The Trial of Derek Chauvin

[WhatTheBuck 28775]

He was just following orders. 

[Gourmand 7774]

 

 

[WhatTheBuck 28775]

But he wasn’t a small, frail man, was he? He was a big scary black man, wasn’t he?

Just gotta find one juror. 

[yoladu 4092]

17 hours ago, Atxracer said:

This officer should be so fucked. If he's not, I am definitely worried about the aftermath toward our police force and justice system.  

Don't read the threads/posts on the trial on Texags.

All it takes is one of those types on the jury.

Edited March 31, 2021 by yoladu

[Atxracer 797]

6 minutes ago, yoladu said:

Don't read the threads/posts on the trial on Texags.

While I have no experience on the matter, I don't like fucking sheep so I don't go over there.  But, I certainly understand your point.  

[Guest Lobo]

She shouldn't have rambled at the end there, but there was no need for a 2-minute timeout/chastising of her by the judge.  Ito would make that dude his bitch.

anyway, yeah to yoladu's point...couldn't help myself last night.  Was pissed about our crap showing in College Station in baseball so wandered over to texags for some more wounds...and yeah...clicked on their Chauvin trail thread.  Holy fuck.  I believe too many of us have our minds made up, but there's a healthy medium.  They're basically up and down the thread, "Drugged up colored boy got what he deserved." Real nice.  Without twitter gods to tell them what to think, they're even worse off with no adult supervision.  

[tigol 2395]

While I have no experience on the matter, I don't like fucking sheep so I don't go over there.  But, I certainly understand your point.  

I read it. They want to say the N word so badly. It is astonishing and almost the exact opposite of this thread.

[GopherRock 1765]

The State's first witness this morning is the clerk from Cup Foods that sold Floyd the cigarettes and took the counterfeit $20. Surveillance video was played along with his testimony. 

 

 

[lemonlime 5503]

I don't understand the defense's theory with the cross of the clerk.  If Floyd was so dangerous and also such a criminal, then how the hell was he so close to death he died of a Fentanyl overdose just minutes later?

[Brisketexan 105083]

3 hours ago, Lobo said:

She shouldn't have rambled at the end there, but there was no need for a 2-minute timeout/chastising of her by the judge.  Ito would make that dude his bitch.

anyway, yeah to yoladu's point...couldn't help myself last night.  Was pissed about our crap showing in College Station in baseball so wandered over to texags for some more wounds...and yeah...clicked on their Chauvin trail thread.  Holy fuck.  I believe too many of us have our minds made up, but there's a healthy medium.  They're basically up and down the thread, "Drugged up colored boy got what he deserved." Real nice.  Without twitter gods to tell them what to think, they're even worse off with no adult supervision.  

This.....this is why murdering cops walk almost always.  These two facts:

1) most people who cops interact with - and thus have a chance to kill - are not the most savory.  Even if they aren't doing anything particularly bad in the moment, they aren't boy scouts, either.   So....they have it coming.

2) cops are our heroes, we can't question their judgment in the moment.  If you didn't want to die, all you had to do was obey the cops (note, this applies even when you DID obey the cops, it doesn't matter), what the cop did may not be pretty, but the job isn't pretty.  So be it, I side with the cops.

 

These are not outlier beliefs.  A solid plurality of our country feels this way -- think something like 30-40%, at least.  The chance of you NOT having one of those people on your jury is close to zero.

Edited March 31, 2021 by Brisketexan

[TwiceHorn 31440]

22 hours ago, lemonlime said:

The defense questioning of these witnesses is terrible.  I don't understand after listening to a witness describe how they stood there watching Chauvin kill a man, you would ask the witness if he/she was angry.

It's clear the cops and their attorneys are so used to a criminal justice system that swallows whatever bullshit they spew out, they don't know how to actually respond to real questioning.

Well, despite the shortcomings of our criminal justice system, this is kind of the nature of it.

Unlike civil litigation, a criminal defense attorney by and large isn't worried about the frivolity of a defense or an argument.  If it has potential to create reasonable doubt, then it's legally and ethically fair game.  Of course, no lawyer wants to destroy their credibility before the judge, or more importantly in criminal law, the jury, but a lot of that "ego" has to yield to the purpose of criminal defense, which is raising doubt, no matter how unreasonable it may initially appear.

