Officer Derek Chauvin has been found guilty on all three counts against him in the death of George Floyd but will have grounds to appeal the conviction. Reuters. Chauvin was convicted of three counts, 2nd degree murder, 3rd degree murder, and 2nd degree manslaughter. However, there were several incidents before and during the trial that may have tainted the jury pool. Before the trial began the city of Minneapolis paid out a $27 million settlement to George Floyd's family, which implied the guilt of Chauvin and was still fresh news when the trial started. The judge in the case also refused to change venues even though the jury pool was drawn from people that could be effected by riots and local news coverage. Most alarmingly the media coverage of the trial and the comments of politicians like Maxine Waters, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Joe Biden implied that there would be riots and violence if the jury did not find Chauvin guilty on all three counts. Chauvin's defense team has 60 days to appeal the conviction.
My Comment:
This was an awful day for American justice. Regardless of the guilt or innocence of Derek Chauvin, his trial was not a fair one. The jury should have been sequestered and the jury pool should have never been drawn from the people of Minneapolis. They had a huge incentive to convict regardless of their actual thoughts on the evidence in the case.
To be fair, it was a difficult case. It always reminded me of the old hypothetical we heard about in my criminal justice cases. Is it still murder if a man shoots outside of a building on the first floor and hits someone who just jumped from the 10th floor? In that case the answer is yes but I am not so sure in this case here.
George Floyd appeared to be a dead man walking. He had a lethal dose of fentanyl in his system and his body was weakened by a previous Coronavirus infection as well. He then decided to resist arrest and that was too much for his body and he died. Chauvin's actions may have had nothing to do with his death. Having not watched the trial I don't know if the prosecution proved their case that Chauvin actually did cause or contribute to Floyd's death, but let's not pretend that the outcome was ever going to be good for Floyd.
But this post isn't really about the facts of the case. It's about the drama around it and the fact that there are going to be appeals. The first problem is that the venue wasn't changed. This seems incredible to me but apparently it is very uncommon in Minnesota to change venues. This case seems like the perfect example of why that is important. With their own homes on the line, the jurors were not able to handle the case objectively. The threat of riots meant that an acquittal was going to be difficult in the first place, but it's almost impossible when your own house and workplace are on the line.
Not sequestering the jury seems like an act of utter lunacy in this case. The media coverage was almost universal and I don't see how you could escape it. I know the jury was instructed to not watch the news but I don't see how they could have avoided the news in the last few days. It was everywhere and you can't even turn on non-news programing and avoid commercials or PSA's that imply that black people are somehow oppressed by the police.
And I have to believe that the jurors heard about what these various scummy politicians did. Joe Biden and Jacob Frey pretty much implored the jury to convict and that's hard to ignore. Not to mention the disgusting behavior of Maxine Waters, who called for violence if the jury did not convict.
The media was little better. The Minneapolis Star Tribune basically doxed the members of the jury. I won't post the information here because I do believe the juror's lives are still at risk, but the message was clear. Vote to convict or your life will be at risk. Everyone will know who you are and you will be lucky if it's only your life that is destroyed.
So I think that this conviction should be overturned on appeal. Will it be though? Reuters seems to think that it is unlikely and I think there is an argument for that. The same pressures that tainted the trial will likely taint the appeals process. And Minnesota is unusual that they rarely change venues, so that path will likely be closed. Though this kangaroo court was clearly in the wrong I see little hope of justice actually being done here.
This wouldn't be such a bitter pill to swallow if it was clear that the jury wasn't influenced. I think they made the wrong choice but if this had been a fair trial with a sequestered jury not held in a city that was going to burn if they convicted, I could live with it. As it stands right now it's clear that justice was not done. Everyone deserves a fair trial regardless of the facts of the case.
The worst thing though? This is going to make race relations so much worse. Right now every single cop in America understands that if they arrest a black man and he dies in custody, even if they follow every departmental regulation in the books and do nothing wrong personally, they could go to prison for the rest of their lives. And they won't even get a fair trial.
Ask yourselves this. Would you want to be a cop under these circumstances? Would anyone? Of course not! And that means a lot of good cops are going to quit and very few talented and professional people are going to want to get jobs as a police officer, especially in these Democrat run cities that have a personal hatred for police.
This means that only people who are too dumb to realize this will try and get jobs as police. There may be a few brave holdouts but the fact of the matter is that the quality of police officers is going to go way down. Which means you will get more bad cops which will lead to more corruption, violence and general stupidity. Whatever complaints you have about police in America you have to understand that this conviction will just make things so very much worse.
I am also disgusted that the worst people in America, Black Lives Matter and the Democrats, got their way here. Anyone with even the most basic understanding of criminal statistics and law knows that the narrative that blacks are being murdered by police by the thousands is a totally false narrative, to the point of being blood libel. It's a disgusting lie and one that should not be given any credence whatsoever.
But the people that spread that lie? They won big today. They proved to America that if you don't do what they say they will utterly destroy your lives and take away one of the most basic civil rights, the right to a fair trial. And they are gloating about it.
If there is any good news it's this. America's cities are less likely to be destroyed tonight and over the rest of the week. There may still be some small riots but I don't see those lasting very long. This is, of course, a temporary reprieve as sooner or later there is going to be another case of black person being killed and that will mean riots no matter how justified the death is. The riots won't be stopped until the ringleaders are arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned and it's very clear that nobody in the government wants that. Sooner or later, and it's inevitable in a country of 300+ million people, someone will get killed and the riots will be back on...
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