I think its more like 40% of the country thinks that its literally not possible for a cop to commit murder on duty when dealing with a “suspect”.
Nah, you’re overestimating it in this case. Lotta closet racists want to feel good about themselves and be able to say “see, the system works” when faced with a case that is so blatant even they’re like “man that’s fucked up.” Let’s remember that Floyd was the case that led Mitt Romney to march in BLM and had even people like Mitch McConnell commenting “that’s fucked up.”
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Surgical strike on causation while conceding that Chauvin is a fucking asshole and do a whole lot of nothing when the prosecution calls the fact witnesses to the stand. You know what would have been super effective IMO? The defense attorney not saying a fucking thing for like the first two days after opening. Would leave the jury wondering why he’s not saying a fucking thing, and then when we start getting into medical, they’d be like “oooh, that’s why he didn’t say anything during the first half of the case.”
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Yeah, this. Racists are going to come to this story as evidence that they aren’t racist. (See also “I can’t be racist; I have a black friend”)
Like, I just can’t stress enough how stupid it is to go after the fact witnesses attacking their memory or trying to show they are biased or angry when this is the most videotaped crime in the history of the world. Like there are cameras and sound running from fifteen angles. Nobody gives a fuck if you catch a fact witness in a prior inconsistent statement about exactly what they saw or heard, or successfully demonstrate that they were “angry” and thus could maybe be lying. The hardest thing for an attorney to do is to know when to sit down and shut up. It’s the mark of a master class attorney.
The defense here is causation. It is not “he was just following police procedure, he was afraid of the crowd, etc.”. Those are dog losers and by trying all of them he makes the real defense weaker.
Agree. “The mean bystanders made me do it” defense doesn’t seem like a winner. Especially since the tape shows he was completely unfazed by the comments. It also conflicts with the “he went by the book” defense that they’ll be trying to present simultaneously.
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“My client is an asshole and this is a tragedy but the state has not shown beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim’s underlying health conditions were not the cause of death.” Get some whore doctor to say it’s possible and only talk about that one exact thing.
I really think you guys are putting too much weight on the need for the defense to be logically consistent and coherent to win. We seem to be assuming that the jury is made up of people that think about things like us (“What are the facts? What is the truth? Is this information reliable? Is this story consistent?”) whereas the defense needs to just provoke an emotional response in one member of the jury to win. One of the things that we should have learned from the Trump presidency is that “What about this?! What about that!?” bullshit distraction tactics work on people. Lots and lots of people.
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To put a finer point on this - many, many, many, many people when presented with inconsistent information will not criticize the inconsistency, they will instinctively fall back on “Well now I don’t know what to think! I will go with what I feel should be true.”
Many, many, many people.
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Want to hear inconsistent?
One person I know (I believe he’s a libertarian bro but he never wants to be direct about his politics or how he feels) continuously argued with me that covid deaths were overstated and a lot of people died from other things. George Floyd is killed and he automatically says covid was the cause of his death LOL
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Hard agree. I fear jman is approaching this with experience/knowledge average jurists just never consider. A shotgun approach of “it was chaotic, cops don’t have to act perfectly, the danger may have subsided but was imminent (both from a potentially dangerous waking up suspect disoriented from his choke and the crowd), Floyd had medical issues/drugs” is going to work on some people. Juries mistake confusion for reasonable doubt all of the time.
Totally understand the efficacy of a surgical direct/cross and this attorney’s strat may not be GTO but I wouldn’t count it out just yet.
Ok I know you’re posting this to show that even the cashier didn’t want the cops called, but this tweet kind of annoys me because you can’t legally dock someone’s pay for this so it’s not like it was an either/or choice? I was a shift supervisor at a fast food restaurant once and if someone asked me to dock their pay I’d be like what the fuck bro I’m not HR how would I even do that and are trying to get me fired?
Oh…I completely agree that jurors make confounding decisions and its certainly possible they could in this case. But I’m also agreeing Chauvin’s attorneys are presenting a less than ideal defense. And not sure a hung jury would be a win, since they would just have to do it all over again at some point. A win would be an acquittal or conviction on the least of the charges, which is still possible.
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Yeah I know but I’ve worked a lottt of retail as well as being a bank teller. I have never ever seen anyone get in trouble (including the manager) for being short on their register or having a fake bill unless it was more than $100 and even then it was only a write up. Involving police for something like this is pretty ridiculous IMO
Yes. This is the defense. It’s not even a bad defense. You know what sucks for the prosecutions case? That George Floyd was already complaining about shit before the knee from Chauvin. The argument should be “he was already having a medical episode due to XYZ, Chauvin’s knee had nothing to do with it.” That’s the only defense possible here. I still think it’s a loser on net, but it’s the best defense possible. But this throw everything against hte wall, he was just following orders/training Nuremberg shit is a loser every day of the week.
It has nothing to do with being logically consistent. If the jury was made up of perfectly rational robots then a good defense would be to argue every possible defense in the hopes that one of them prevails. But that’s not how human psychology works. If the defense makes a dumb clearly losing argument about the crowd being angry or Chauvin not being an asshole, well the jury is going to dislike that, and it makes them more likely to discount the causation defense. Because they already don’t like the defense attorney and have decided that he’s wrong. A very good trial attorney once told me that the only thing that matters in the end in a jury trial is which side the jury likes more. I think that is largely true. The jury is going to dislike this defense attorney because of this and won’t listen to him when he gets to his “real” defense.
Cup foods doesn’t strike me as the kind of place that follows hr rules. The cashier testified that it was store policy to dock pay if someone accepted a counterfeit bill. Yes, that’s not legal. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t do it though.
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Thanks, these are great points. I wonder how much of the conventional wisdom about juries holds up when a) the defendant is a cop and b) the case is of national political interest. I think the “who do you like more” reasoning makes a lot of sense when the jury is legitimately impartial and disinterested, but I would be surprised if the actually found 12 people that are truly dispassionate at this point in time about the role of cops in society and the general political environment that can’t be separated from the facts.
There’s gotta be a better system than this. No idea what that might be though.