When I did the Criminal Defense Clinic at UT, Dave Sheppard asked us all a question:  "If there is an apple on the ground under an apple tree, are you comfortable arguing that someone put it there rather than it fell from the tree"?  Because that is the essence of a lot of criminal defense trial work.

The other thing is that counsel here is probably provided by the police union.  That was the case in the Guyger trial and I wasn't terribly impressed with their work although at least one of them, the appellate guy, is very highly regarded.

This guy may not be Racehorse Haynes or Percy Foreman.

But I think most important of all, he's got a bit of a shit sandwich for a case.

Edited March 31, 2021 by TwiceHorn

[TwiceHorn 31440]

38 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

This.....this is why murdering cops walk almost always.  These two facts:

1) most people who cops interact with - and thus have a chance to kill - are not the most savory.  Even if they aren't doing anything particularly bad in the moment, they aren't boy scouts, either.   So....they have it coming.

2) cops are our heroes, we can't question their judgment in the moment.  If you didn't want to die, all you had to do was obey the cops (note, this applies even when you DID obey the cops, it doesn't matter), what the cop did may not be pretty, but the job isn't pretty.  So be it, I side with the cops.

 

These are not outlier beliefs.  A solid plurality of our country feels this way -- think something like 30-40%, at least.  The chance of you NOT having one of those people on your jury is close to zero.

In small defense of cops, they do see some fucked-up, repugnant shit.  And it takes a mighty effort not to let that make you a cynical racist and prejudiced asshole.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of cops fail to exert that effort, and their "milieu" or general group attitude reinforces or even creates the cynicism where it may not exist, and, some of them bring a fair amount of predisposition to the job.

[Brisketexan 105083]

25 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

In small defense of cops, they do see some fucked-up, repugnant shit.  And it takes a mighty effort not to let that make you a cynical racist and prejudiced asshole.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of cops fail to exert that effort, and their "milieu" or general group attitude reinforces or even creates the cynicism where it may not exist, and, some of them bring a fair amount of predisposition to the job.

All of this.

Some of their cynicism etc. is well-earned.  But that doesn't change the fact that they are obligated to resist letting it turn them into criminals themselves.

And 100%, the group, "tribe" dynamic (the Brotherhood of the Badge) creates cynicism, amps up existing cynicism, and most importantly, creates a code/Omerta problem where not only do they NOT hold each other accountable, to do so violates the sacred code.  When you layer on the fact that it leads to the people who are literally supposed to be the tip of the spear in ENFORCING the law....to being a group that VIOLATES the law and relentlessly protects their fellow members who do so.....well....

That's a real freaking problem, man (Brisket says as a huge understatement).

[WhatTheBuck 28775]

Either everyone else is pronouncing Chauvin’s name incorrectly or the female prosecutor is. 

[gyroprotagonist 2592]

3 hours ago, tigol said:

I read it. They want to say the N word so badly. It is astonishing and almost the exact opposite of this thread.

[Captainant 27641]

1 minute ago, gyroprotagonist said:

I didn't know johnny sack had a texags account

[lemonlime 5503]

45 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Well, despite the shortcomings of our criminal justice system, this is kind of the nature of it.

Unlike civil litigation, a criminal defense attorney by and large isn't worried about the frivolity of a defense or an argument.  If it has potential to create reasonable doubt, then it's legally and ethically fair game.  Of course, no lawyer wants to destroy their credibility before the judge, or more importantly in criminal law, the jury, but a lot of that "ego" has to yield to the purpose of criminal defense, which is raising doubt, no matter how unreasonable it may initially appear.

When I did the Criminal Defense Clinic at UT, Dave Sheppard asked us all a question:  "If there is an apple on the ground under an apple tree, are you comfortable arguing that someone put it there rather than it fell from the tree"?  Because that is the essence of a lot of criminal defense trial work.

The other thing is that counsel here is probably provided by the police union.  That was the case in the Guyger trial and I wasn't terribly impressed with their work although at least one of them, the appellate guy, is very highly regarded.

