There is a real possibility that former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin will be acquitted of second-degree murder in the death of George Floyd. Floyd died on May 25 in the custody of police while being restrained on the ground, with Chauvin pressing his knee into the side of Floyd’s neck.
There’s no doubt that Floyd’s death was horrible. Caught on camera by passersby, he pleads that he can’t breathe, calls for his mother and repeatedly cries “please.” Chauvin seemed as though he had no concern or compassion for the distress that Floyd was in. He stares impassively at bystanders recording the incident, and leaves his knee on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes, with Floyd unresponsive for the final three.
Former U.S. Congressman and current Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has charged Chauvin with second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter, and the three other officers involved have been charged with aiding and abetting the same.
Floyd’s death led to immediate protests, rioting, looting and arson in Minneapolis and in dozens of other cities nationwide. Statues were torn down across the nation, including not only Confederate Generals, but Union Generals, our Founding Fathers, and anti-slavery statesmen like Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.
Black Lives MatterTM, Antifa and Democrat mayors and governors all stoked the flames of rage and racial division. Several city blocks in Seattle were blockaded and taken over by demonstrators, protesters have blocked highways and city streets, and rioters have clashed with police nightly for almost three months straight in multiple cities. Outraged accusations of widespread racism, systemic injustices and inequities, and police abuse against the black community are cited as justification for the near anarchy.
Police have been vilified. Forceful demands to defund the police and to “reimagine” public safety have led mostly progressive city councils to slash budgets for police forces; specialized police units have been disbanded, hundreds of officers are taking early retirement, and crime in most major cities has skyrocketed.
And, yet, it’s possible that Derek Chauvin will be exonerated of the most serious charges. We now have the bodycam footage of the arresting officers which, along with the autopsy and toxicology reports, will make it very difficult for AG Ellison to prove his case.
Briefly, the combined evidence shows that Floyd was incoherent and behaving erratically when the police showed up. He complained several times that he couldn’t breathe before he was restrained on the ground. The officers showed concern for his welfare, reassuring Floyd that they weren’t going to shoot him, noting that he was foaming at the mouth and asking if he had ingested drugs, calling twice for an ambulance to come to his aid, and only applying enough force to make him comply with their initial set of instructions.
The toxicology report showed more than three times a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl in his blood, along with a lower dose of methamphetamine. Fentanyl is known to cause severe respiratory depression, seizures, hypotension, coma and death. Methamphetamine causes aggressive behavior, irrational reactions, restlessness, confusion, hallucinations, circulatory collapse and convulsions. Floyd showed many of these behaviors as he was being placed under arrest.
On top of that, the neck compression technique that Chauvin used was a legal tactic that, while inherently dangerous, was approved by the MPD as a way to control a subject. Floyd was able move his head off the ground and to speak while Chauvin’s knee was on his neck for more than five minutes. While that by itself does not prove anything conclusive, it does show that the pressure on his neck was not strong enough to render him unconscious. If Chauvin had cut off oxygen to the Floyd’s brain, his brain cells would show the damage. But the autopsy showed no evidence of hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, which is caused by oxygen deprivation.
Minnesota law says that second-degree murder charges can be brought if the suspect causes someone’s death without intending the death of anyone. It will be very difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Chauvin caused Floyd’s death. Such a conviction would seem to rest solely on the second autopsy report. The original autopsy showed no signs of asphyxiation while the second, requested by the family, claimed to have found evidence of “mechanical or traumatic asphyxia.”
So here’s the question: if Derek Chauvin is acquitted of all charges (and the other officers, by extension, are too), what do you think will happen in the streets? Will it be a collective shrug and everyone will go on about their business? Will it be mostly a non-event except for pockets of noise where people expected him to be convicted? Or will it look more like what we’ve seen over the last 75 days?
Based on what we’ve seen so far, it doesn’t take a genius to predict what will happen. And that’s the greatest tragedy because there will have been no basis for any of it.
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There are two articles from which I’ve sourced this blog post. I encourage you to read them both. In addition, I’ve linked a commentary by Tucker Carlson in which he raises questions about why we didn’t have the body camera footage until now. I think we now all know why.
Why Derek Chauvin May Get Off His Murder Charge
Who Killed George Floyd?
Tucker Carlson: We finally have more facts surrounding George Floyd’s death