The jury instructions seem professional and encompassing. What I will note here is that Judge Cahill did not in fact "admonish the jurors that the state need not prove that Chauvin intended to cause Floyd harm" in the charge of 2nd degree Manslaughter as previously stated by McCarthy.
Rather he suggested that the state needed to prove culpable negligence. This, under Minnesota law, requires that the state prove that Chauvin consciously created a dangerous situation that would have a strong likelihood of death or great bodily harm.
His use of the term intent (or his limitation of that intent) was that the state does not have to prove that Chauvin had intent to cause death, but that it they must prove that his intent was to commit actions that a reasonable person would understand might cause death or great bodily harm. A murky difference, but Minnesota manslaughter laws still require that intent .
In other words, my suspicions on this were correct. It does appear that McCarthy might be drawing some inference regarding a typical manslaughter charge, versus the specific manslaughter laws in Minnesota. If you do a search on culpable negligence you will see the use of terms such as "reckless" and "flagrant" or even "gross recklessness" for that description. It's a higher bar and it would definitely require that the State prove that Chauvin had some understanding that the prone position restraint was dangerous and would cause death.
If the statute only required simple negligence (without any intent to create a dangerous situation) then Chauvin not following procedure as described by book training, or simply a failure to turn him to his side, would certainly be enough to prove that form of negligence. Sort of the difference between "I know this might kill this guy and I don't give a shit" versus the concept that "he should have known better" as some have sort of argued.
All that being said, the instructions made it quite clear that the state still has to prove that the death was Chauvin's fault. Again, the instructions for that left a lot of leeway as to how one might want to judge it. But at the end of the day, if you believe that it was more likely that the underlying medical conditions or the Fentanyl was the substantial cause, then Chauvin would have to be found not-guilty across the board. If you felt the opposite. That those conditions were not all that relevant and that it was the prone position restraint itself that actually crushed Floyd to death, then you move on to the intent side.
(please comment on previous thread)