This guy may not be Racehorse Haynes or Percy Foreman.

But I think most important of all, he's got a bit of a shit sandwich for a case.

It just reminds of nothing so much as the attorneys for police I saw in practice, who would make asinine arguments, and clearly expect them to be bought because their clients were upstanding officers of the law who we should all respect.  I practiced civil defense for years.  And the two most blatant plaintiff liars I ever saw were both cops. One just perjured himself for hours straight at his deposition.  There were multiple defendants, and all the defense lawyers were gobsmacked the entire time at the blatant, constant perjury, even over dumb unimportant facts.  And it was readily apparent neither the plaintiff nor his attorney realized what was going on and thought we bought the entire shit sandwich.

This just enrages me.  It's a clear shit sandwich of a case. And his lawyers are making some of the dumbest arguments I've ever heard. But he'll probably be acquitted because at least one member of the jury will gleefully eat shit sandwich.

[GopherRock 1765]

Defense didn't cross the last witness. I get not crossing the 9-year-old kid from yesterday, but at some point don't you have to try and discredit some of them?

On an aside, the last witness featured the first footage released from any of the officer's badge cams. No one seems to know if the entirety of the footage will be shown, and no one knows whether Chauvin will take the stand in his own defense.

[crash_davis 23103]

[lemonlime 5503]

7 minutes ago, GopherRock said:

Defense didn't cross the last witness. I get not crossing the 9-year-old kid from yesterday, but at some point don't you have to try and discredit some of them?

On an aside, the last witness featured the first footage released from any of the officer's badge cams. No one seems to know if the entirety of the footage will be shown, and no one knows whether Chauvin will take the stand in his own defense.

Discredit them with what exactly though?  So far they tried to discredit them by asking if they were "angry," and that backfired with of course I was angry I watched your client murder a man.  And these were just normal people on the street, who have no vested interest in this case, so it's not like they have biases to examine.  And it's not even like there's problems with their memory  of what happened to question them about, given that the entire thing was caught on video.  

If Chauvin was anyone but a cop, his attorney would have told him in no uncertain terms to enter a plea deal.  Because the case is indefensible.

Edited March 31, 2021 by lemonlime

[Guest Lobo]

It's literally one of the selling points of the Apple iPhone 11Pro.  

"For decades, studies have shown that witness testimony can be incredibly inaccurate due to time elapsed, stress, duress, injury, lighting, fatigue, or just innocent errors in memory and recollection.  That's why we created the Apple iPhone 11Pro.  Capable of recording crystal-clear HD-quality video in any lighting scenario possible in our Solar System for hours at a time with absolutely no lag or gaps."

Not a great look for the defense to go for the "Hey, it was a stressful situation so you probably don't remember perfectly.  It was a disturbing scene, amirite?"

If your point is that everybody around the scene can't be trusted to remember everything perfectly because of what was taking place...you're kinda drawing attention to the elephant in the room, "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury...every witness at the scene was understandably shaken up and can't recall every detail.  Only one person had the cool head, calculating presence, and inhuman distance from feeling and emotion at the time of this horrible overdose...the man on his neck...my client, Officer Chauvin.  He's really the only one who demonstrated a complete, almost alien disassociation from the horrible death taking place in real time in front of him (checks notes), underneath him.  It's really only his recanting of the events of that evening that we can trust."  

[GopherRock 1765]

4 minutes ago, lemonlime said:

Discredit them with what exactly though?  So far they tried to discredit them by asking if they were "angry," and that backfired with of course I was angry I watched your client murder a man.  And these were just normal people on the street, who have no vested interest in this case, so it's not like they have biases to examine.  And it's not even like there's problems with their memory  of what happened to question them about, given that the entire thing was caught on video.  

If Chauvin was anyone but a cop, he would have a public defender, and would have pleaded guilty long ago on these facts.

KARE-11 has a criminal defense attorney on as an analyst. As I was reading your post, he was reading off all the stuff that the State has yet to get to (medical, cause of death, and use of force), and there's 7 to 8 days worth of testimony. Defense is picking their spots and saving their credibility for those issues.

