chauvin invokes 5th amendment right, chooses not to testify.
defence is resting, and state is calling rebuttal witnesses.
I got the impression Chauvin wanted to testify. Eric Nelson said they’ve discussed it repeatedly.
IMHO Not testifying is probably the best option. I don’t think Chauvin would appear sympathetic or remorseful on the stand.
Of course he wants to testify. He’s pretty much Colonel Jessep. It’d probably go just about as well, too.
as soon as chauvin got on the stand they could have brought up his past uses of force, his firing, many, many, things that are not admissible now. a very smart move.
the prosecution just walked a tight rope and got across safely. that was really tense. one wrong word and the judge would have hammered down a mistrial. also having dr tobin as your last word is really good.
looks like this will be a short day. then on to monday’s closing.
What is this about? (for those of us not watching live)
the defence and prosecution have rested. the jury will be excused until monday when closing happens.
I caught a snippet, and I believe it relates to some reports regarding carbon monoxide poisoning that the State wanted to introduce or reference, in rebuttal to the defense suggesting that carbon monoxide emissions from the patrol vehicle may have been what caused Floyd to die. The judge said that it couldn’t come up due to late disclosure.
(I haven’t watched most of the trial, although I am following along with news reports. It seems to me that the defense is flailing if one of their arguments is that Floyd only died because the defendant pinned him down while he was slowly poisoned from car exhaust)
procrustus, the defence witness dr fowler on wednesday mentioned carbon monoxide. the medical examiner called the prosecution and said there was a report that had that information. it turned out that the medical centre did not give the full report to the lawyers.
the prosecution wanted dr tobin to testify on the full report that they obtained this morning.
the judge ruled that because they knew the basics of dr fowler’s testimony in february, that they had enough time to get the report. he very narrowly defined what dr tobin could say in rebuttal. the judge stated that should either the prosecution or dr tobin mention the value on the report or hints of it, he would rule a mistrial.
basically one word by tobin or the prosecution could blow up the trial.
the prosecution brought in dr tobin and kept him on a “very short leash” and managed to get the rebuttal they wanted and not blow up the trial.
it was very tense.
for the record dr tobin was able to use the blood gas report already in evidence to state that it would be around 2 %. the report that was obtained stated 1.5%, he could not state that.
Thanks. Very interesting. I’ve done some carbon monoxide cases. There are usually clear signs if that’s the cause of death.
I don’t think the defense was trying to say that CO was THE cause but that it was just one of many contributing causes that they hope would amount to “substantial” so that what Chauvin did is not “substantial”.
Just as an aside;
If the defendant in this trial were not a police officer … and the case not well-known nationally … but the same level of video evidence existed … this would’ve been a really quick trial, wouldn’t it have?
But for Chauvin, none of these ancillary factors come into play. Chauvin caused Floyd to die, and whether it was by choking him to death, or traumatizing his heart, or poisoning him, or a combination of factors, is ultimately immaterial to that crucial fact. In my opinion, the issue ripe for the jury to argue over is whether Chauvin acted lawfully when he caused the death.
I don’t think the defense really helps themselves by trying to create an issue out of causation.
Of course that would make this a completely different case, since police officers do in fact have a legal right to use greater force than a lay person, under certain conditions.
That’s why, in my opinion, what ultimately determines this case is the fact that fellow officers from Chauvin’s department testified against him. This is the crux of the case - if other cops he worked with say he was wrong, the defense loses on the issue of whether this was lawful police use of force.
(And I hardly think the jury will be persuaded by the defense rebuttal witnesses. Their experts were from out of town. They didn’t serve this area, they didn’t work with Chauvin, and that won’t generate the same credibility).
What else do they have? Their choices are 1) he didn’t do anything wrong, and/or 2) anything he might have done wrong didn’t cause Floyd’s death.
Both are tough arguments to make, but causation seems like the better hope.
I think he’s convicted, but I see the causation issue as the harder one for the defense, because I think a jury is mainly going to use the videos to decide what happened, and it’s plain that the video shows Chauvin causing Floyd to die - whatever scientific mechanism was involved is sort of immaterial. Instead, if I were the defense, I’d try to make it an issue of Chauvin’s concerns and worries (about the crowd, about Floyd, etc) then some highly technical medical argument.
I think these two go hand in hand. It cannot possibly be a lawful police restraint technique that would kill anyone after four minutes. It simply cannot.
Therefore, for the defense to win, it has to show that the technique was lawful, and that the reason Floyd died was because of the other issues.
I’m not sure of MN manslaughter laws, but here if you commit an illegal act which causes death you are guilty of involuntary manslaughter. The textbook case is that if you are mad at me for some reason and in an unprovoked fashion you punch me in the face. Completely unbeknownst to you, I have a terrible heart condition and the punch causes me to have a fatal heart attack. In my state, you would be guilty of involuntary manslaughter, a misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in jail. I’m not sure how MN law translates to that scenario, but that seems like it could be an appropriate one.
Another thought I had, which I haven’t seen mentioned and so maybe it is meaningless, is that there are differences between the law and best practices. The law allows “reasonable force” to be used to effectuate an arrest. Suppose force can be placed on a spectrum of 1 being the mildest and 20 being the harshest. If the law has said that 12 is reasonable in a particular situation, I’m not sure why a police department adopting a voluntary policy saying that 8 is the max (say it adopted a lower force policy to improve community relations) would give rise to criminal liability. The officer could get disciplined or fired, sure, but I don’t see how that would effect the legal significance.
Imagine if someone of your body type can have three beers and legally drive without getting a DUI. However, you work for a company that has a zero tolerance policy: no drinking and driving on company time. If you are pulled over on company time after drinking one beer, you could be fired, but that wouldn’t mean that you would get a DUI.
The difference here is that what Chauvin did would be unambiguously far beyond acceptable for anyone not a police officer. The only reason it might not be assault is because of his authority as an officer. And the only things that being an officer authorizes him to do are the things set forth in his department’s policy. The department policy is more permissive, not less, than the standard for the general public.
Yeah. Now the question is- will that be good enuf for the demonstrators?
In what percentage of criminal trials does the defendant actually choose to testify?
Even if the use of force were reasonable at the beginning, is it reasonable to restrain someone who is motionless for four minutes and deny him care? I think the jury would be hard-pressed to accept that.
That cannot be the correct standard. A private person is permitted to make an arrest for a " public offense committed or attempted in the arresting person’s presence."
https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/629.37
A private person couldn’t possibly have legal authority to use more force than a police officer. If you want to argue that what Chauvin did was far beyond what a private citizen or a police officer can do, then fine, but that wasn’t my point. My point was a question of why a police department’s policy equals the law.
And again, I don’t know MN law, but I dispute your characterization that a violation of a PD use of force policy would, ex post, nullify his arrest power. It is an interesting theory, but seems not practical. It would be as if I filed a frivolous pleading in court and instead of only being disciplined by the State Bar, I was also criminally charged for practicing law without a license because my law license only allows me to file pleadings in conformance with what my law license allows me to do. It’s a pretty large bootstrap.