Welcome, everyone, to the official launch of my coverage of the second-degree murder trial of Derek Chauvin, criminally charged in the March May 25, 2020 in-custody death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, MN.
Tomorrow, Monday, March 8, 2021, begins the jury selection for Chauvin’s trial, with opening arguments likely within the following week or two, and presumably a verdict by sometime in early or mid-April. It’s our intent to provide daily coverage of the trial proceedings, as much in real-time as circumstances allow, and based on observation of trial proceedings as they occur.
Throughout the trial I’ll be providing in-depth legal analysis in the form of blog posts here at Legal Insurrection, as informed by my own modest expertise in use-of-force law and based solely on the relevant evidence and law in this case, with links to the actual sources of evidence and law, as appropriate. Many of you may have followed my coverage of the George Zimmerman trial back in 2013, and if so you can expect the same coverage insight and expertise in the trial of Chauvin, as well.
I also plan to use the social media platform Parler to provide live coverage of the Chauvin trial as it proceeds. For those interested in following that content, I’m on Parler using the handle @LawofSelfDefense.
In summary, the narrative of guilt for Chauvin is that while a Minneapolis police officer lawfully arresting Floyd, Chauvin placed his knee on Floyd’s neck with sufficient force and for a sufficient duration to cause Floyd’s death, knowing he was doing so in front of a crowd of people who were recording his conduct for all the world to see, and in a manner consistent with the criminal act of second-degree murder. Naturally, the prosecution is obliged to prove the elements of this crime (or any lesser-included offense) beyond a reasonable doubt in order to obtain a conviction.
In contrast, the narrative of innocence for Chauvin is likely to be something to the effect that Chauvin’s use of force—the knee on Floyd’s neck—was a lawful and appropriate use of force under the circumstances of making a lawful arrest of a non-compliant Floyd, who presented the appearance of experiencing excited delirium, that this technique was approved and trained by his department as a non-deadly force restraint technique under these circumstances, and that the technique was not applied in a manner that could be reasonably expected to cause death or serious injury to Floyd consistent with the lack of any indication of any trauma whatever to Floyd’s neck discovered upon medical examination.
Further, the narrative of innocence is likely to argue that the actual cause of Floyd’s death was not Chauvin’s knee at all, but rather the three-fold fatal dose of fentanyl in Floyd’s system—presumably because the drug was ingested by Floyd upon approach by the officers making his arrest in order to conceal the drug from discovery by the officers.
This narrative would hold that the ingestion by Floyd of the fatal dose of fentanyl would have inevitably resulted in his death regardless of any conduct by the officers involved. This is particularly so given Floyd’s medical history of existing respiratory and cardiovascular disease, his COVID-positive status, and his poorly made decision to physically and forcibly resist lawful arrest for some 10 minutes.
It is also known that Floyd had a history of ingesting illicit drugs to prevent their discovery when approached by officers, and indeed he had previously been hospitalized as a consequence of precisely such conduct. It is unclear at this point, however, if that history will be admitted as evidence at Chauvin’s trial.
As has become routine in such cases, Floyd’s in-custody death and Chauvin’s trial have been racially energized by the usual suspects, including Attorney Benjamin Crump specifically and the social and mainstream media generally. Their narrative is that this is another example in a long list of instances of white police officers murdering black suspects, a continuation of what they argue is well-established institutional racism of police departments in particular and America as a whole. Indeed, the established social narrative puts Chauvin’s guilt as the murderer of Floyd as beyond question.
Of course, George Zimmerman faced a similar established social narrative when his trial began on second-degree murder charges for the killing of Trayvon Martin, and after fourteen months of investigation and trial he was acquitted of all charges by a racially diverse jury in a matter of hours.
Much of the world was shocked by the acquittal of Zimmerman, because they’d been propagandized by the social media narrative to be utterly convinced of his guilt. Those of you who followed my day-by-day analysis of that trial, however, fully understood that not only was the prosecution’s case against Zimmerman weak, there was literally no evidence in the case inconsistent with Zimmerman’s narrative of lawful self-defense. For the well-informed, Zimmerman’s acquittal came as a relief, but not a surprise.
Will we see the same outcome in the trial of Chauvin? Follow my daily coverage and analysis of the trial right here at Legal Insurrection to find out!
I began analysis of this case soon after Floyd’s death over at my own Law of Self Defense web site, and anyone interested in reading that content, which includes far more details than I can reasonably include in this initial “launch” post, can gain free access by clicking the relevant links below:
After Action Analysis (George Floyd): May 27, 2020
NEWS: Officer Chauvin Charged with Murder of George Floyd (May 29, 2020)
Did Baden Autopsy Find Clinical Evidence Floyd Killed by Asphyxia? No (June 1, 2020)
News/Q&A (George Floyd): June 4, 2020
George Floyd: Criminal Complaints & Medical Examiner Report (June 5, 2020)
Media Slowly Sensing Perhaps Floyd’s Death Maybe Not A Murder? (March 3, 2021)
OK, folks, buckle up, gird your loins, and all that good stuff, and get ready for our coverage of the second-degree murder trial of Derek Chauvin, starting substantively tomorrow with the beginning of jury selection.
–Andrew
Attorney Andrew F. Branca
Law of Self Defense LLC
Attorney Andrew F. Branca’s legal practice has specialized exclusively in use-of-force law for thirty years. Andrew provides use-of-force legal consultancy services to attorneys across the country, as well as near-daily use-of-force law insight, expertise, and education to lawyers and non-lawyers alike in the form of blog posts, video, and podcasts, through the Law of Self Defense Membership service. If this kind of content is of interest to you, try out our two-week Membership trial for a mere 99 cents, with a 200% no-question- asked money-back guarantee, here: Law of Self Defense Membership Trial.
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