Lately, it has become common for elected officials in the USA to make inappropriate statements regarding cases being heard in the courts. One elected official in particular would not only give a strong opinion on how the case should be resolved, he would repeatedly hurl personal insults at judges who did not rule his way and accuse them of corruption or worse.
I don’t think Maxine Waters should’ve said what she said, and I think she should apologize. But I’m not going to help make an example of her, and any Republican/Conservative that criticizes her is a hypocrite.
Judges run their own courtrooms like fiefdoms, so that doesn’t surprise me. I promise you if you pay attention and watch verdicts read out in California, 95% of the time, it’s the clerk who’s reading them.
One judge I worked with occasionally when my regular judge was away and I was farmed out to different courtrooms, despised the phrase, “so help me God,” added to the oaths. If you worked for him, you had better remember to omit that phrase from all the oaths you administered. Woe to those clerks who inadvertently spoke the phrase in his courtroom. The phrase is included in the official version of the oaths. Didn’t matter.
A premeditated (considered, planned, or prepared for before the act) killing with the intent to kill the person
applied, as he had several minutes to consider, plan, or prepare to kill Floyd.
I wouldn’t have been shocked or upset if the jury felt there was reasonable doubt about that. But I read somewhere that Chavin knew Floyd, as the two had previously worked together as bouncers or something, and the nurder just looked so intentional to me.
I understand that argument but I would be inclined to lean against it. To me premeditated means that he planned to kill him, like got up that day and went looking for him. I don’t think that he planned to kill him. I don’t think he gave a shit one way or the other. Assuming a reasonably long sentence, I think that justice was served. Maximum sentence is 40 years. Typical sentence for someone found guilty of this without any priors is 12.5 years, but this isn’t typical.
Early on it was disclosed that they worked at the same place at the same time but it was a busy club and they worked in different areas. It’s not clear that they knew each other. I don’t think it came up at trial.
I think premeditated means before one starts the act of killing, doesn’t it? Not just deciding to keep strangling somebody, or whatever?
And intent in this case seems to me next to impossible to prove. I can see why they didn’t charge it, and I very much doubt they’d have gotten a conviction on it.
I flipped over to Fox for about a minute, and they seemed to be breathlessly searching the crowds, looking futilely for “antifa” ——— apparently antifa watchers look for black hoodies, respirator masks and signs on sticks——- but they couldn’t find them. At least not that they could show on film, they claimed to catch fleeting glimpses, but they are wily critters that know how how to blend in.
They seemed very disappointed that the crowd wasn’t angry and violent. Now they’ll have to find something else to talk about for the rest of the week.
Thank you. Everyone I know is relieved. But Minnesota has some deep racial issues that are hidden under Minnesota Nice and “but we are Liberal.” There is a lot of NIMBY and a lot of smug superiority. In some ways, this and the recent killing of Duante Wright have knocked a little of our superiority out of us, which is good. I don’t consider myself native to Minnesota - I was born here, and have spent my adult life here, raised my kids here. You can’t solve problems you don’t acknowledge. And maybe we are getting there.
Well, okay - I surprised myself by being mildly surprised. I guess I didn’t expect such a sweeping verdict. There will be appeals of course, these cases almost never just end with any degree of finality. But it was still a very important decision.
And I have to applaud the prosecution team. They did a very good, very thorough, very systematic job. This was sort of the anti-original OJ trial in how it played out.
That was Richard Nixon. As I recall things, Manson brought a copy of the LA Times into the courtroom; and held it up, facing the jury. The headline read, “Manson Guilty, Nixon Declares.” It was quickly taken away from Manson, but his action did hold things up for a while.
Before the all-important conviction, another very important precedent was established in this case: a lot of good officers came out and spoke out against one very bad one.
No. Please re-read the whole thing. If the system had been working correctly he would have been fired long ago. This is not just a failure of Chauvin but also a failure of the system.