Chauvin Murder Trial

[Rev. Rye]

The point that I saw Mark Geragos make for doubt was that Floyd died of hypoxia, and fentanyl can cause hypoxia. People have said that wouldn't have happened at the level of fentanyl he had in him, but all the expert witnesses also testified that there is no safe level of fentanyl. The autopsy also stated that the drugs contributed to his death, as did his heart disease.

Yeah, fentanyl and heart disease helped contribute to his death. So did that knee that pressed on his neck for nine and a half minutes. And when the man who conducted the official autopsy for Hennepin County was called to the stand, he pointed out that the catalyst that sealed his fate was almost certainly that knee. The fentanyl and heart disease just helped it along.

And, as for how culpable Chauvin was, I’ve mentioned before that eight current and former cops testified that Chauvin went well beyond the bounds of any reasonable use of force. At least one pointed out that once he was handcuffed, there would be no need to keep him in that chokehold. (Unless maybe, I dunno, Floyd had laser eyes and keeping him in that exact position was somehow the only thing keeping him from laser blasting some civilians?) And beyond that, he didn’t budge for nine minutes, long after Floyd lost consciousness and was probably dead. Even as a crowd started assembling, filming the event, and yelling at him to move his knee, he just kneeled there with his hand in his pocket. If there was just some reckless motion or he was a bit too slow to get up, I’d understand a manslaughter verdict. Hell, even if it happened the same way but we didn’t have multiple videos publicly available of the event, I’d understand it. But we do have multiple videos, we know exactly what happened, and we know exactly what he was doing and how he was responding to it. It’s legitimately baffling how someone can look at all that and not think that Chauvin had little to no regard for George Floyd’s life.