Hey folks, a quick heads up on a change to our LIVE coverage of the murder trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, over the in-custody death of George Floyd. I’ll be live blogging the court’s proceedings all day in real-time, but we’re trying a different method than Parler. Instead we’re using a plug-in over at the Legal Insurrection website.
So, if you want to follow my live commenting in real time, head over to Legal Insurrection and find today’s blog post with the same headline as this post.
We’ll still be doing an end-of-day summary/analysis post that will be posted both here at Law of Self Defense as well as at Legal Insurrection.
–Andrew
Attorney Andrew F. Branca
Law of Self Defense LLC
Attorney Andrew F. Branca’s legal practice has specialized exclusively in use-of-force law for thirty years. Andrew provides use-of-force legal consultancy services to attorneys across the country, as well as near-daily use-of-force law insight, expertise, and education to lawyers and non-lawyers alike in the form of blog posts, video, and podcasts, through the Law of Self Defense Membership service. If this kind of content is of interest to you, try out our two-week Membership trial for a mere 99 cents, with a 200% no-question- asked money-back guarantee, here: Law of Self Defense Membership Trial.
[Featured image is a screen capture from the live video of this trial, Minnesota v. Chauvin.]
Andrew,
Nice work here. It is interesting that you and Legal Insurrection took the same stance on this performance, i.e., that the prosecution’s first turn at bat looked weak and that their witnesses were relatively poor as well. Reading Scott Johnson’s work at PowerLine made it sound as if the prosecutor’s day had the ball last seen disappearing in the vicinity of Kenmore Square. For what it’s worth, I have a lot more faith in you and Professor Jacobsen.
One thing I would note here is that, while I have tried to follow this incident closely, I had never before today been made aware of the serious size disparity between Officer Chauvin and Floyd. 5’9 and 150 lbs. is a tough matchup against a guy 6’3 and 220+. What is more, it appears that Officer Chauvin was the largest officer on scene. If I was a police officer facing that size disparity, I would certainly have been worried and quite probably have drawn my service weapon. A guy Floyd’s size with a load of meth in him would certainly create a serious problem if it came to hand-to-hand combat. Moreover, an officer simply cannot afford to lose such a fight since his sidearm would almost certainly be seized by the criminal and quite likely used against him.
Minneapolis and the State of Minnesota have certainly put themselves in a bad situation here. It looks like the police in this case really did follow Minneapolis Police Department protocol explicitly, and consequently did nothing wrong. However, there has been almost a year of Minneapolis/Minnesota political leadership, along with the media, making Officer Chauvin out to be a murderer who executed Floyd in cold blood. If Chauvin is convicted, the verdict will almost certainly be overturned on appeal, not to mention Minneapolis/Minnesota forever being tarred with the brush of having railroaded an innocent man. If he is acquitted or found not guilty, Minneapolis, and probably other cities, will burn.
One thing that is certain, no matter what, is that Minneapolis is going to have a damned difficult next twenty years recruiting decent people to be police officers. Moreover, the police they currently have aren’t stupid, and they aren’t about to take chances in enforcing the law when they know neither their departmental nor their political leadership has their backs. I would suspect that any officer who can retire or move to a different department nearby is already well into the process of doing so. Minneapolis is in for not just a crime wave, but a crime tsunami.
I would note that a lower-quality police force that has makes poorer use-of-force decisions makes Benjamin Crump even wealthier.
From Crump’s perspective, it’s feature, not a glitch.
–Andrew