Tag Archives: Derek Chauvin trial

The Three Rivers of Angst, by James Howard Kunstler

Memorial Day 2021 finds America beset by wokesterism, the fallout from Covid and its vaccines, and a shaky economy loaded with debt. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:

Does Memorial Day 2021 seem an unusually grim lull between spring and summer this year? Here in the northeast, rain pounded the lakes, ballfields, and barbeque circles all weekend with the additional insult of a steady fifty-degree chill that hardly changed from noon to midnight all weekend. Anyway, the holiday is always freighted with that hush of battlefields strewn with the dead — no smiling Santa Claus, no pastel Easter eggs, and the skeletons aren’t in the mood for dancing.

Even the military looked tarnished this year with a battle royale raging over the new imposed strictures of Critical Race Theory poisoning the ranks, and the fishy spectacle of Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier, an exemplary officer, getting drummed out of his post as Commander of the new Space Force for publishing a book about all that. His firing provoked the consciences of retired generals and admirals who denounced the Pentagon’s new tilt into Marxist political activism as an existential threat to the nation — and that didn’t seem like such an exaggeration, either, considering how an America led by transsexual gunnery sergeants might meet its future foes on the fields of war.

Memorial Day also marks one year since the sacred transfiguration of George Floyd from repeat felon to patron saint of social justice, but the remembrance of all that seemed a bit wan now that officer Derek Chauvin stands convicted of murder and the Floyd family has been elevated into the financial one-percent with a $27-million settlement for the loss of George’s earnest existence. Meanwhile, America could not fail to note the 36-percent increase in the national homicide rate since that mournful afternoon in Minneapolis.

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Saving Civilization, by Robert Gore

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Savagery or civilization?

Imagine you had been picked as a juror for the Derek Chauvin trial. Before you hear a shred of evidence, you very well might make a decision most people would not only admit was the better part of valor, but that harmonized perfectly with prevailing morality.

Your pretrial verdict? Guilty. There had been threats since Chauvin was charged with second and third degree murder and second-degree manslaughter that acquittals would provoke rampaging riots. After the riots last summer, no one could doubt the threats’ credibility. A guilty verdict on all counts could avoid injuries, deaths, and billions of dollars in property damage. Against those consequences, what do the rights or the life of a policeman matter? You’re predetermined verdict is for the greater good.

Even if such considerations never entered your head, you’d need extraordinary courage and independence to impartially hear the evidence and if you thought it warranted, vote for acquittal. You’d have to withstand pressure from your fellow jurors. You’d run the risk that your personal information was leaked by some mainstream or social media scumbag and mostly peaceful thugs showed up at your door. You might be canceled out of a job, your business network, and your social circle. Your privacy would be obliterated and reputation ruined in the wilting glare of nonstop publicity and odium. Politicians and other public figures would denounce you.

The chance that one such person would land on the jury was remote, the chance of twelve nonexistent. Under the inverted standard of justice that prevailed, the outcome was always going to be dictated not by the facts of the case, reasoned consideration of the evidence, deliberation, and the applicable law, but by “social considerations,” which is a polite way of saying the mob.

The mob hailed the verdict as justice. It’s the same justice as John Gotti’s three acquittals after his goons intimidated jurors. Chauvin was guilty unless proven innocent beyond a “reasonable” doubt as defined by the mob. In the same vein, the policeman who shot and killed Ashley Babbitt at the Capitol is not guilty—without a trial—because that’s what the mob demanded. Such blatant contradiction is mob justice.

A morality that confers “rights” on mobs and strips those of an individual is the morality of savages. Maxine Waters is a savage, but so too are the members of the Minneapolis City Council who agreed to pay George Floyd’s estate $27 million before Chauvin’s trial had begun, the judge who recognized the prejudicial unfairness of Waters’ inflammatory statements but passed the buck for doing anything about it to the appellate courts, and the political, media, and celebrity jackals from Joe Biden on down who’ve been howling for Chauvin’s conviction since Floyd’s death.

Whatever the justifications they cite for their pre-verdict demands, they are implicitly insisting that Chauvin’s rights are of no consequence. When the “rights” of some outweigh the rights of one, anything goes. There are people who call for reducing the world’s population to 500 million, which implies a genocide of over 7 billion. That such people are on university faculties rather than denounced and shunned as advocates of mass murder shows just how far the barbarism of collectivist justification has advanced, even when the collective embraced is a fraction of the number of individuals whose lives are to be canceled!

