Leading questions are what you do in cross, though. So why would that matter?
The point to me is that they played more of the clip, and the guy heard something else. So either the clip was too short and additional context made it clearer, or the clip is too ambiguous to have any clear meaning. Either way, that seems to undercut the supposed “evidence.”
I’m also pretty sure that the science on this sort of ambiguity says that people are more likely to stick with the interpretation they were last primed to hear. I know that’s how it works for me. I’ve watched videos where different things are suggested for backmasked lyrics, and the last one they use is the one that sticks in my head.
Plus, well, there’s just the fact that “I ate too many drugs” is not the way people normally talk. You don’t “eat” drugs–you “take” them or “do” them.
I’ve heard the term “ate drugs.” My point was that it is just an ink blot. You can hear what you want to hear on that part of the tape, and for the reasons you point out, I think it was a mistake for the defense to try to tie it down to a particular thing. But even if he said “I didn’t/ain’t do no drugs” that is shown to be false by the partially chewed up pills with his saliva and DNA in the back seat of the police car.
Also, if he was unable to breathe, in his last breaths, the “I ate too many drugs” should help the STATE as he was trying to be honest to get the cops off of him. So, I think the argument is confusing in many ways.
Google’s ngram viewer shows zero instances of “ate drugs”, “ate some drugs” or “ate too many drugs” in its corpus of books. The iWeb corpus (14 billion words from usage on the Internet) shows just one instance of “ate drugs” (in a headline “Baby Ate Drugs”), zero instances of “ate some drugs”, and one instance of “ate too many drugs” (in a bizarre rambling post about drug usage). I’d say at best it is an exceedingly uncommon usage.
I’m getting hits for “ate drugs.” (You don’t use quotes in the ngram search.)
That said, looking through Google Books, most of those are false hits (like “appropri- ate drugs” going over the right margin. I did find some real ones: “These folks ate drugs like they were candy.” from a 2006 book (but that kind of makes sense, as they are comparing it to candy, which you eat. Another cite I find uses “ate drugs” with a candy comparison as well.)
And there’s also a good number of stories where suspects “ate drugs” in order to hide the evidence. I see headlines and news stories from a number of places, like this one or this one or this one or many more. It seems to be restricted to usage in which one ingests drugs in order to get rid of contraband.
I’m not saying that’s the case here, just that it is a usage.
Hm, not sure what I did there. I do know not to use quotes in ngram. “Ate some drugs” and “ate too many drugs” have zero hits, but you’re correct that “ate drugs” has some, mostly false positives.
I have a question. We all know that there was, in fact, a carbon monoxide test on George Floyd’s blood and that it was in the normal range. Given that it is a fact that he did not have an abnormal level of carbon monoxide, can the defense still claim in their closing arguments that it was a factor? i.e. Can they lie in their closing arguments?
Watching the prosecutions closing, he did a good job explaining the findings the jury can and should make, but I would have liked to see a little more passion, and he kind of tread into dangerous territory with the “superhuman” comments. That could make the jury think about the drugs, and could make the jury think the fentanyl prevented pain compliance from working.
Jurors tend to push back when hit with “passion.” A detached professional presentation is usually less flashing but more effective. Let the facts themselves create the emotion.
Rebuttal closing is a good time to turn up the heat a bit.
