Chauvin Trial

[Kevin]

Today, a pulmonologist testified that Floyd was doing everything he could to try to breathe. The left side of his chest was being compressed by the police and he was using his fingers, knuckles, chin, forehead and nose to try to get air in. The way the handcuffs were shoved up high into his back also constricted his breathing.

Earlier, a forensic scientist testified that Floyd died of hypoxia - lack of air.

In other words, Chauvin looked straight at the camera and choked the life out of Floyd.

Horrible!

[Phillbo]

No matter the verdict BLM is going to go crazy when it's over.

I believe it's also called Mechanical asphyxia....

[Dave Grubb]

Guilty or not---and I will not voice an opinion----when I saw that video the first time and not knowing at the time any details or outcome, I was incensed to the point of shouting at the TV as that SOB rolled his leg back and forth grinding the man's face into the pavement with a look on his face as if he were smashing a bug. The man was handcuffed and on his belly----where in the hell was he going to go

[FredK]

Dave I have to agree. Still don't know why the other officers and others there didn't stop him. Shakes head.............

[UTAH]

During my LEO career, I never saw an officer trained to kneel on a person's neck to hold them down. And, even when deployed on a Fugitive Apprehension Team (yes FAT), I never saw such a restraint used.

It does occur to me that Chauvin may have encountered such a move during his career. But, I assume if he did, the defense would bring that up at trial.

Hunter

[Honda]

I will fully support the jury's verdict. I hope others do the same.

[Kevin]

Depends on what it is.

I'm not a process person, one that believes that if the process is agreed upon, so must be the outcome. If the machinery spits out what I think is a stupid verdict, then I see no reason to support that verdict. All our institutions - political, legal, whatever - exist to order our society. They are for us, not us for them.

I had this discussion about a decade ago with wacojoe. He was a former prosecutor and he bought into the support of the jury system as part of a legal system he spent his life serving. That was understandable. But when the legal system gives results that offend our notions of justice, there is no reason that the legal system must be accepted as is.

Case in point - KKK trials in the 1950s and 1960s. Should everyone have just accepted the not guilty verdicts of various perpetrators of racist violence? Or should justice have been sought another way, this time through changing the federal law and going after them from a different direction? I say the latter. Refusing to accept that a jury has dealt justice doesn't mean violence. It just means the matter is not finished just because 12 people said so.

[Honda]

Understood. You don't fully agree with the American system of adjudicating criminal defendants. I do.

[Honda]

Case in point - KKK trials in the 1950s and 1960s. Should everyone have just accepted the not guilty verdicts of various perpetrators of racist violence? Or should justice have been sought another way, this time through changing the federal law and going after them from a different direction? I say the latter. Refusing to accept that a jury has dealt justice doesn't mean violence. It just means the matter is not finished just because 12 people said so.

You might want to add the OJ trial to your list. I don't know anybody that thought he was innocent other than the jury. But guess what he was acquitted and he did not go to jail for it. The public bitched and whined about it for a bit and it was over. The juries are not always right and they're not always wrong but I will and I will always continue to respect their decision.



Case in point - KKK trials in the 1950s and 1960s. Should everyone have just accepted the not guilty verdicts of various perpetrators of racist violence? Or should justice have been sought another way, this time through changing the federal law and going after them from a different direction? I say the latter. Refusing to accept that a jury has dealt justice doesn't mean violence. It just means the matter is not finished just because 12 people said so.

[QUOTE=Kevin;1078840]

You might want to add the OJ trial to your list. I don't know anybody that thought he was innocent other than the jury. But guess what he was acquitted and he did not go to jail for it. The public bitched and whined about it for a bit and it was over. The juries are not always right and they're not always wrong but I will and I will always continue to respect their decision.

[Honda]

I don't know how the hell I screwed this up but you get the gist I'm tired of trying to edit it.

[Kevin]

It isn't quite that simple.

People create the system to give justice. The system exists for the express purpose of giving justice and justice is a verdict that does not contradict the purpose of the system's existence. Juries in the Deep South routinely let murderers of black men, women and children walk free. I don't think that we need to support those decisions out of allegiance to the process, especially if that process is giving results that are not acceptable.

We as a people created the system of justice we have. When it no longer gives justice, we are fully within our rights and in compliance with our history to change things until we can accept the verdicts being given. That's what the Civil Rights Act was all about.

[Kevin]

With respect to OJ, I don't know nearly enough about that trial to even begin to form an opinion one way or the other.

[Honda]

It isn't quite that simple.

People create the system to give justice. The system exists for the express purpose of giving justice and justice is a verdict that does not contradict the purpose of the system's existence. Juries in the Deep South routinely let murderers of black men, women and children walk free. I don't think that we need to support those decisions out of allegiance to the process, especially if that process is giving results that are not acceptable.

We as a people created the system of justice we have. When it no longer gives justice, we are fully within our rights and in compliance with our history to change things until we can accept the verdicts being given. That's what the Civil Rights Act was all about.

I know it's folks down here in the Deep South we're all racist.

[Kevin]

Why take things so personally, Honda? I'm merely stating a historical fact. I doubt you were on any of those juries.

[Mike]

If we are not going to respect the decisions of juries there is no reason to seat them in the first place.

This is just more of the same lack of respect for the government we are seeing everyday and I'm damned tired of it. I think it may be time for a Constitutional Convention to determine if we even want to continue the Union. We might be better off dissolving it and letting like minded states form new unions.