Derek exercised his rights and his defense and it failed. He was never denied anything and got his shot.
Except the mistrial that should have been granted after repeated prosecutorial misconduct and politicians attempts to influence the jury, but hey, details, right?
He was found guilty because the evidence showed this. We will see people pulling this or that out on this thread about drugs and circumstance - no doubt - but a jury was convened and convicted him.
You can view it however you want, but alas your support or non-support of either party makes no fucking difference in a court where all that shit is washed away and one only gets to view evidence.
No functioning adult is this naive in general, and in this particular case, this sentiment crosses the line into legitimately retarded.
-The change of venue was denied, so jurors were drawn from a pool of people who were at ground zero of months of riots stemming from this exact case.
-The jury was not sequestered, do they were aware of things like the NYT's attempts to dox them, the pig's head left on the porch of the defense witness, and Maxine Waters' call for violence if they reached the "wrong" verdict. The idea that they saw "nothing but the evidence" is trivially untrue.
-As for the judge, I alluded to Iona Nikitchenko earlier in the thread for a reason.
Derek still has rights, and if there is a valid reason why the conviction should be thrown out then so be it.
People have been spelling out those reasons with alphabet blocks all throughout this thread, but that apparently has no effect on "there was a trial so it was fair by definition" magical thinking.
Really, after reviewing the videos - regardless of Floyd's drugs or whatever, to question what was Derek's intent is to be so fucking blind you'd have to be an idiot to think he didn't intend to harm Floyd. It is so god damn obvious he sought to harm Floyd. His wish was to cause harm to Floyd, and he did, and under his oath and duty as an officer he got what was due.
This is "obvious" to anyone without domain knowledge. To everyone else, this is UVA Rape Hoax levels of bullshit. Due to the way that the rib cage, neck, skull, windpipe, relevant arteries etc are configured, getting the back of your neck knelt on while prone is not life-threatening, not even if it's MovieBob doing it. The "muh eight minutes" bleat shows how pig-ignorant many people are about these things: if your blood or oxygen are actually cut off, unconsciousness and death don't take nearly that long. Note also how two autopsies, both of which were under severe political pressure to get the "right" answer, could not establish a causal link between Chauvin's actions and Floyd's death. Hell, the coroner himself said that under any other circumstance, he would have called it an open-and-shut overdose.
I think any defense of Derek really comes down to intent; and I think we can all
What was Derek's intent with Floyd? If the answer is to harm him, then he is guilty of causing his death through his actions. If you want to argue he had no such intention, I would beg to suggest the evidence shows otherwise.
So really, can it with the "He chewed this or that" horseshit and instead go to a bathroom and sit there for 9 minutes with a bowling ball against your neck and try and convince yourself you aren't intending to hurt yourself.
Credit where it's due, this is a nice bit of rhetorical sleight of hand. You say that a neck restraint hurts (true) and then use the ambiguous definition of "hurt" to claim that by applying it, Chauvin intended to "hurt" Floyd. Of course, this obfuscates the difference between necessary and unnecessary harm, and taken at face value, flies in the face of common sense: the idea that if a police officer causes you pain, even in the line of duty, is prima face evidence of his malicious intent towards you would, if actually applied, make the profession of policing effectively illegal. Nice try though.
