Prosecution makes its case against Chauvin
What happened
The prosecution in the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin rested this week, after a series of expert witnesses testified that Chauvin’s kneeling on George Floyd’s neck violated police procedure and was the primary cause of Floyd’s death. Jonathan Rich, a cardiologist, was one of several medical experts who testified that Floyd died from asphyxiation while Chauvin kneeled on his neck for nine and a half minutes. “I can state with a high degree of medical certainty that George Floyd did not die from a primary cardiac event and he did not die from a drug overdose,” said Rich. Hennepin County medical examiner Andrew Baker called Floyd’s heart disease and fentanyl use contributing factors but “not direct causes of Mr. Floyd’s death.” The medical testimony followed numerous expert witnesses—including eight Minneapolis police officials—who called Chauvin’s use of force excessive and a violation of standard procedure. It was “totally unnecessary,” said Lt. Richard Zimmerman, a 36-year veteran, while Police Chief Medaria Arradondo testified that Chauvin “absolutely” violated police protocol by using force long after the handcuffed Floyd had stopped resisting. “That is not what we teach,” he said.
Defense attorney Eric Nelson called a use-of-force expert, Barry Brodd, who testified that Chauvin’s actions were “objectively reasonable” in the face of a resisting suspect and a hostile crowd he perceived as a threat. “It’s easy to sit and judge in an office on an officer’s conduct,” he said. Defense witness David Fowler, a forensic pathologist, testified that Floyd died from “a sudden cardiac arrhythmia” caused in “significant” part by his heart disease, along with his drug intake and possible carbon monoxide poisoning from the police car’s exhaust.
What the editorials said
The unusual spectacle of police testifying against a fellow officer was a welcome breach of the “blue wall of silence,” said The Washington Post. But it doesn’t give police a pass on “systemic problems” that have “fueled brutality against people of color.” If Chauvin was just a “rare bad apple,” why hadn’t his 17 civilian complaints and two shootings raised red flags sooner? “Make no mistake: Policing is also on trial.”
The jury must focus on the facts of the trial, not liberal notions about police officers’ “collective guilt,” said the Washington Examiner. To convict Chauvin based on a “hyped-up media narrative” about “police officers improperly killing unarmed black men” would be a miscarriage of justice.
What the columnists said
The “crumbling” of the “blue wall” is a striking development, said Elie Mystal in TheNation.com. In a sharp break from tradition, Chauvin was denied a key advantage that’s allowed scores of accused cops to walk: “the support of other cops.” If “uniformed outrage” is what it takes to hold police accountable, “then we must ask why there isn’t more of it.”
“The battle over causation is over,” said Andrew McCarthy in NationalReview.com. Prosecutors only had to show Chauvin’s actions were “a substantial factor” in Floyd’s death, which is now beyond a reasonable doubt. But a second-degree murder conviction requires proving that Chauvin knowingly committed a “criminal assault” on Floyd that led to his death—“a heavy lift” because the jury must make a judgment about Chauvin’s state of mind. If Chauvin is instead found guilty of third-degree murder or manslaughter—acting recklessly to cause Floyd’s death—will it be seen as justice or will it “re-inflame the community and the nation?” asked Harry Litman in the Los Angeles Times. The verdict will determine whether the prosecution “goes down in history as a triumph or a failure.”
If America is on trial, then vindication is not a possible outcome, said Leonard Pitts in the Miami Herald. Let’s say Chauvin is convicted—would it “really attest to the integrity of American justice toward African-American people?” In this case, a video showed the whole nation how a chillingly nonchalant cop inflicted torture and death on a pleading, prone Black man for more than nine excruciating minutes. If that’s what a conviction takes, isn’t it just further evidence that “for us, justice is harder, the bar higher, the road steeper”? Where Chauvin’s concerned, “we await the verdict”; for America, the “verdict is already in.”