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Service and sacrifice are the watchwords of government, the ultimate mob. Who’s served and who’s sacrificed? There has never been a government that has not arrogated to itself the privilege of using force and fraud to strip individuals of their production, their property, their rights, their liberty, and ultimately, their lives. That privilege is governments’ defining essence and is the privilege that has always threatened humanity. The rationales and rhetoric are invariably collective: the demands of the mob supersede individual rights and individual justice.

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A Legal System Corrupted, by Clarice Feldman

The legal system has become a pillar of The Corruptocracy. From Clarice Feldman at americanthinker.com:

I’ve always had great respect for our legal system. It’s as good as any of which I’m aware. No, I’m not naive. I’m fully aware that every institution depends on the competence and integrity of those involved and that means sometimes decisions are rendered that are wrong — muddy thinking and sometimes corrupt judges; self-seeking prosecutors; incompetent counsel; bad and poorly written laws; false testimony by liars — all contribute now and then to unjust resolutions. But in recent years, my faith has been even more badly shaken by continued and obvious corruption all the way down the line.

This week there are three instances that confirm my belief that something is seriously amiss in our justice system:

  • The FBI’s hidden and far-too-tardy acknowledgment that the Bernie Sanders supporter who tried to murder the Republican House leadership in 2017 was a domestic terrorist.
  • The continued mistreatment (overcharging and continued solitary confinement) of several of the January 6 Capitol demonstrators compounded by the officials’ lies about it and the Department of Justice’s refusal to make available to the public the videos of that event.
  • And a claim by one of the three defendants in the George Floyd case that a key witness in the Chauvin trial had been improperly coerced to change his testimony and the prosecution (the Minnesota attorney general’s office) did nothing to inform the defense of the interactions the defendant asserts were coercive.

James Hodgkinson

Since the press has quickly smothered this story, let me remind you. In June 2017 Hodgkinson, a Bernie Sanders supporter who had posted on Facebook that “Trump is a Traitor. Trump has Destroyed our democracy. It’s Time to destroy Trump & Co,” and had otherwise demonstrated his extreme hostility to Republicans, traveled to Virginia from his home in Illinois, and after learning that the men playing ball there were Republican congressmen, opened fired on them, wounding five people including Congressman Steve Scalise, who nearly bled to death and required multiple surgeries before he could return to Congress.

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If I Had Made the Closing Argument in Defense of Derek Chauvin…, by Robert S. Griffin

Monday morning quarterbacks are not always wrong, and Derek Chauvin may not have gotten a very good closing argument from his attorney. From Robert S. Griffin at unz.com:

At this writing, in mid-May, 2021, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has been convicted by a jury of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter in the death of George Floyd during Floyd’s arrest. Chauvin hasn’t been sentenced yet. The first charge carries a maximum of forty years in prison.

Chauvin was one of four officers involved in the arrest of Floyd on May 25th 2020 for passing a counterfeit $20 bill. They handcuffed him but were unable to get him to go into the back seat of a police car. While Floyd was lying face down in the street, Chauvin had his knee on Floyd’s neck and shin on his back for over nine minutes and he died. Mobile phone video taken by a bystander recorded the episode. The autopsy revealed that Floyd had COVID, heart disease, and high amounts of fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system at the time of his death. The medical examiner’s opinion was that Floyd died of cardiac arrest and that his health condition contributed to his death, which he ruled a homicide. The case received extensive attention because of its racial angle: Chauvin is White, Floyd was Black. It fit the current widely-believed narrative of an epidemic of racism-motivated killings of blameless Blacks by White cops.

I didn’t follow the Chauvin case all that closely. I sampled front-page news accounts in the paper and read daily summaries of the trial on the internet. I watched the defense closing argument on television, which brought up questions for me and prompted this writing. Later, I read a transcript of it.[1]

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The Shape of Things to Come, by Philip Giraldi

Each “new” iteration of statist ideology is more stupidly pernicious and evil than the previous one. From Philip Giraldi at unz.com:

So what was preordained has finally taken place. Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has now been convicted of the murder of George Floyd. While many, possibly even most, Americans would agree that Chauvin exceeded what was necessary in his use of force, the prosecution never proved that he intended to either kill or severely injure Floyd, nor could they demonstrate that any racial bias was behind what had developed after Floyd resisted arrest.

