Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!
The Verdict Is In…
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Musings on the byways of popular culture
Musings on the byways of popular culture
by 42 Comments
Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!
You must be logged in to post a comment.
We’re still talking about the ESL, then?
Triple Barbara Striesand
One Barbra, One Randy Newman, and a Classix Nouveaux.
And a Diet Pepsi.
Excellent. Anything else would have been desperate.
Anything else and I would have had to riot. Now, I feel like playing some Funk:
Welcome home stripy one. X 🐯
The best thing, of course, is it sets a good precedent for other over enthusiastic cops. Plus if he’d got off America would have burned tonight.
Surprised myself by bursting into tears of relief.
I am sure you were not alone, Ivylander.
The whole world was watching and hoping for justice.
And for those of you who live in the US, the tension must have been excruciating.
As Twang says: if the verdict had gone any other way, the consequences would have been terrifying.
I’m heaving an enormous sigh of relief.
My enormous PHEW this morning has left me exhausted…
There will no doubt be an appeal.
I waited up for the result as, like others, I too could see the US on fire had he been acquitted. The defence lawyer was a disgrace, with his never ending justifications of nonsense, summed up by his point that the existing carotid artery blockage was more responsible for his death than the 100% blockage caused by the kneeling.
Appeal, sure, but I don’t rate his chances for a jolly time in US chokey in the meantime…..
I’d assume he’ll be stuck in an isolation wing for his own protection.
Otherwise, imagine the faces in the canteen when he gets asked what he’s in for…
@Slug
He’s in for serving after serving of snot, piss, shit and ground glass in every meal he eats.
I think the Defence Attorney did his job, as unappealing as it may seem. His job was to do his damndest to get Chauvin off and he did the best he could with the cards his client dealt him.
Quite. What do people think defence barristers spend their days doing in the UK ? They spend their days defending people who they know are invariably guilty.
Yes. He was doing his job.
I was more upset with the experts-for-hire who were called as defence witnesses.
The endless droning on about a ‘reasonable officer’ was undermined by that photo of Chauvin with his hand in his pocket, looking the absolute picture of unreasonable. The bystanders were unable to reason with him including the fire fighter but the sad thing is that none of his colleagues even tried to stop him. They are in the frame next.
Spot on. Must be the hardest job in the World – in this instance even the defence attorney must have secretly been hoping he lost the case.
But he’s been on the telly now. He won’t be short of work, and can probably hike his fees a bit.
On this and other issues Biden is proving to be far more than the hollow platitudinous shell a lot of people (including me I confess) expected.
I wonder how Fox News, breitbart etcetera are going to report this.
Right wing website conservapedia have said that George Floyd died from fentanyl poisoning.
But Conservapedia’s servers are powered by the wind from the arses of Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Rush Limbaugh and Ted Cruz.
True.
Alleged offenders’ right to be defended in court regardless of how odious or guilty they may be is what distinguishes legal systems in the US and the UK from the laughable “justice” meted out in countries such as China.
Guilty yes.
Will it change anything? I reckon we all hope so.
Racism runs deep in all 21st Century societies.
Throughout my life I’ve been hearing from the USA every time a tragedy like this happens ‘We have to change’ hmm. Biden seems determined, let’s hope he gets the time to make a permanent difference. However it’s not just our friends over the Atlantic who need to change. IMHO racism in the U.K. Was responsible for Brexit, go figure.
Hi Tiggs, hope all’s well with you and yours.
Yep to Brexit caused by racism (and ignorance).
Sadly Biden wont make a difference. If you have seen the film Three bilboards outside of Ebbing, Mo the racist cop in that film is a fair summation of cops in many different areas of the USA. The attitude at the top will not change the attitude at their level. Biden’s four years will be marked by a number of mass shootings and a number of killings of black people by policemen and then the next candidates will stand for the same philosophies.
Much of America is broken, has been broken for a number of years and will only start to heal if gun laws are repealed which is unlikely to ever happen.
Don’t agree fully. This verdict will surely have some effect on how the police behave.
If Biden wants to have any real impact he needs to tackle police unions and the huge difficulties ordinary people face in holding the police to account.
Chauvin had 17 misconduct complaints before he murdered Floyd. Only one resulted in discipline — two letters of reprimand. Details of complaints made were kept secret by the force. A lot of the police behaviour stems from the security of knowing it’s rare to face any kind of meaningful charge.
Ted Hastings may be available.
