Most states do not allow assault/battery to be the felony which triggers a felony murder charge. Assault/Battery by definition is not lethal.
Minnesota is strange. Their “depraved indifference” murder is Murder 3, whereas many places its Murder 2 or in extreme situations Murder 1.
The point of charging multiple murder types is so a jury could convict Murder 3 or manslaughter without having to change the indictment. It also prevents the case dismissed for meeting the elements of a lesser charge than the one before the court.
5 Likes
I think Joe and company are painfully aware of the anchor that Amy as his running mate would put around his neck. The past week has seriously changed the political landscape for both the Dems and Repugs.
4 Likes
Which is patent bullshit. Grand juries are notorious for rubber stamping prosecutorial decisions. When they don’t give prosecutors what they ask for, it’s the exception.
10 Likes
Well I’m of the opinion that the potential for serious adverse effects of putting your knee on someone’s neck is obvious to anyone with enough brains to close one’s mouth to prevent drooling. So doing so voids any idea of mere carelessness on one’s part.
But there’s a lot of people who appear to be drooling idiots out there. People who might just buy his actions as being correct procedure and let him off.
2 Likes
I’m on the exact same page as you; hopefully someone on Grandpa Joe’s team is equally as savvy…
12 Likes
The most charitable possible interpretation of Chauvin’s behavior is that he intentionally assaulted Floyd using a technique which was forbidden for Minneapolis cops to use, making it a personal off-the-clock crime, while also negligently manslaughtering him.
That’s if we take his side.
9 Likes
I believe it would have a greater effect without the riots. Then there would be zero ammo against. That said, this, so far, is huge.
Ellison apparently agreed with Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe and Minnesota criminal attorney Albert Turner Goins, who argued that the third-degree murder charge against Chauvin was inappropriate. Minnesota law defines that offense as causing someone’s death by “perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life.” Tribe and Goins noted that state courts have interpreted the statute as limiting the charge to “reckless or wanton acts…without special regard to their effect on any particular person.” Instead they recommended the sort of second-degree murder charge that Ellison has now filed.
Chauvin still faces the lesser charge of second-degree manslaughter, which alleges that he killed Floyd through “culpable negligence” that created “an unreasonable risk” of “death or great bodily harm.” Unlike the murder charge, it does not require proof of an underlying felony.
2 Likes
Doesn’t matter how many years he gets. Derek Chauvin’s life only has two outcomes:
1: Convicted and murdered in prison
2: Not convicted and murdered in the street
2 Likes
No riots, no arrest. People can bitch about the riots all day long, but they worked.
3 Likes
not necessarily. ex-officers are typically isolated from general population. Because their isolation is not meant to be punitive they typically get access to special privileges to compensate for the isolation.
if let free, he’ll probably move to some remote area where he is difficult to track down.
worse case for him might be house arrest or probation. that would tie him to his current location. This is unlikely as it would piss off the community and put his life at serious risk from vigilantes that view him as a symbol of a much larger problem.
My far too late advice to people like Mr Chauvin is to focus on the job, minimize the amount of harm you do, and don’t let suspect die in custody while you’re on camera.
Long term reform is the only way out of the cycle. Cops will kill people, usually black people, there will be no justice, people will get upset, it will happen a few more times in a row, people will protest, riots break out, police will suppress the riots, repeat so that every generation for the past 50-60 years gets to experience a race riot that we never quite get past.
150 years or so and we still haven’t figured out how to live together side-by-side for mutual benefit. We really are a stupid people sometimes.
3 Likes
I’m thinking Willie Horton right now.
3 Likes
As we’ve seen with Eric Gardner and many who came after him, the peaceful protests would simply be ignored. It’s happened again and again and again, which is how we got to this point in the first place. It’s true there would be no ammo against the protesters, but racists aren’t big on rationality or evidence to support their beliefs. If there’s no ammo, they’ll just make it up anyway. Just look at how outraged and vicious they were against the NFL players protesting by kneeling. No form of protest whatsoever will ever be seen as acceptable or legitimate in their eyes because their privilege is so absolute that they can’t imagine why anyone would ever need to protest, other than to cause trouble.
12 Likes
Yes, I agree, but there is a common law concept in play here called “merger”.
https://law.jrank.org/pages/5868/Criminal-Law-Merger.html
Defined as when a person committed a major crime that included a lesser offense, the latter merged with the former and the lesser offense is not considered. If the elements of the underlying felony are a part of the elements of murder, the felony murder rule cannot be applied
“For example, a defendant who participated in an assault in which someone was killed could not be charged with felony murder because the elements of assault are also incorporated in the elements of a murder. Thus, the assault “merges” into the murder and is not a distinct crime that can constitute the underlying felony.”
https://www.justia.com/criminal/offenses/homicide/felony-murder/#:~:text=Inherently%20Dangerous%20Crimes&text=However%2C%20under%20the%20merger%20doctrine,murder%20rule%20cannot%20be%20applied.&text=Thus%2C%20the%20assault%20“merges”,can%20constitute%20the%20underlying%20felony.
(IAAL, but don’t practice criminal law, nor in MN)
1 Like
The racists don’t respond well to rioting looting and burning. It only entrenches them in their prejudice and gives them tools to keep doing what they want to do. In my opinion, the scale of the mostly peaceful demonstrations, coupled with the absolute, and perfectly egregious nature, point by point of this latest atrocity, is what is having an effect. The idiots randomly running around destroying the businesses and property of people who had nothing to do with Floyd’s Killing can go die alone in a cold wet hole as far as I’m concerned.
Well on the one hand I guess we can all appreciate the lawyering profession for having a standard that says they don’t charge this that and everything in the book when somebody only did one crime.
But on the other hand, when somebody holds a guy’s throat closed for almost ten minutes, while bystanders beg for the victim’s life and minions stand around keeping them away, what is that?
On its face we can assume they all meant to kill the guy, because everybody knows that’s what happens when you strangle somebody for ten minutes. They’re going to make excuses. The excuses will be bullshit. Charge them with everything and let the jury figure it out.
3 Likes
Murder. The act was intentional and it resulted in the death of the victim. The problem lies in how that gets interpreted by the lawyers on either side.
Prosecutors will say it was intended to kill the victim but lacked the forethought of Murder 1, so Murder 2.
Defense will say the officer did not intend to kill the victim but it happened anyway to claim it was Voluntary manslaughter.
Personally I think the cop’s act was something more on the line of depraved indifference. He acted in such a way that death was likely, and just didn’t care. Closer to MN’s Murder 3 (and Murder 2 in my own state).
I like the idea of charging for every form of intentional homicide from Murder 2 down to manslaughter. Because we all know he is guilty of killing Floyd and deserves to be in prison. But its something prosecutors have to work for. Complacency, desire for media attention, and political aspirations tend to wreak havoc with effective prosecution.
1 Like
As Hanglyman pointed out in their post, the racists didn’t respond well to peaceful protesters like Kaepernick either. They also didn’t respond well to lunch counter sit-ins or black women refusing to give up a seat at the front of a bus. Racists don’t respond well to being called out on their racism, no matter how politely it’s done.
14 Likes
Surely Minnesota has some kind of hate crime legislation? I feel like that’s not too much of a stretch to add on for the prosecution given Chauvin’s long history of racist behavior. If I recall this is quite possibly the 2nd black person he’s murdered just in his career in MPD (Some 15 years ago during a response to a call a black person was shot in the back and killed by officers who didn’t even bother leaving their car, I believe? It was never determined which officer in the car did it, but Chauvin was among them. Pretty sure the news story is in one of the threads here.)
2 Likes
