This is where I am.
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Maybe(but I think it unlikely if an intelligent, sane person managed to sneak into the jury). I think they’d have to start looking at charging the others with the same, at that point. No injury to his neck/throat would(I think) mean the pressure on his back was just as big a factor.
It’s possible. I’m not going to make any hard bets on this one though, because I don’t know enough and it’s honestly a crap shoot at this point when you consider jury dynamics and all the other stuff
If I were Chauvin, I think I’d ask whichever of Floyd’s long lost family members is in attendance to come put a knee on my neck and do his best for 10 minutes.
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What’s the white Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit?
I did?
Yeah, those welfare checks and public housing are so much better than having a job and living somewhere better.
I’m sure there are some heifers in his family so who knows.
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Imagine if the defence lawyer delivered his closing statements with Chauvin on his back… Can’t imagine a judge would allow it but would be powerful.
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Appalachia and other parts of the country with poor, dysfunctional white cultures. The problems are much the same - family breakdown, devaluing of education, lawlessness, glorification of violence. Read JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy.
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To be fair that’s assuming the job in question would allow them to escape. Most or all jobs a person in that situation would qualify for would not pay enough to get them out of the ghetto.
Do they also have the same level of violence? The answer is no. There are differences between rural poverty and urban poverty.
Now, yes, but we are talking about why it got like that. If the communities that became ghettos were not always ghettos, people got married, they had jobs that supported a family, then why did they change to what we see now? If it wasn’t outside influence then it means the people made a conscious decision to turn their communities into violent shitholes. Why would they do that?
We know for a fact that highway construction has contributed to the decline of black communities, for example. We saw this with Newark’s South Ward which was once predominately Jewish and Italian. Philip Roth grew up there.
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I agree. They wouldn’t. Outside influence is a dominant factor. Others are changing nature of the economy, changing culture norms, and especially the drug invasion. However I agree with you here.
This is something I hadn’t thought of, although it makes sense.
This is the irony. It was the government and outside forces that were the main contributors to what we see now in inner cities yet, the way out for people is to learn to help themselves and have accountability. The conservatives say pull yourself up by your bootstraps and liberals just have policies that maintain the status quo. I think most Americans can accept the answer is in the middle but politicians have to maintain a binary view of things.
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Found hiding in a hole, given a show trial and then taunted by onlookers as he was hanged. Very manly.
That was a body double. The real Saddam is living in NYC.
That’s true, but it’s a question of degree. As someone whose family comes from Appalachia, I can tell you that the cultural dysfunction of much of that population looks very similar to the kind of dysfunction we see in inner cities. In my (former) culture, “real men” know how to fight and often have criminal records, but they can’t necessarily hold down a full-time job or earn a degree. It’s par for the course for a woman to drop out of high school and have several kids by several different men, and then be on public assistance. And of course it’s all someone else’s fault; the world isn’t fair and is just keeping these folks down. Personal responsibility is an alien concept. Put all this together and you have a pretty f***ed up mess. And these folks pass the same habits and mentality on generation after generation. I was lucky to have a father who wanted something different for his son and pushed me hard to do well in school and go to college and law school. But I still have plenty of relatives deeply enmeshed in that culture.
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Verdict is between next We’d - Fri. Feels very quick.
George Floyd:
- Had heart disease
- Had an enlarged heart
- Had 75-90% occlusion in his coronary arteries
- Had hypertension
- Had a previously-recorded blood pressure of 216/160
- Had a tumor (extra-adrenal paraganglioma) associated with hypertension and tachycardia
- Had COVID
- Was a smoker
- Had a potentially lethal amount of fentanyl in his system (11 ng/mL; 10-20 ng/mL used for anesthesia per EMCDDA)
- Had a cocktail of other illicit drugs in his system, including methamphetamine
- Was hospitalized for an overdose the month prior
- Took the same pills he OD’d on (#11) the day of his death
- Complained of his stomach hurting (made same complaint in #11)
- Was saying he couldn’t breathe before he was restrained
- Had foaming at the lips at time of apprehension
- (Presumably) spat methamphetamine/fentanyl pill into the back of the police car per the pill fragment/residue testing positive for his DNA
- Had no damage to his spine, neck, or trachea per autopsy; no petechiae noted
The prosecution:
- Had one witness stating Floyd died of a “blood choke”
- Had another witness saying he died from a “neck choke”
- Had another witness say he died from positional asphyxia
- Had witness (#3) state carbon monoxide couldn’t have been a factor in Floyd’s death as his oxygen saturation was tested at 98% (did not reconcile this with asphyxia assertion)
- Shifted description of Chauvin’s restraint to “knee on neck” to “knee on neck area”
The defense:
- Had prosecution witness state they performed a “load and go” of Floyd due to the perceived hostility of the crowd
- Had prosecution witness state it wasn’t uncommon for unconscious individuals (drug/trauma-related) to suddenly regain consciousness and become violent
- Had prosecution witness confirm being handcuffed does not make a suspect harmless
- Had prosecution witness state Floyd looked high while in Cup Foods
- Had prosecution witness confirm EMS was called (code 2) at time Floyd was placed on the ground
- Had prosecution witness confirm EMS call was upgraded code 3 after noting Floyd’s behavior was worse than bloodied nose would explain
- Had prosecution witness state the EMS arrival time seemed abnormally slow
- Had prosecution witness confirm police first aid training was below that of EMT/EMS; that, given the location (in the street) and unruly crowd, it was reasonable for police officers to wait for first responders to arrive rather than attempt to administer first aid
- Had prosecution witness (off-duty EMT lady) admit she never provided any credentials/identification to police after interjecting herself in the scene to offer assistance
- Had prosecution witness state that it wasn’t the neck restraint that was problematic - it was explicitly permitted per MPD policy at that time - but the duration of the restraint (something not covered in the policy to my knowledge)
But then, the defense’s use-of-force expert shat the bed, so there’s that.
There’s more that I’m forgetting, but oh well. The respective highlight reels will be brought to bear Monday.
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Also, kudos to Eric Nelson (Chauvin’s attorney). He’s been essentially a one-man show (he has some female assistant/attorney in the background) against two assistant attorneys general, two outside lawyers, and, from what I’ve read, ten other attorneys working behind the scenes. He’s been getting document dumps of ~500 pages per day, oftentimes in the late afternoon/evening.
And he’s still giving the prosecution a run for their money.
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I’d like to reply to my own post. I’m listening to closing arguments now. The prosecution’s case, indeed, is Chauvin’s face. This is ridiculous.
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