Nevertheless, Chauvin was held solely responsible for the death of Floyd and will be sentenced to up 40 years in prison the first week in June, at which point he can initiate an appeal, and, to be sure, there are considerable grounds for upending the verdict. First of all, the defense’s moves to have the trial moved from Minneapolis, where violent crowds were gathering nightly outside the courthouse and in other public spaces, was denied, creating a “mob rule” atmosphere that clearly intimidated the jurors as well others involved in the trial. And there were more specific threats. The day before Chauvin’s case went to the jury, the former California home of a defense witness was vandalized with a pig’s head and blood.

Secondly, media coverage of the trial, visible to the unsequestered jury, weighed heavily against Chauvin and only provided perfunctory and unsympathetic reporting on his defense. Third, Minneapolis gave the Floyd family a “historic” $27 million wrongful death settlement on March 12th, which sent a clear message to jurors and others that the city considered Chauvin guilty as charged and it also reinforced fears that if the verdict were to go the wrong way the city would burn.

And finally, the political class, mostly Democratic Party activists supported by the usual guilt-stricken limousine liberals in this case, intervened regularly in the commentary surrounding the proceedings. Representative Maxine Waters notoriously appeared in Minneapolis shortly before the jury was due to consider its verdict and advised an angry mob that “Well, we’ve got to stay on the street. And we’ve got to get more active. We’ve got to get more confrontational. We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business” if the judgment went the wrong way. When Republicans in the House of Representatives called on Waters to either apologize or be censured, the move was blocked by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. One might note the double standard, recalling that recently a president of the United States was impeached for saying something rather less provocative than Waters.

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Police Problems? Embrace Liberty! by Ron Paul

The more laws, the more problems you’ll have with police behavior, acknowledged or not. From Ron Paul at ronpaulinstitute.org:

Many Americans saw former policeman Derek Chauvin’s conviction on all counts last week as affirming the principle that no one is above the law. Many others were concerned that the jury was scared that anything less than a full conviction would result in riots, and even violence against themselves and their families.

Was the jury’s verdict influenced by politicians and media figures who were calling for the jury to deliver the “right” verdict? Attempts to intimidate juries are just as offensive to the rule of law as suggestions that George Floyd’s criminal record somehow meant his rights were not important.

The video of then-policeman Chauvin restraining Floyd led people across the political and ideological spectrums to consider police reform. Sadly, there have also been riots across the country orchestrated by left-wing activists and organizations seeking to exploit concern about police misconduct to advance their agendas.

It is ironic to see self-described Marxists, progressives, and other leftists protesting violence by government agents. After all, their ideology rests on the use of force to compel people to obey politicians and bureaucrats.

It is also ironic to see those who claim to want to protect and improve “black lives” support big government.

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Trial Travesty, LeBron Le Moron, and Cheney Challenge: The Week in Review, by PF Whalen

Lately the problem hasn’t been finding idiocies to fill up a weekly account, it’s been editing them down to a manageable size. From PF Whalen at thebluestateconservative.com:

Headline #1:         Former Minneapolis Policeman Derek Chauvin Found Guilty of All Charges

On Tuesday, the jury in the Derek Chauvin trial for the death of George Floyd delivered a verdict of guilty on all charges: second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and manslaughter.

Thoughts and Observations:

  • In determining the correctness of the verdict, consider a simple question: If everything else about the case had been identical to what actually happened, except George Floyd was a white man and not black, would Derek Chauvin have been convicted? Of anything? Not only is the answer ‘no,’ this trial would have never even happened.
  • We all knew before the verdict that the BLM/Antifa riots of last summer would be a large factor in the outcome. “If you find him not-guilty Mr. and Mrs. Juror, you can expect to see the country burn down.” But to hear people like Al Sharpton and President Joe Biden openly pointing to the protests/riots as a force is remarkable. Sharpton actually applauded and credited the riots for the decision. This verdict was mob justice, and no one is even trying to hide that fact.

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St. George Floyd and Biden’s Anti-White Regime—Enabled By Ethnomasochism, by John Derbyshire

The US Attorney General says we don’t have equal justice under law and he’s certainly right. Not, as John Derbyshire points out, when Derek Chauvin will probably be spending the rest of his life in jail and the policeman who shot Ashli Babbitt won’t face charges. From John Derbyshire at unz.com:

It’s St. George’s Day, April 23. This has actually been St. George’s week; not the chap who slew the dragon, but St. George Floyd of Minneapolis, who was slain himself last year by something much more fearsome than any dragon—by systemic racism!

So the Narrative tells us, and so a jury ruled on Tuesday.

