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It is obvious to most people that have the ability to think for themselves that the thing was promoted by evil forces to create as much chaos as possible, and those police officers were sacrificial lambs.

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Been meaning to do this for a while, and I'm finally doing it. POLICE KILLINGS IN MINNEAPOLIS BY YEAR:

2019 year with 14 killed:

* 5 were white

* 5 were black

In 2018 13 were killed

* 7 were white

* ONLY 1 WAS BLACK

I'm trying to find a pattern here like with George Floyd and I don't. 27% of people killed by police are black.

So now that the City Council plan to abolish the police won't come to a vote (they would have to change their City Charter), I went to finally look at who the police are killing, and you won't see the above stats in the news because the narrative doesn't care about facts. Last year had a whopping 14 killings by police, which is more than NYC or Chicago had (Chicago's remarkably low, so that's another story). Only 4 killed by police this year (3 white, 1 was George Floyd).

CRIMINAL CONTEXT (also omitted by media): Minneapolis is 18% black and 64% white, but black folks make up around 75% of violent crime suspects and 57% of murder suspects.

And supposedly this is a uniquely anti-black police force? In every city I've looked at from Baltimore to NYC to Chicago to San Francisco I have not found any evidence that police are treating black citizens dramatically different when it comes to force. You're essentially being lied to by the media, activists, politicians, and pretty much everyone. These are lies of omission.

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True on every count.

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A brave and important piece

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No mention of how fentanyl kills people. It depresses respiratory rate and inhalation.

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Here is Dr Tobin’s testimony about the effects of fentanyl on respiration and why, in his expert opinion as a pulmonologist, fentanyl did not cause depression of Floyd’s respiratory rates in this case. He explains what normal respiratory rates are, shows what Floyd’s rates were according to the video of Floyd under the MRT, tells what would have happened had fentanyl been a causative factor vs what actually happened, and then proves that fentanyl was not a causative factor in this case.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lJ_nWQhJPk

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There is reasonable doubt on both theories of Dr Tobin and Dr Baker - with that in mind DC should have been acquitted it’s as simple as that. If we had a fair justice system running since 2020 we would not be having these articles written.

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Did you watch Tobin’s testimony? Did you watch the Don Lemon interview with the jurors? Did you watch other video interviews with the jurors? There was no reasonable doubt at all with Dr Tobin, and it wasn’t a “theory”, it was facts. The link I gave was just the one on fentanyl, there’s another one for his explanation of the chest compression that the MRT would have effected, and which would have cut off Floyd’s ability to breathe and ultimately kill him, which it did. The jurors all said the evidence was literally overwhelming that Chauvin’s actions killed Floyd. We do have a fair justice system, and it works as intended.

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Colman for President. Please.

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The people of Minnesota elected their officials who sided with the mob over their own police. Despicable. Ironically Floyd died while wait for the ambulance called for by the same police charged with murder. How many more deaths can be attributed to the inevitable rise in crime that followed this travesty? White progressives don’t give a damn about black lives; actual black people are bit players in the great progressive hero story.

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This was a great summation. I had seen the film some time ago. It had convinced me that there certainly was sufficient doubt in the case to consider it inconclusive in terms of a conviction. I think Dr Hughes has made an excellent case in that direction. As he clearly stated, it isn't a statement of innocence, but it is enough for an acquital based on reasonable doubt. Prior to seeing the film I had no real solid knowledge of the case and had simply assumed Chauvin was guilty. The film gave me serious questions, and this essay added further confirmation. I have only read one piece by Balko, and that was several years ago, so I cannot fairly assess his views. However, if Dr. Hughes is accurate in quoting him, and I have no reason to question that, it is pretty obvious that Balko has a strong bent towards blaming police for any questionable problem.

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Jun 15·edited Jun 16

I tried to read Balko's first essay when it first came out. Frankly, I thought it was terrible, and I didn't finish it. In fact, I gave up after ten or fifteen paragraphs, skimmed a bit more, then gave up on that, too. The essay was so clearly biased, so nasty in tone, and its arguments generally so dishonest and implausible, that I judged it not worth my time. I was initially interested in it, though, because I had concluded long ago that Chauvin was *likely* innocent--and that it was *clear* that he had not received a fair trial. Since that time, I've sought out contrary arguments (of course)...but I found Balko's essay so off-putting that it was doing nothing but (illicitly) strengthening my commitment to the conclusion I'd already arrived at.

