Derek Chauvin Trial

NAACP: "Not-Guilty Would Electrify a New Wave of Activists"
AZ NAACP College Leader: "Protesting This Summer Regardless of Outcome"


 

Washington Post Article - The Build Up To - Will There Be Blood?
Floyd's Killing - Another Call to Action For Gen Z'ers With Sense of Urgency

Shaped by Black Lives Matter, Gen Z watches Chauvin trial with cynicism and urgency: ‘What’s next?’
From the acquittal in Trayvon Martin's death, eight years ago, which launched the Black Lives Matter movement, teenagers across the nation watched nationally televised justice.

Many high school and college-age members of Gen Z, their formative years brought gut punch after gut punch to their faith in the American criminal justice system. Other widely protested deaths of Black Americans followed Martin’s, spawning hashtags and headlines but either no charges or no convictions: Eric Garner. Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Freddie Gray. Breonna Taylor.

Now, the generation that grew up with Black Lives Matter — increasingly activist, attuned to inequity, more likely than their elders to see far-reaching problems behind George Floyd’s killing last May — is watching another case in which they have been anguished bystanders but also key witnesses and drivers of change. A White ex-police officer is in the hands of a court system that near-majorities of young adults have long viewed as unlikely to deliver justice free from racial bias.

For Gen Z, Floyd’s case is “an orienting point for all their political values coming to life,” said John Della Volpe, who directs polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics and is writing a book on the “Zoomer” generation, often defined as those born from 1997 to 2012. “It’s like Floyd being suffocated is almost a metaphor for millions of other vulnerable people not having the opportunity that White people have had in this country.”

More racially and ethnically diverse than any generation that came before it, Gen Z is no monolith, with differences of opinion along the usual lines of skin color, class and political party. Compared with people of color, White Americans were less supportive of last summer’s protests and less critical of police, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll.

But the jolt of Floyd’s killing would in some ways cross demographic gulfs, experts say.

Last fall’s Harvard Youth Poll found what it called “overwhelming support” across races for more government action to confront systemic racism. Pew Research said in the fall that more than half of White Republican adults under 30 years old reported taking steps to educate themselves on racial inequality in the past few months, notably higher than White Republicans overall.

“So younger Whites were more aligned with other younger people, and not necessarily their parents and their grandparents,” said Della Volpe, a longtime leader in surveys of U.S. youths.

Floyd’s killing was another call to action for a generation that already mobilized on mass shootings and climate change — a group that shares many values with the millennials before them but stands out for their sense of “urgency,” as Della Volpe puts it.

He said Floyd’s death and the racial reckoning that followed is “certainly one of a top five, if not the most significant event in the political development, the political maturation of Generation Z.” Young adults lagged behind their elders in tracking news about the coronavirus pandemic and the election, but that gap disappeared when it came to last year’s Floyd protests, according to Pew.

A not-guilty finding would electrify a new wave of activists, predicted Armonee Jackson, a 23-year-old from Phoenix who leads the youth and college division of the NAACP in Arizona. She sees Floyd’s killing as an especially weighty turning point for the younger members of Gen Z: “This was their Trayvon Martin,” she said, recounting the hoodie she wore to eighth grade in protest of Martin’s death.

“This is going to be a make-or-break,” Jackson said, adding, “It’s either going to push them harder or not, depending on the outcome of the case.”

She said she expects to be out protesting this summer regardless of whether Chauvin is found guilty. washingtonpost.com
 

Superiors Aware of Chauvin's "Questionable Decision-Making"
Chauvin trial again casts spotlight on MPD's training program
"Salty" training officers can quickly set a rogue example for rookies.

Over his 19 years with the Minneapolis Police Department, Derek Chauvin, the now-fired officer on trial in the death of George Floyd, racked up 17 misconduct complaints and was involved in four on-duty shootings or other fatal encounters.

Yet despite an ever-thickening personnel file, Chauvin continued to serve as a field training officer, or FTO, even mentoring one of the two rookie cops who first interacted with Floyd outside of a South Side convenience store last May. In body camera footage, some of which was played during testimony last week, that officer, J. Alexander Kueng, referred to Chauvin as "sir." The other officer, Thomas Lane, followed Chauvin's direction to stay put after he asked whether Floyd should be repositioned as they pinned him to the ground before he lost consciousness and died.

Revelations about Chauvin's history and his conduct on the day Floyd died have drawn further scrutiny of his training role even though his superiors were aware of his at-times questionable decision-making.

Critics have blamed the training program for fostering a culture of aggressive policing that stretches back decades.

To some, the larger problem is a tendency of some officers not to question and intervene when a colleague — particularly a senior officer — uses excessive force. After Floyd's death, Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo announced a stricter "duty to intervene" policy that says officers who witness another officer "use any prohibited force, or inappropriate or unreasonable force" must attempt to "safely intervene by verbal and physical means."

