Here is a murky philosophical question...

Doctors make mistake, sometimes horrible mistakes, and sometimes people die because of those mistakes. A doctor might break protocol, might not follow guidelines, or may even do things that are borderline unethical, and end up losing a life in the process.  In those cases, the hospital is generally sued, the doctor is many times fired, and may even lose their medical license because of their negligence. 

Yet, we don't charge doctors for murder and put them on trial for their lives. 

At least we do not, unless it can be proven that they intended for that patient to die.

But under similar circumstances, we seem to want to put police officers on trial. 

Whether or not they intended someone to die seems irrelevant. Why is that?

While I think can all agree that when excessive force is used with the intent to hurt someone, that a police officer should be held to the same standards as anyone else who has that same intent to hurt someone. After all, being a cop does not give you the license to go around beating people up.

But if the police officer is at the very least following some semblance of protocol, not going out of his or her way to actually hurt someone, why do we believe that they should be held criminally liable for things that happen to suspects that they are dealing with? 

Because it's not just Chauvin. It's the criminalization of police work in general. 

Let's be clear at this point. There is no real argument anymore that Officer Chauvin placed his knee across the neck of Floyd with any intent to choke him. The prosecutions own witnesses have already established that he didn't. Even if you believe the one doctor who claimed that the pressure from the prone position somehow blocked the hypopharynx (which is dubious and discounted by Baker), there is no way you can prove that Chauvin intended to do so. I doubt the guy has ever heard of the hypopharynx. Moreover, the prone position is something Officers are trained to do. Even if it was misused (and that is still an unresolved question), misuse of a trained procedure, absent any proof of malice, is a mistake, not murder.

But now hearing the prosecution argue about whether or not Chauvin was responsible for CPR is pushing the envelope to crazy limits. It's one thing to train a police officer, a fire fighter, or even a life guard CPR, it's quite another to charge them with murder if they failed to recognize that they needed to administer it and someone died. Why would anyone learn CPR if we started holding them criminally liable if they somehow failed to recognize and administer that CPR? 

Where we seem to be right now in this trial is an argument, not about intent, but about following protocol. They are arguing about whether or not the lowest level of force can be seen to be "excessive", and now apparently whether Chauvin could have done more to save Floyd from dying. But that's no different than reviewing a patient who died in the Hospital. Did the doctors follow protocol, did they do anything out of the ordinary, could they have done more to save that life. Only difference is that those questions are never argued in front of a jury while looking at murder charges. Nor should they or nobody would ever become a doctor.