San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Snapdecision defense may not work for officer
Convicting a police officer of killing someone is notoriously difficult, in part because juries hesitate to secondguess the defendant when the officer claims to have made a splitsecond decision in a life ordeath situation. But that’s probably not an argument Derek Chauvin can make.
The fired Minneapolis police officer was captured on video pinning George Floyd to the pavement, his knee on the Black man’s neck, for about nine minutes last May. Onlookers shouted at Chauvin to get off, asked him to check for a pulse and warned that Floyd no longer seemed to be breathing. Opening arguments in Chauvin’s trial are set to begin Monday.
“If I’m a prosecutor, I’m holding my stopwatch up for 8 minutes and 47 seconds and showing the jury how long that is,” said Geoffrey Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina.
Still, Alpert and other experts said that despite the strength of the video that prompted a nationwide outpouring of fury over Floyd’s death, prosecutors could be hardpressed to convict Chauvin of murder because of both the facts of the case and attitudes toward police.
Chauvin’s lawyer is expected to argue that Floyd’s swallowing of drugs during his arrest — along with the 46yearold man’s underlying health conditions, including high blood pressure and heart disease — caused or at least contributed to his death. Prosecutors argue it was Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck that killed him.
As for Chauvin, “the jury will have to overcome the suggestion that he was just trying to do his job well,” said former federal prosecutor Taryn Merkl, senior counsel at the Brennan Center’s Justice Program at New York University. “Most jurors don’t want to believe officers go to work and think ‘I’m going to kill someone today.’ ”
Phil Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green State University, said that out of thousands of deadly police shootings in the U.S. since 2005, fewer than 140 officers have been charged with murder or manslaughter. Only seven were convicted of murder.
Some police officers have been found guilty when prosecutors were able to show that a reasonable person would not have reacted in the same way. In Texas, officer Roy Oliver was convicted of killing 15yearold Jordan Edwards by opening fire on a car full of teenagers as they left a house party. Oliver’s partner testified that he had not perceived a threat.
Prosecutors in Chauvin’s case hope the pleas from onlookers to check on Floyd will serve the same purpose.