National Review Online
Wednesday, April 21, 2021
The swift verdict reached by a Minneapolis jury
on Tuesday afternoon affirms what most Americans thought upon watching the
excruciating recording of the last nine minutes of George Floyd’s life. He was
killed by an excessive use of force by Derek Chauvin and three other subsequently
fired police officers.
The jury convicted Chauvin of two murder counts
and, inexorably in light of those verdicts, of a lesser count of
manslaughter, which is duplicative and will be irrelevant to his sentence.
There is cause for concern about whether Chauvin received
a fair trial, an issue that is separate from the strength of the evidence, and
one that the trial judge, Peter Cahill, acknowledged just after the jury
retired to begin deliberating late Monday afternoon. By then, the notoriously
irresponsible congresswoman, Maxine Waters, had threatened unrest unless the
jury returned a verdict of “guilty, guilty, guilty.” President Biden, who
scorched his predecessor for unhinged commentary about pending cases, piled on
Tuesday, observing that he was “praying” for a conviction.
The defense complained from the start that Chauvin could
not get a fair trial in Hennepin County; and as if to prove its point, the City
of Minneapolis paid the Floyd family a $27 million settlement in the middle of
jury selection. The judge declined to change venue, and later refused to
sequester the jury, even after the tragic accidental killing of Daunte Wright
by a police officer in a Minneapolis suburb.
Nevertheless, the appellate courts will have to weigh
these matters against the damning recording, and determine whether the public
pressure had a decisive influence given the strength of the evidence. Even
allowing that Floyd’s arrest was lawful (it was triggered by his passing of a
counterfeit $20 bill, a comparatively trivial offense, although the cops found
him high on drugs behind the wheel of a car), and even acknowledging that he
resisted arrest (not threatening the police, but forcibly refusing to comply
with their effort to take him into custody), there is simply no excusing the
manner of his detention.
Floyd was maintained on the hard street in the prone
position, handcuffed from behind. While police may at first have been skeptical
of his claims that he could not breathe (since he had started saying so, as
suspects are known to do, before the cops restrained him), it gradually became
obvious that his breaths were becoming shallow. He complained that he was in
agony. His breathing stopped. His pulse stopped. Horrified bystanders, who
never threatened police, warned the cops that he was not resisting and no
longer responsive.
Yet Chauvin would not relent. He and his fellow officers
continued to hold Floyd down — Chauvin, now infamously, with his knees on
Floyd’s neck and chest area. This, the medical experts testified, is what principally
killed him: The loss of oxygen that caused his brain and heart to cease
functioning.
If there is a silver lining in such a tragic story, it is
about policing. Among the most compelling witnesses in the case were police
officials. What had to have impressed the jury was how far Chauvin strayed from
standard detention procedures. Police are trained that, if they must use a
prone restraint, they are to roll the suspect onto his side as soon as he is
secured — and especially if he has stopped resisting — in order to facilitate
breathing.
American cops also go by the credo, “In my custody, in my
care.” No matter how serious the crime, no matter how loathsome the suspect,
they are responsible for the wellbeing of the people they detain. If a detainee
falls ill, they are duty-bound to administer care — and trained to do so as
“first responders.” If a detainee loses his pulse, they are trained to begin
CPR immediately.
Chauvin did none of these things. As prosecutors said,
“He wouldn’t let up, and he wouldn’t get up.” The police witnesses expressed a
healthy disdain for that. They know nothing makes a good cop’s job harder than
a bad cop.
George Floyd died because Derek Chauvin was a bad
cop. We are, of course, mindful that police have a very tough job, dealing
with uncooperative and often dangerous suspects, many with drug-abuse and
health problems — such as the ones Floyd had, which likely contributed to his
death. But the police power to use necessary force, which must necessarily be
superior force, never justifies excessive force. That is the message of this
emphatic verdict.
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