Chauvin trial week two

Moving into week two of what could be a trial that lasts for months

One of the things that came up late last week was the State offering that they only want to show "some" of the video from events. From legal insurrection:

A reasonable person might wonder why the state preferred to offer the jury only selected portions of the videos, rather than be entirely transparent and ensure that the jury is fully informed on the totality of the video evidence relevant to the events surrounding Floyd’s death, but maybe that’s just me. 

Or maybe it’s not just me. For example, the full length video of Officer Lane (BWC 5Z7) shows Lane climbing into the ambulance with Floyd—at Chauvin’s direction!– and providing chest compressions in an effort to save Floyd’s life. The state’s offering of that same video footage as Exhibit 47 cuts off immediately prior to Chauvin ordering Lane to jump into the ambulance to provide this medical assistance. 

Coincidence that the state’s version excludes Chauvin ordering Lane into the ambulance to assist the efforts to save Floyd’s life? Things that make you go, hmmm.

Andrew McCarthy has been moving a bit in the direction of the defense. He notes the same thing I brought up last week regarding the timing of the breathing issues. He also suggests that it is legally relevant that it was Floyd's choice to be on the ground, and that Chauvin and other other officers called for medical assistance.

Notably, Floyd’s now-famous statements that he could not breathe and that police were killing him, as well as his cries for his mother, were not just reactions — as prosecutors and political activists have framed it — to his being placed in a neck hold by Chauvin after police put him in a dangerous prone position on the street. In reality, Floyd began calling for his mother, and crying out that he could not breathe and was going to die, while police were trying to get him to sit in the back of the squad car. Those claims may have been sincere, but if so, they were spurred by what Floyd maintained were his “claustrophobia” and anxiety over being taken into custody, not by the neck hold in which Chauvin subsequently placed him.

What’s more, it was not the idea of the arresting officers to place Floyd in a prone position on the street. Rather, after propelling his way out of the squad-car rear seat that four cops unsuccessfully struggled to place him in, Floyd insisted that he preferred to lie down on the street. The police restrained him in the position in which he put himself, which was not the position they wanted him in (they wanted him in the car). Reasonably convinced that Floyd was high on drugs (a conclusion supported by his erratic behavior, the accounts of witnesses, and later toxicology tests), the police called for paramedics to take him to a hospital, rather than continuing to try to thrust him in the squad car and take him into police custody.

That is, the police accused of murdering Floyd actually summoned medical help out of concern over his condition.

It now makes me wonder how many people really are still sucked into the narrative and not privy to the whole truth. If someone like McCarthy was not aware (until last week's testimony) that Floyd had been struggling with his breathing and complaining about it prior to the knee to the neck, then how many others are also unaware?  

Now with someone like McCarthy, these facts matter. But they may or may not matter to some of those sitting on the jury if they are really tied emotionally to the narrative handed to them since the time of death. They can pretend that they remain open-minded, but sometimes that is not a conscious choice. Cognitive dissonance is strong and has a way of shutting your mind down, especially in manners that are emotionally important to you.

Either way, as the facts keep coming out, more and more people are starting to question the original narrative that led to widespread rioting, destruction, and racial animosity we experienced over the past year. This is why the prosecution continues their legal ploys to limit the amount of "truth" that the jury gets to see and why the defense is bound and determined to show the whole story.