Why did they rule that way, and how did we get stuck with such a crazy Narrative? Let’s explore.

The jury’s verdict itself was absurd. Derek Chauvin did nothing wrong. The best case here was made by retired lawyer Harold Cameron over at Revolver News a week before the verdict came out:

When Floyd continued resisting arrest after being placed in handcuffs, Chauvin didn’t beat him with a baton. He didn’t taze him. He didn’t put in him a chokehold. He put one knee on what the prosecution is now optimistically calling Floyd’s “neck area” and waited for the ambulance to come save Floyd’s life … The worst that could be said is that he didn’t simply let Floyd go because he was still complaining about being unable to breath, just as he had been since the beginning of the encounter. The state’s case so far boils down to a collection of experts equating that to murder.

[ Derek Chauvin Did Nothing Wrong, April 13, 2021]

Hamilton also reminds us of the size discrepancy between Chauvin, who weighs a slight 140 lbs., and Floyd, 230 lbs. and all pepped up on chemical stimulants. If you have ever been involved in a close-quarters struggle for physical mastery with another adult, you’re impressed that Chauvin managed to subdue Floyd.

In the famous kneeling video, Chauvin has a look of being somewhat pleased with himself. I would have been, too.

Aside from that look of muted pride, I thought from the beginning, and still think, that Chauvin did not at all have the appearance of someone who was aware he was doing something wrong.

Come on: If you are doing something grossly wrong, something that might end another person’s life, you know you are, and it will show.

Chauvin’s entire affect in that video was of someone who’s done an unpleasant job, and believes he’s done it rather well.

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Peak National Dysfunction, by James Howard Kunstler

Peak national dysfunction . . . so far. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:

No need to argue anymore about defunding the police. The police across America have been successfully disarmed and castrated. Why would any cop with a sense of self-preservation interfere in the commission of a crime now? Just assume that the social contract is cancelled. You’re on your own.

Interesting factoids, by the way: rape reports are up 322 percent in New York City over the past year, shootings were up 97 percent and murders up 44 percent — a good start to the new era of all-against-all, where life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. But don’t worry, Benjamin Crump and his legion of super-hero personal injury lawyers stand ready to enforce the suspension of law, seeking multi-million-dollar payouts in civil suits, such as the $27-million recently settled on the family of George Floyd, which is $27-million more than Jesus of Nazareth got for somewhat harsher treatment years back, though, according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, George Floyd has by far outpaced the old lord-and-savior in sheer saintliness mojo. Looks like George and Jesus will soon be vying for Speaker of Kingdom Come in the new, revised cosmos of American Wokery.

Anyway, New York’s City Council voted last month to end qualified immunity for police officers, which formerly shielded them from personal lawsuits in the performance of their duties. Predictable result: they will no longer perform their duties. This is on top of Mayor Bill de Blasio ending the age-old practice of posting bail for charged felons pending disposition of a criminal case. Meanwhile, the city’s main jail, Rikers Island, is scheduled to be closed down in 2026. Abolish incarceration! Well done, Big Apple!

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Triumph Of The Woke Mob Led By Two Doddering Old Fools, by David Stockman

The government is more to blame for the problems of blacks than racism. From David Stockman at davidstockmanscontracorner.com via zerohedge.com:

Events of the last few days have made one thing crystal clear: The Democratic Party (and therefore the nation) is being led by two doddering old fools who should be domiciled in a rest home, not the Oval Office and the Speaker’s Chamber.

How that baleful reality coexists with Wall Street’s expectation of an awesome economic future and stock prices which never stop rising to the sky is one of the great enigmas of our times. Or maybe it’s just because $10 trillion of fiscal and monetary “stimulus” in the past year can turn the proverbial sow’s ear into a silk purse. For a time.

By now, of course, we expect idiocy from Sleepy Joe, especially on the economic front.

Accordingly, at his virtual global summit he will be reading-out from the White House teleprompter the demented agenda of the Climate Change Howlers. Therein he will promise to cut greenhouse gases by 50% by the end of this decade, which calamity we can also promise would cut America’s debt-entombed economy to its knees.

That comes after Tuesday’s White House contretemps when he first prayed for a guilty verdict in the Chauvin trial even as the jury was sitting in its deliberations, and then, afterwards, made the risible claim that this tragedy was the spawn of systemic racism.

In fact, Nanny State over-reach was the underlying cause of George Floyd’s arrest and unjust death—just as it is the source of most of America’s unfortunate violence between police and unarmed citizens, back, white and otherwise.

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