Another point the attorney made: The other three officers charged as accessories will NOT testify, but we'll see their badge cams. 

[GopherRock 1765]

And here comes the badge cams. First one is Officer Lane...

[Gourmand 7774]

44 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

 

Judge: JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION ASKED YOUNG LADY

[GringoSalado 1651]

8 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

But he wasn’t a small, frail man, was he? He was a big scary black man, wasn’t he?

Just gotta find one juror. 

[WhatTheBuck 28775]

“My knee might be a little stressed.” (I’m assuming that was Thomas Lane.)

Poor little piggie. 

Edited March 31, 2021 by WhatTheBuck

[Gourmand 7774]

holy shit that body cam footage was devastating. i'm shaking with rage. 

[Gourmand 7774]

 

[Guest Lobo]

isn't that where they're supposed to go?  

[Gourmand 7774]

The bystanders are heroes for calling them out and getting it all on video. FUCK DEREK CHAUVIN. I hope he gets his ass beat in prison.

Edited March 31, 2021 by Gourmand

[BBQ2Bayou 807]

They just started Chauvin's body cam. The others have been brutal. 

[Guest Lobo]

The others are actually more damning, IMO, to Chauvin.  But what would have been powerful to see would be Chauvin's camera just glaring into the faces of those bystanders barely moving.  But as it stands, I guess it falls off when he takes Mr. Floyd out of the backseat

[Gourmand 7774]

That shitheel Thao telling the crowd "This is why you don't do drugs, kids" over the screams of George Floyd saying "I can't breathe I can't breathe" was disgusting. 

[BBQ2Bayou 807]

28 minutes ago, Lobo said:

The others are actually more damning, IMO, to Chauvin.  But what would have been powerful to see would be Chauvin's camera just glaring into the faces of those bystanders barely moving.  But as it stands, I guess it falls off when he takes Mr. Floyd out of the backseat

Yeah I didn't realize his fell under the car. I hadn't seen any of these. 

[Guest Lobo]

3 minutes ago, BBQ2Bayou said:

Yeah I didn't realize his fell under the car. I hadn't seen any of these. 

I'll rely on some of you line-of-sight/videographer specialists, ex-military guys, et. al.  My brother is a professional photographer (wildlife, natural landscapes, etc.) and I'd like to think I got 10% of his eye for this kinda shit.  

We know from previous cell phone camera footage that Chauvin makes that cold hard stare into the young woman's camera several times, sometimes for incredibly uncomfortable long stretches.  Right?  That young girl filming is probably all of 5'5" or so, give or take a couple of inches.  She holds her phone up to film, as we all do, a couple inches under her eyeline so she can toggle back and forth between the two (real field of vision and the camera feature on the phone screen).  Her little cousin is to her left, Chauvin's right and seems to be about a foot+ shorter than her.  If Chauvin's body camera is attached and running and aimed slightly to the right of the two girls, when Chauvin is staring at the bystanders, particularly the 17 year old girl filming...his body camera would have been focused precisely on the little 8-year old cousin's face. 

9 minutes of choking a man out and his eyes honed on the cell camera and his own camera honed on the confusingly terrorized look on the face of an 8-year old child.  Chauvin wasn't staring into the little girl's eyes, but it would have looked that way from his bodycam angle.  The whole "the police were nervous about the growing crowd yelling at them" bullshit goes out the window with Chauvin and his camera having a starring contest with two little black girls as he puts a man to death on the street.  This trial is over before it starts.  But lucky for Chauvin, it fell off handling that big, scary man.  and so Chauvin lives to fight another day.  

 

[Aqua Buddha 14582]

So, they had Floyd in the car at one point and then took him out?  WTF?  I'm not watching the trial but saw the highlights on the news.  The 61 year old witness was the first to walk by and told Floyd (who was in the car at that point) to stop fighting or something.  

Him and the EMT have been devastating.  I liked the smarminess of the EMT.

[Cheeseweasel 26438]

4 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

So, they had Floyd in the car at one point and then took him out?

He demanded to be taken out of the car, FWIW.

[Captainant 27641]

1 minute ago, Cheeseweasel said:

He demanded to be taken out of the car, FWIW.

