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Steve's avatar

" Chauvin was convicted by a jury on essentially undisputed evidence that he put a lethal amount of pressure on a prone Floyd’s neck and kept in there long after Floyd had stopped resisting. It hardly takes a biased or intimidated jury to conclude that that was murder in some degree. Chauvin’s actions knowingly created a risk of unjustified death. He knew or should have known better, and he has himself to blame"

Well That's pretty much nonsense. He got convicted because The Jury did not want to see the city Burn Again.

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William Otis's avatar

I doubt you can know with the assurance you employ the "motive" for the jury's judgment, but assuming arguendo that you're right, it doesn't make any difference. Whether the verdict is correct depends not on the jury's motive, but on whether the evidence at trial was, under the law, sufficient to sustain the conviction. You don't dispute that it was.

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Chrissy's avatar

Yep. The first version of the autopsy was that Floyd died of a drug overdose and with pressure they changed it. B.S.

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Ron's avatar

I have nothing good to say about Derek Chauvin or his conduct towards George Floyd. But it’s worth noting that the most serious offense of which he was convicted, second degree murder, resulted from application of the felony-murder rule, a theory that obviated any need for the prosecution to prove that he was aware of and indifferent to any particular risk posed by his conduct, much less that he intended to kill, or even injure, Floyd. Chauvin’s predicate felony was assault.

The felon-murder rule is widely criticized, especially among legal scholars and others who consider themselves progressive and enlightened. Some states have disallowed the theory altogether, or at least limited its reach in a variety of contexts. One common limitation among those states that still recognize the felony-murder theory is achieved by application of the “merger rule,” which disallows predicating a felony murder prosecution on a felony that is—as it was in Chauvin’s case—assaultive. This might seem counterintuitive—particularly considering that a separate limitation on felony-murder requires that the underlying felony be inherently dangerous to human life. Minnesota has not adopted the merger limitation, leaving Chauvin unprotected from the felony-murder rule’s “bootstrapping” effect that many find (in most cases) unjust.

As it happens, Chauvin was also convicted of separate (lesser) charges that required proof that he was indifferent to the dangers he knew his conduct posed. That Chauvin deserves a lengthy prison sentence might not be “open to question” by Bill (and probably most people), but the fairness of the theory on which he was convicted most certainly is—and not merely, or even primarily, by “conservatives.”

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Jfan's avatar

There is an objective difference between a murder committed by a civilian and a murder committed by a police officer. Both are serious crimes and may demonstrate important failings both in our society's inculcation of values and in how seriously our society punishes criminals. However, these are different problems, just as the thousands of racially motivated lynchings of black men from the 1860s to the 1960s are qualitatively different from the murders of blacks by other blacks which I presume occurred over this period. Therefore if Bill wants to highlight a case which "puts the lie" to the George Floyd "narrative," he would be better off pointing to the murder of a white man or woman by a police officer, of which there are several which come to mind.

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BlueRidge4Ever's avatar

From your post "Ayala, who just turned 18," Doesn't seem to square with "The death penalty will not be sought in either case because under Nevada law, they face 20 years to life in prison if they are convicted before they turn 18" also from your post. So I guess the argument would be that what is good for the gander (under 18) must be applied to everyone involved no matter their age. Strange law why would conviction be the demarcation line rather than when the act was committed?

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