One argument that sticks in my mind was his MRT argument. Part of that argument is (as noted by CH, above), basically: Chauvin wasn't using the MRT (at all or, perhaps, correctly) because he didn't apply a hobble. This struck me as an absurd argument even independently of CH's point about the arrival of the ambulance. It seemed to me to amount to: Chauvin wasn't using MRT because he didn't employ all its components--in particular, the hobble. But one can partially apply techniques. And, furthermore, there can be no doubt whatsoever that the addition of a hobble would significantly add to Floyd's discomfort and stress. In effect, Balko was arguing for convicting Chauvin on a bizarre technicality: he applied (quasi?-)MRT in a way that mitigated the stress on Floyd...therefore he did not fully employ the technique...therefore he is guilty. I don't have the patience for such nonsense.

[At the very least we'd have to hear testimony from a lot of other cops and experts about such partial applications of techniques--restraint and otherwise. I'd bet money that it's very common. In what is, in effect, a fight, it's unlikely that everything always gets done perfectly and completely.]

But, to be honest, it was Balko's tone that was decisive. When I can tell from someone's tone that he has no intention of even *trying* to be objective, I'm not likely to waste my time reading his essay...

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As Kahneman et al have pointed out, the human mind does not like uncertainty. Nuance and grey areas are uncertainty. So the mind seeks out certainty. In this case the only "certain" opinions were Chauvin was justified in what he did and it was a terrible accident; or, Chauvin murdered an innocent black man; part of a nationwide practice. For most people, the former was socially unacceptable, so they defaulted to believing the latter. Balko et al give them the justifications they need to override any doubt, and indeed, become indignant at anyone who would question their worldview.

And, in this highly politicized age, everyone must have, or wants to have, an opinion on everything. Saying "I don't really know" isn't seen as prudence or humility. It immediately puts you on "the other team".

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So long as many US communities see the unfortunate deaths of their children as personal lottery winnings, legal and medical arguments and jury deliberations will reward the survivors and their attorneys.

No one wants to touch the fact that African Americans with only 13% of US, commit over 50% homicides... males mostly killing other African American males. But, no money in that.

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Chauvin was convicted the minute the well-edited video clips hit the media. How many people got to see Floyd resisting arrest before he was restrained? How many people were exposed to the fact that Floyd had in the past pistol whipped a pregnant black woman during a home invasion, and he wasn't this poor innocent picked on by the cops? Why was the implication that Chauvin acted the way he did out of racism bandied about without end, yet the prosecution did not actually ever bring any evidence demonstrating a pattern of racist behavior, probably because Chauvin might in fact be a tough, perhaps even a brutal cop, who took the hard road against resisting arrest, but was not a racist. I wonder what would have happened if Floyd, with his record, was white, and Chauvin was black, and the rest of the incident was the same. Would that Chauvin have been convicted of murder?

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This might be a very unpopular opinion, especially amongst the black community, but I believe Chauvin was used as the fall guy because of the fear of riots, looting and burning by blacks and others. I do not believe he committed murder and should not have received the sentence he got. Should Floyd have died? No however he was a known criminal drug addict with a huge amount of Fentanyl in his system which most certainly contributed to his death. It angers me how he was idolized and had a monument erected in his name. Truly disgusting. If anything it was unintentional manslaughter. I also am shocked that the other officers were also charged. Who the heck would want to go into law enforcement? I wouldn't. We have too many things backwards.

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It has puzzled me all along why more attention wasn’t paid by the defense to the possibility of opioid induced pulmonary edema. As described, Mr. Floyd was complaining of shortness of breath from early on in the encounter, prior to any restraint. He had a high level of Fentanyl in his system. Mr. Floyd’s lungs weighed above the normal range on autopsy and were found to be “diffusely congested and edematous”. If the pulmonary expert had been asked about this possibility, there is likely no way he could have ruled it out. That is the definition of reasonable doubt.

https://bcmj.org/articles/noncardiogenic-pulmonary-edema-associated-ultrapotent-opioid-overdoses

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It was like watching a Chess master try to play Chess against 3 people who didn’t fully understand the rules. Coleman would routinely make a strong point in the reasonable doubt framing which he painstakingly established that would definitionally require the others to respond within that framing and they refused to do it. They would respond in a way that did not acknowledge the framing. It’s like he would split their rook and king with his knight and their stupid response would be to have a pawn move like a queen to ‘capture’ his knight.

