Welcome to our LIVE coverage of day 4 of the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, over the in-custody death of George Floyd. I’ll be live blogging the court’s proceedings all day in real-time!
For those who may not know, I’m Attorney Andrew F. Branca, an internationally-recognized expert in use-of-force law, providing daily real-time legal analysis of the Chauvin trial’s proceedings as a guest commentator for Legal Insurrection, as well as over at my own blog, Law of Self Defense.
Anyone interested in a free podcast version of our daily legal commentary and analysis of the Chauvin trial, you can find that available at the Law of Self Defense News/Q&A Podcast, available on most every podcast platform, including Pandora, iHeart, Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, simple RSS feed, and more.
Based on yesterday’s testimony from state’s witnesses, it looks like we may have moved past the state’s bystander witnesses, with the weeping and gnashing of teeth and their very limited personal knowledge surrounding Floyd’s arrest and in-custody death. The first witness was Floyd’s lady friend Courteney Ross, who also had an emotional breakdown on the witness stand, but then we moved on to more professional witnesses, including the responding paramedics, fire department personnel, and the retired MPD sergeant who had oversight of the officers involved in Floyd’s arrest.
So, here’s hoping that we’re now moving away from the largely emotive, but relatively uninformed, testimony of early bystander witnesses, and will begin to see more substantive, expert, and professional testimony moving forward.
Whether such testimony will be any more helpful to the prosecution than have been the state’s first round of witnesses is, of course, an open question.
Meanwhile, we’ll continue live blogging today’s proceedings in court, as we have been doing since the start of jury selection, and providing commentary and analysis of those proceedings in our separate “wrap-up” post after the court has adjourned for the day.
Here’s a live video feed of the day’s proceedings:
We are using a new live blogging software. If you encounter any problems, post in the regular comment section to this post.
Here’s today’s live blogging, updated in real time throughout the day:
Enjoy the show!
–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.
[Featured image is a screen capture from the live video of this trial, <em>Minnesota v. Chauvin</em>.]
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