Derek Chauvin

 Guilty.

On all three counts.

Justice is done.

April 8, 2021: An Apology

I titled my April 3 post about the trial of Derek Chauvin for murdering George Floyd "The George Floyd Trial."  I then suddenly realized that murder trials are usually named for the defendants, not the victims.  It was never my intention to suggest that Derek Chauvin was not responsible for Floyd's murder or that Floyd is a defendant in any way.  In fact, by referring to the trial as the George Floyd trial - and by including Floyd's picture in my post - I wanted to drive the point home that the victim should be remembered and placed first and foremost in our minds.  Floyd is the avatar of justice in this trial, justice being defined as the intent of the prosecution to deliver a verdict of guilty against Derek Chauvin.

It's to late for me too change the title of the April 3 post, because I'd have to change the URL and repost the links on social media because the old links wouldn't work any more.  But I would like to apologize for my terminology, and I want to make clear again that I never meant to suggest that George Floyd himself is on trial, only that his murder is the reason there is one. 

The George Floyd Trial

While I would rather not watch wall-to-wall coverage of the George Floyd trial in Minneapolis on cable news - especially when there are still so many other things to worry about, like COVID, COVID variants, COVID vaccines, and the likelihood of COVID ending civilization as we know it - it is important to keep up with the trial, and quite frankly, the highlights are all you need to focus on.  The evidence is clear to me: Derek Chauvin is guilty.

How could this cop not be guilty?  He violated standard police procedures, he used unnecessary force (as many a trial witness and policing expert have attested), he seemed to be enjoying having Floyd's neck under his boot heel, he attracted a whole bunch of witnesses who all saw the same thing - no Rashomon situation here! - and the defense has put up a poor cross-examination before presenting its case. Its case, basically, is that Floyd was a drug user, and that was a major factor in his death, along with his various health problems..  Then Floyd's girlfriend - his white girlfriend - testified about his and her opioid addictions and how they were both striving to get clean.  So you have all of these witnesses speaking out on how they wished they could have helped Floyd, a white girlfriend telling tales of a biracial couple trying to help themselves and each other, a real sense of humanity in describing the ordeal of a man who didn't know the $20 bill that got him arrested in the first place was a fake, and the defense is saying Floyd's death is his own fault?

If comedy is tragedy plus time, then the defense case that is presented after the prosecution rests should prove that maxim, because the defense case promises to be comedy in the English absurdist sense.  Unlike the Goons or Monty Python, though, Chauvin's lawyers will be unintentionally funny - and they'll accomplish that in trying to prove that their client is innocent.  And that would be funny, if the crime and the implications of this trial's outcome weren't so damn serious. 😟