

    There were less than a dozen people. All were either filming, begging them to get off his neck and/or calling 911.

    The fire department who responded to the scene described them as upset but not unruly. Video footage of the scene shows they were not unruly. Any more excuses you planning on making?
    Read what I said and then try that again.
     
  12. Bells Staff Member

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    No. Candace Owens is just racist. Full stop.

    Anybody, regardless of ethnicity, sex, sexuality, religion, who comes out and opines that the problem with Hitler was that he wanted to globalise, should never, ever, be linked to as an example. But here you are. Linking Candace Owens and using her as an example. Because she's the far right's go to girl to prove you aren't racist..

    She's a con artist and a bigot.

    I don't give a shit what her ethnicity or colour is.

    Yep. And then pro-slavery white men decided to turn him into something else and it is that version that became the dominant story.

    George White was critically injured. But when surgeons in his Atlanta hospital found out he had black ancestry, they kicked him out mid-examination, shipping him across the street to a black hospital despite the pouring rain. He died in the overcrowded, underfunded hospital days later. The year was 1931, and like hundreds of thousands of other black people in the segregated South, White was a victim of Jim Crow segregation laws.

    Between the 1870s and the 1960s, Jim Crow laws upheld a vicious racial hierarchy in southern states, circumventing protections that had been put in place after the end of the Civil War—such as the 15th Amendment, which gave black men the right to vote 150 years ago this week. The discriminatory laws denied black people their rights, subjected them to public humiliation, and perpetuated their economic and educational marginalization. Anyone who challenged the social order faced mockery, harassment, and murder
    .​

    Jim Crow era.. Keeping black families together..

    Too bad about Mr White's family or the families of the thousands of black men and women who were lynched or murdered

    Says a lot about you.

    Uh huh..

    Hey! She could be your black friend. You have a lot in common!

    Your play is obvious. It was the 'see, black person also thinks so and so'.. And you picked Candace Owens.

    Ah, projecting again.

    You do this all the time.

    Cherry picked? There are hundreds of such images. I picked the smallest ones I could fit without taking up the entire page.

    And my comment was clear. You're the one twisting yourself into a pretzel to make it into something else entirely.

    You also do this all the time.

    My comment was clear enough and explained why it was inappropriate.

    Your example was of a black Hitler sympathiser with a known history of fraudulent behaviour and racist ideology for political expediency..

    I'm not the one arguing that skin colour makes someone bad. But you're such a dishonest hack, that you think this play is effective.
     
  13. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    Doesn't matter. If Chauvin _contributed_ to his death (not caused it; see the chart above) he can be found culpable for murder.
     
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  14. Thus Spoke Registered Senior Member

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    I didn’t hear him say that he swallowed drugs. Did he say that?

    What I heard was that he had claustrophobia and that he felt choked and couldn’t breathe when he was put into the car.

    Claustrophobia can make you feel like you’re going to die. It can also make you feel like you’re choking, cause your heart to race and cause shortness of breath, but it won’t kill you. However, the drugs in his system could have kill him.
     
  15. Thus Spoke Registered Senior Member

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    150
    If he died of a drug overdose, the contributor would more than likely be one of the passengers in his vehicle that provided him with the drugs.
     
  16. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Yep. But he didn't die of a drug overdose, per the coroner. His death was a homicide caused by "cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression." A second coroner agreed, saying his death was caused by "asphyxiation from sustained pressure."

    Hence the trial.
     
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  17. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    The discovery of the pill fragments heightened the importance of a garbled audio clip of Floyd taken during the arrest by a police body-worn camera. The two sides offered opposing interpretations of the audio. The prosecution said Floyd said “I ain’t do no drugs,” in the clip. The defense claims that Floyd actually said, “I ate too many drugs.” One witness for the prosecution, James Reyerson, the agent in charge of an investigation into George Floyd’s arrest, said he heard both versions after hearing two different renditions. When presented with a longer version of the audio, that included police conversation about drugs, Reyerson ultimately said he believed Floyd to be stating he hadn’t used drugs.

    https://slate-com.cdn.ampproject.or...oyd-swallowed-drugs-as-police-approached.html

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  18. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    how long will the jury deliberate?
     