Only for a short time I think then back to business as usual. I was thinking more in terms of small provincial police forces not in Metropolitan areas. We will see – I like to think there will be positive change but somehow doubt it.
I asked a business friend of mine in Massachusetts if she had guns in her house. She proudly told me she had 17 including a sub machine gun. I asked why and she said that ‘when’ society broke down her and her husband needed to protect themselves and their property.
Sadly I do not think that is an isolated view.
It’s no way isolated, the right to bear arms will never be overturned, I obviously defer to those of you who live in the USA, you know better than me. Amearica is a deeply divided country over a number of issues and it’s going to take a miracle worker to unite it again,
Yes I’ve seen Three Billboards @SteveT and I know what you are referring to.
I wonder ‘when’ they will think society has broken down. There are currently three deaths a day involving the police and 42 other deaths by gunshot, excluding suicides.
I’m struck by the body cam footage. It seems black people are unbelievably polite and deferential when confronted by police. What kind of society are they living in when people are more afraid of a police officer in their home than a burglar?
And thanks for the good wishes, Baron. I hope all is well with you and yours.
Seems to me that society has already broken down, if people think they need 17 guns, including a sub machine gun, to protect themselves and their property.
Cheering somebody to prison somehow makes me sad for us all even when they are guilty.
A humanist point of view, but I think a detached and unrealistic one. Also I believe the mood is one of relief and surprise rather than being specifically celebratory.
Chauvin is also a bit of a scapegoat I think.
His defence should have been built around that. Don’t hold me, the one officer responsible. It’s the entire force. The defence should have brought more police as witnesses. I’m not excusing the man but there’s a higher culpability.
It’s not much of a defence – ‘All the others were doing it too’. I only followed the trial when I saw clips on the news, but weren’t more senior officers called who said that kneeling on the neck, as caused Floyd’s death, was explicitly banned in officers’ training?
“It may be Chauvin kneeling on the guy’s throat, but society is the guilty party” would have been laughed out of court, and quite rightly.
Much like your comment, which implicitly misconstrues what I said. Society?
Your point boils down to the individual being influenced by his surroundings to such a degree that he can no longer be held entirely responsible for his own actions. So, yes, society.
That shit didn’t fly at Nuremberg and it wouldn’t have flown here:
1. It wouldn’t have absolved him of his individual responsibility in this specific case.
2. It was very clear that ranks had closed against him, from the top down.
3. If others are as guilty, then the recently announced Federal probe may end up getting somewhere.
Are you arguing that he should have been found not guilty, or guilty on lesser charges, because you think that others are just as bad?
Not at all. I’m not arguing anything. Merely pointing out that it’s convenient for the police to have a sacrificial lamb at this point and Chauvin’s defence counsel who surely must have known from the outset that he was likely to be convicted might have used the culture of policing as a more effective strategy.
There is now a federal investigation into the whole of Minneapolis policing which may address your issue.
During the trial, the defence called an officer who had detained Floyd during a traffic stop some weeks earlier. Floyd was a passenger. The video was horrific. The police officer, with gun drawn, approached Floyd, yelling ‘Show me your hands!’ Floyd raised his hands above his head. Then, ‘Put them on the dash’, ‘Put your hands where I can see them’, while his colleague yelled, ‘Put your hands on your head’! Floyd had no idea which order to follow & just kept saying, ‘Don’t shoot. Please don’t shoot.’ The officer cursed & told him he wouldn’t shoot if he kept his hands still. He finally got out of the car, was handcuffed & remained compliant standing up.
All this did was demonstrate how Floyd could have been subdued without even being put on the floor. It also showed how terrifying it must be to be pulled over by the police.
This ProPublica article is worth a read. It highlights how one police officer failed to follow any of the guidelines and shot a man dead who seemed to present no threat.
In most US states, investigations against officers are conducted by the force they work for, and actions taken rest with the commissioner for that force. Civilian complaint bodies exist but have little access to information and their findings are mostly ignored.
Chauvin’s in prison because a member of the public got it all on film, and it was proof that what he did was unlawful. Otherwise, precedent suggests an internal investigation would have found no issue.
https://www.propublica.org/article/what-police-impunity-looks-like-there-was-no-discipline-as-no-wrongdoing-was-found?
Police Impunity appears to be throughout the USA, not just in Minneapolis. They are pretty much unaccountable to the public they are supposed to be serving and seem to be only serving the white constituents of that public. The fact that so many of the higher offices in US law enforcement are held by politically-elected people cannot be a good thing either.