So if you've already been handcuffed and detained, the only way to secure that person outside of the squad car is to strangle them to death? What's your point that he requested to be out of the car?

[Gourmand 7774]

1 minute ago, Cheeseweasel said:

He demanded to be taken out of the car, FWIW.

He seemed to be having a panic attack and kept complaining to the officers about feeling claustrophobic. 

 

[Aqua Buddha 14582]

18 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

He demanded to be taken out of the car, FWIW.

So what?  Their argument is they had to restrain him on the ground.  They already had him restrained in the car.  

[Cheeseweasel 26438]

2 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

So what?  Their argument is they had to restrain him on the ground.  They already had him restrained in the car.  

Didn't say it was smart. Just said it happened.

[Cheeseweasel 26438]

15 minutes ago, Gourmand said:

He seemed to be having a panic attack and kept complaining to the officers about feeling claustrophobic. 

Yup. In hindsight, taking him out of the patrol car was pretty fucking dumb.

[WhatTheBuck 28775]

At no time while Floyd was saying he couldn’t breathe and begging to get up did Chauvin ask him if he was ready to get in the car and go peacefully. 

[Gourmand 7774]

1 hour ago, WhatTheBuck said:

At no time while Floyd was saying he couldn’t breathe and begging to get up did Chauvin ask him if he was ready to get in the car and go peacefully. 

Correct. I have to admit that while watching the first few minutes of the body cam footage I was skeptical of a guilty verdict because the footage corroborates the accounts of the accused. Or to clarify, there's enough there to sway one or more jurors. However, everything gets flipped upside down around the time the off duty EMS shows up on scene or maybe a few seconds before. The body cam footage shows Floyd not resisting arrest and hardly moving either as the onlookers are yelling at Chauvin to get off him and check his pulse etc. Where he was previously fidgeting a lot and kicking his legs, he is now motionless. That's when it became murder imo. Floyd was under control and not a threat to the officers. Someone else said it upthread and I completely agree: Chauvin was deliberately exerting more pressure Floyd's neck because of the protestations of the witnesses. It had nothing to do with George Floyd and everything to do with that fucking dirtbag cop's power trip over onlookers filming him and pleading with him to stop. 

He's a murderer. 

[GringoSalado 1651]

1 hour ago, Gourmand said:

Chauvin was deliberately exerting more pressure Floyd's neck because of the protestations of the witnesses. It had nothing to do with George Floyd and everything to do with that fucking dirtbag cop's power trip over onlookers filming him and pleading with him to stop. 

Seems obvious at this point. Disclosure, I haven't watched all of the vids and don't plan to.

[threesheets 1672]

9 hours ago, Cheeseweasel said:

He demanded to be taken out of the car, FWIW.

Next time I get thrown in a paddy wagon I'm going to do that.  

[WhatTheBuck 28775]

If he was about to die from an overdose anyway then they should’ve obliged him and just waited for him to stroke out. Apparently it would’ve taken less than 10 minutes. They could’ve avoided a lot of hassle that way. 

[conVINCEd 21469]

6 minutes ago, threesheets said:

Next time I get thrown in a paddy wagon I'm going to do that.  

We have a mutual friend who tried such a thing and ended up having to call his parents at 3 a.m. while they were celebrating their anniversary at some private island in the Caribbean to authorize getting staples in his little brother’s head.  He was a senior in high school and had not yet turned 18.  As phone calls go, that one was probably pretty unpleasant.

[TwiceHorn 31440]

Fentanyl is a CNS depressant, and, as far as I know, kills people by respiratory arrest.  Meaning your breathing slows to the point you're not getting enough oxygen and you don't have the normal gasping, increased respiration response.

And, it's fast-acting.

Unless Floyd just took an overdose of it, I don't think what I have seen of his response is consistent with Fentanyl OD or most other opioids for that matter.  You don't take Fentanyl and die an hour or two later.

I dunno, maybe if you mix it with meth.

[Asithappens 974]

On 3/31/2021 at 6:40 AM, Gourmand said:

 

 

That judge is a jagoff, maybe even a fucking jagoff. 

What a tool.