For years, groups like Communities United Against Police Brutality have pushed for the department to adopt a peer intervention training program developed by the New Orleans Police Department that is based on the premise that there is a tendency for officers not to intervene when they see a colleague engage in misconduct. The program, called Ethical Policing Is Courageous, or EPIC, is built on the premise that intervention must be taught through training and role-playing and must be continually reinforced through more training to the point that it infuses the departmental culture.

St. Paul police participate in the training, but Minneapolis has not. The debate over police training has been brewing in Minneapolis in recent years after a series of high-profile on-duty killings of civilians. In 2019, Mayor Jacob Frey announced the nation's first-ever ban on "warrior-style" and "fear-based" training. The move was met with resistance from the Minneapolis Police Federation — the union representing rank-and-file officers, which announced that it would offer the popular training free for any officer who wants it.

A recent report by the Council on Criminal Justice Task Force on Policing found that most U.S. police training lacks focus, is too short, uses ineffective teaching methods and is out of touch with both community safety priorities and current research about what works to minimize bias and use of force.

The trial wrapped up its first week of testimony on Friday, with longtime Minneapolis police Lt. Richard Zimmerman testifying that the level of force used by Chauvin on Floyd was "totally unnecessary" and dangerous. startribune.com
 

Here's the entire case
Floyd died of cardiac arrest - Not asphyzia or lack of oxygen - But ruled a homicide
In the writer's opinion - if that stands Chauvin could walk free

Cause of death at issue in Chauvin trial as prosecution questions medical examiner's findings
Prosecutors trying the former Minneapolis police officer charged with murder in George Floyd's death appeared to distance themselves last week from the medical findings on his cause of death, issued by the only doctor who performed an autopsy.

Special Prosecutor Jerry Blackwell told jurors last Monday that while Hennepin County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker ruled Floyd's cause of death cardiac arrest, prosecutors would prove he died of asphyxia, or, lack of oxygen, while Chauvin knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes.

"This was … not a fatal heart event," Blackwell said in his opening statement. "He died one breath at a time over an extended period of time."

In a PowerPoint presentation during his opening statement, Blackwell displayed the names of six outside medical experts hired to help their case, including a forensic pathologist — Baker's job — whom Blackwell spoke about at length while mentioning Baker as an aside.

"What is unusual is that, to some extent, the battle of the experts is within the state's case instead of between the state and the defense."

Chauvin's attorney, Eric Nelson, seized on the issue. To raise reasonable doubt, he told jurors in his opening statement, "The state was not satisfied with Dr. Baker's work so they have contracted with numerous physicians to contradict Dr. Baker's findings, and this will ultimately be another significant battle in this trial: What was Mr. Floyd's actual cause of death?"

He noted that Baker was the only person to perform an autopsy on Floyd.

"Dr. Baker found none of what are referred to as the telltale signs of asphyxiation," said Nelson.

"There was no evidence that Mr. Floyd's airflow was restricted and he did not determine [it] to be a positional or mechanical asphyxia death."

Nelson argued that Floyd died of a cardiac arrest resulting from drug use and pre-existing health issues, including heart disease and high blood pressure.

Bystander Darnella Frazier's graphic video showing Chauvin kneeling on Floyd last May 25 while he repeatedly said he couldn't breathe has been played in court several times, but a medical ruling on cause of death is still crucial to the case, some attorneys said.

Medical examiners in Minnesota work independently of law enforcement and prosecutors. They determine the cause and manner of death, but make no determination about legal culpability.

"It seemed to me that essentially the prosecution is going to take the position that Dr. Baker's autopsy report is incorrect or can be explained more clearly," said Mitchell Hamline School of Law emeritus professor Prof. Joe Daly. "It's extremely unusual … to cast doubt on your own medical examiner."

Baker's findings that Floyd's cause of death was "cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression" sparked public outrage when they were released last June 1. Many, including attorneys for Floyd's family, believed Floyd died of asphyxiation and criticized Baker's ruling. An emergency fence and concrete barricades were erected around Baker's downtown Minneapolis office two days after he issued his results; they remain standing.

Baker listed hardening and thickening of the artery walls, heart disease and drug use as "other significant conditions." Fentanyl and methamphetamine were also found in Floyd's system.

Baker ruled the manner of death a homicide, a death that occurs at the hands of another person.

"Dr. Baker offered that one possibility for the pathway of Floyd's death is that Floyd's heart was starting to fail one of the symptoms is the perception that you cannot breathe."

However Minnesota jury instructions, "To cause' means to be a substantial causal factor in causing the death. …The fact that other causes contribute to the death does not relieve the defendant of criminal liability."

It could pose a risk to the prosecution's case to distance themselves from the in-house medical expert, said defense attorney Mike Padden.

"It absolutely can be a problem because he's the doctor who did the autopsy," Padden said. "They're making a strategy decision that they're moving completely away from him."

An abundance of complex medical testimony could also overwhelm jurors. The defense has 15 medical experts listed as potential witnesses; it's unknown how many will be called to testify. startribune.com