Balko was bad, arguing from bad faith almost without exception. But at least Balko tried to confine his discussion to the plausibly relevant facts of the case.

It’s hard to believe Liz can hold down a job or can function as an adult. Every point she brought up and critique of Coleman was spectacularly irrelevant to the guilty / not-guilty in a legal sense question that they were tasked with debating. Truly one of the most harmfully stupid people I have seen on film.

The other Reason guy was a non-entity. Didn’t talk much but tried to steer the conversation in Balko’s favor unsuccessfully.

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Jun 15·edited Jun 15

Don Lemon when he was still with CNN interviewed the jurors after the trial. In the segment I watched recently, the jurors make a couple of points with emphasis:

1) They knew they had to convict Mr. Chauvin of something really serious or the city would burn down again. They knew they couldn't walk out of that jury room to deliver acquittal. Wasn't going to happen. So they spent their entire deliberations trying to figure out *how* they could convict, not *whether*.

2) Their first straw vote had only 7 or 8 jurors satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Mr. Chauvin was in fact guilty as charged. The other 4 or 5 felt really bad that they were going to have to convict a man when they had reasonable doubt about his guilt. So the defence evidence really did raise reasonable doubt in at least some jurors, and all it takes is one. (Like in Twelve Angry Men.)

3) The lightbulb moment, as one keen-to-convict juror put it, that gave the 4 or 5 holdouts the fig-leaf they needed to convict was when their deliberations moved to what Mr. Chauvin did *after* Mr. Floyd lost consciousness and (probably) died. They decided that his actions in what they saw as failing to promptly attend to the emergency gave them the excuse thy needed to convict. And so they did.

In the segments of this interview that you can find on-line now, only 3), the "lightbulb moment" is covered by a beaming Don Lemon. The truncated discussion gives no insight into the reasonable doubt faced by some jurors and their fear about acquittal as covered in points 1) and 2).

I haven't watched the portions of the bystander video that the jurors called the lightbulb moment (and which wasn't covered in the TFOM movie) so I have no personal opinion about whether they got it right about that in rendering their verdict. It's just a clue as to what was going on in the jurors' minds in how they came to their verdict.

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Jun 16·edited Jun 16

I just watched the Don Lemon juror interview here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGlcM2J90hE

You have totally mischaracterized what the jurors said. They specifically stated that they were under NO PRESSURE to reach a guilty verdict, and they SAID NOTHING about being afraid of post-trial violence. That wasn’t mentioned by any of them. Instead they said that they were aware of the seriousness of their duty to come to an honest and fair verdict and to take their job seriously so that Chauvin would not be convicted without overwhelming evidence. Indeed, their very first vote was on the manslaughter charge and it was UNANIMOUS GUILTY. Before they reached that conclusion as a final vote, they played devil’s advocate with each other, arguing both sides back and forth to make absolutely certain they had no doubts (not even a reasonable doubt) that Chauvin was guilty before moving on to the next charge.

On the next charge the votes were split, so they mapped out the testimony and argued that one back and forth. They watched the video of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck 8 times and they said it was excruciating and very traumatic. They then went over the pulmonologist’s testimony again and this was, indeed, a “light bulb moment”. Far from “giving them an excuse” to find Chauvin guilty, they specifically said that this was when they REALIZED THAT CHAUVIN HAD KILLED FLOYD BY SUFFOCATING HIM. The jurors then told Lemon that it unavoidably clear that Chauvin had denied giving Floyd the aid that the MPD training required, indeed that was mandatory, when a suspect in a MRT enters into respiratory distress, and especially here where FLOYD HAD NO PULSE AND HAD STOPPED BREATHING. They said the video proved that Floyd was kept in the MRT for 3 to 4 minutes afterwards and that Chauvin not only made no attempt to move him into the recovery position, he REFUSED to help Floyd in spite of his own fellow police officers telling him Floyd had no pulse and had stopped breathing. It was this realization that convinced all of the jurors beyond any doubt at all that Chauvin was guilty of murder.

I urge everyone to watch the CNN interview and listen to what the jurors had to say for themselves. These citizens were honest, unbiased, and did their job with integrity, and without fear or favor. There are even other CNN video interviews with jurors who said on camera, and quite emotionally (crying) that the evidence against Chauvin was OVERWHELMING. Not one single juror, including one of the alternates said a single word about “fear if there was an acquittal”. No one said that. To imply otherwise is dishonest.

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Thank you for being brave.

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