  19. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    As long as it takes, I think? I was reading yesterday that one case back in 2003 took the jury 55 days to reach a verdict.

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  20. candy Valued Senior Member

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    The first officers on the scene handcuffed the victim and put him in a vehicle.
    The defendant arrived pulled the handcuffed victim from the vehicle and tossed him on the ground placing his knee on his neck.
    The defendant is responsible for the victim's death because of his actions because the death was caused by those actions not whatever chemicals were in the victim's body. Even if the drugs hastened the victim's death I suggest he would still be alive if he had remained seated in the vehicle until paramedics arrived.
     
  21. Thus Spoke Registered Senior Member

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    I’m not so sure about that.

    Nelson asked Tobin if he'd heard of "wooden chest syndrome," a rigidity of the chest wall found in people who take fentanyl. Tobin conceded that the condition can "impede the ability of lungs to expand."

    Nelson also noted that in his report, Tobin said he would expect the peak of respiratory suppression from fentanyl to come on fairly quickly — about five minutes after taking a pill.

    Nelson used this to ask about the partial tablets with Floyd's saliva on them that were found in the back of the police cruiser. If, hypothetically, Floyd had those pills in his mouth as he struggled in the back of the squad car at 8:18 p.m., Nelson asked, would Tobin would expect the fentanyl Floyd ingested to affect his breathing five minutes later, when he was on the ground?

    Tobin said yes, but that it would depend on "how much of it was ingested."

    The officer in the 2019 video suspected that he shoved drugs in his mouth then.

    >Open your mouth. Spit out what you’ve got.



    The muscle rigidity seen in his hands could be an indication of wooden chest syndrome. There are several cases where patients presented with their fists clinched, dyskinesia and distress. They were alert and responsive, even yelling, but none of them were exhibiting other typical features of opioid overdose. It can also cause laryngospasm making you feel like you’re choking and can’t breathe. Toss in methamphetamine with a stressful event and voila.
     
    Last edited: Apr 20, 2021
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  22. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Sure. He might have had that. He might have had a stroke in another ten minutes. He might have had a heart attack in an hour. Heck, a meteor might have hit him the next day and killed him anyway; you have to admit it's possible.

    But none of that matters. What DOES matter is that Chauvin kept his knee on his neck and back until he was unconscious, then he kept it there until he stopped breathing, then kept it there until his heart stopped, too. Something else may have killed him later.

    But that doesn't really matter. Chauvin kneeled on him at 8:20pm on May 25, 2020. He stopped moving within a minute. He began pleading for his life, and did so multiple times over the next three minutes, saying "I can't breathe" several times. Chauvin kept his knee on his neck. By 8:25 Chauvin was unconscious. Chauvin kept his knee on Floyd's neck. At 8:27 paramedics arrived. They could not find a pulse; Floyd's heart had stopped. Chauvin kept his knee on Floyd's neck even after his heart had stopped. He only removed it, almost eight minutes after he started kneeling on Floyd, when paramedics had to move the body to a stretcher.

    There is no doubt that Floyd performed an action that could reasonably be expected to harm someone, that it was not a method he was trained to use, and that he did so long after Floyd was no longer a threat (i.e. not only was he unconscious, his heart had stopped.) And there is no doubt that Floyd was alive before Chauvin's act and was dead afterwards, and both the coroner and an independent pathologist agree that Chauvin's actions led to Floyd's death. The only real remaining question are the details of his intent - those determine which of those crimes his actions fall under.
     
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  23. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Breaking news everyone - verdict has been reached. It will be announced later this afternoon. Only ten hours of deliberation.

    Potentially guilty? Usually, guilty verdicts are arrived at quicker than acquittals, but who knows.
     

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