George Floyd / Chauvin trial starts monday

pupil3142 wrote:

baa baa wool wrote:

Because much the uproar is about the methods used and many find it to be insanely inappropriate, even if 12 jurors find it to be legal. That his incompetence may be legal is why police reform is a hot topic.

His 'incompetence' is in police procedures. People seem to be unable to understand that police deal with violently dangerous people all the time. Police employment requirements, unions and common sense say that procedures for dealing with violent dangerous people need to put the protection of the law enforcement officer first.

You all expect to be protected in your job by your employer, why shouldnt the police?

I don't think anyone was arguing that keeping Floyd on the ground was to protect Chauvin and his three fellow officers. At that point the argument seems to be that Chauvin was restraining Floyd to prevent him from harming himself. As earlier posters on this thread have said, he might have just started thrashing around and banging his head into the ground. Couldn't Chauvin have safely let Floyd sit up after a minute: just call for the three officers to stand behind him, tell Floyd he was going to sit him up, but warn him if he attacked, they would restrain him again. What's wrong with that? How would that have been unsafe? Floyd is handcuffed and they are four men with weapons. I think they can stand a few paces back, ready to strike if necessary.

If you are restraining someone for their own safety (as I noted above, everyone else is safe now) and they indicate they aren't safe, shouldn't that prompt you to consider whether the restraint is the safest course of action?

I do accept the restraint may have been necessary initially, but I am a bit skeptical of that. He was handcuffed and there were four armed policeman, so I'm not sure it was proportionate to threat Floyd posed.

baa baa wool wrote:

You know what the difference is? I'm not sitting here defending Fentanyl abuse or fighting police. You are defending an officer of the state kneeling on the neck of a passed out man. How can civilians reform that?

How do you restrain a cracked-out, 220 lbs, violent criminal? How do you stop him from being a danger to you, your fellow officers, bystanders, and himself after he's moved the conflict into a busy road?

Do you want us to bring back widespread us of baton sticks? Close-range pepper spray or tear gas? Throw a bag over his head? Tie up a suspect like a hog? Joe Bidden suggests shooting people in the leg - what's your idea?

Seriously, GF was a bad hombre who needed to be forcibly restrained after resisting arrest.

Unfortunately (although fortunately for anyone living in that neighborhood), old George ripped back enough Fentenyl to kill a horse that day. His final heartbeats happen to occur will being restrained by an officer of the law.

Dude was cracked-out. You people that are upset about how DC restrained him don't live in reality and your perspective on issues like this are a danger to decent people and society in general. ### Please stop voting. ###

Chauvin is acquitted and will have a case to sue the city and media outlets for millions. He'll be on a 40' fishing boat in Florida while people that hate him are burning down minority neighborhoods in Minneapolis. <-- this is what happens when people don't live in reality.

I hope he gets the chair. Police should be better than this.

A statement doesn't become a misplaced certainty just because you are able to formulate follow up questions about it. I've seen nothing anywhere that suggests 11mg/nL of fentanyl in a human is not deadly. It appears even Rasputin would have died with that much fentanyl. If you have something that suggests otherwise, send it to the prosecution and post it here. We are talking about fentanyl. People overdosing all over the country on tiny hits of it. It's a deadly drug, far more than heroin, opioids, coke, meth.

You and I could brainstorm up many reasons why Floyd took his chances with ingesting his fentanyl/meth pills. Here are some possibilities:

1. He didn't know the pills were fentanyl and thought they were oxy/hydros. That is the most common reason people OD on fentanyl. They didn't know what they were ingesting, and believed they were just taking another oxy.

2. His fear of a felony possession charge got the best of him, and outweighed what he believed were his chances of dying. Keep in mind, Floyd had previously swallowed drugs to avoid an arrest. Maybe he figured he could do it again.

3. He didn't think it was enough to kill him.

4. He's an irrational person, with limited mental abilities, prone to making idiotic decisions. His history certainly suggests that is true.

5. He acted impulsively out of fear and confusion.

6. He was too high already before the cops arrived to properly consider what he was doing with the rest of his drugs. The 911 caller said he very drunk and out of control.

Anyway, I'm not aware of any burden on the defense to show Floyd's deliberations on overdosing. They just need to show it happened. Which I think it clearly did.

I agree that is possible. Just seems massively unlikely. Like I said, the prosecution may argue those things - the fentanyl wasn't lethal, or Chauvin killed him before the fentanyl did. I just don't see those as reasonable at all. Neither do you. You are just free speculating about things with no support. Anything is possible at some level of abstraction. Maybe the paramedics screwed up and killed him on the way to the hospital? Can't be ruled out.

My comment about misplaced certainty was mostly in reference to your incorrect claim that falling from a cliff results in certain death and that you "guess" knee restraints aren't fatal, despite examples of them causing some deaths.

You and armstronglivs both think you've solved this case (as Sherlock Holmes said "when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth"). You think it's impossible for Floyd to have survived once he ingested a quantity of drugs, so you don't have to consider the knee restraint and armstronglivs thinks he doesn't have to consider the drugs as the knee restraint clearly killed him. But neither drugs, nor the knee restraint has actually been eliminated as a possible cause.

I'd be interested to know your sources which indicate he couldn't have survived his dose of fentanyl. This article suggests he could have survived (

):

"Floyd had a negligible amount of drugs in his system — 19 nanograms per milliliter of methamphetamine and 2.9 nanograms per milliliter of THC...

He also had 11 nanograms of fentanyl in his blood. That number, in and of itself, doesn’t tell us much. Immediately after a person dies, the blood concentration of fentanyl increases significantly, so knowing only the post-mortem amount does not tell us about Mr. Floyd’s level of intoxication before his death.

What’s more, the same amount of fentanyl that produces euphoria in a tolerant user can result in an overdose in a newer user. That’s why, along with the toxicology report, we have to look at Floyd’s behavior shortly before his death... [which he doesn't find consistent with one who has taken an overdose]."

"the prosecution may argue those things - the fentanyl wasn't lethal, or Chauvin killed him before the fentanyl did. I just don't see those as reasonable at all. Neither do you."

Why do you say I don't think that's reasonable? Nobody is disputing that Chauvin could have killed him - people are simply dismissing it. I find that dismissal unpersuasive.

Floyd died after 8/9 minutes of knee restraint. Timpa died after 14 minutes of knee restraint. I can't find any examples of people being restrained for a similarly long time and surviving. So it seems to me it's plausible the restraint caused his death. If there are examples of the restraint being safe for lengthy periods that will change my view. How quickly does fentanyl cause an overdose? If almost immediately, why didn't he die before he was restrained? Or if it took a couple of hours, why not after the ambulance arrived? The fact he seemed to become more distressed when restrained, the went unconscious, then died, in the 8/9 minutes, suggests to me the restraint was likely a significant factor.

If Carl Hart's position is correct (that we can't draw inferences from the amount of fentanyl in his blood) it seems the claims he died of an overdose were based on quack science. But if Hart is wrong and we can reasonably conclude he would have died from an overdose, isn't it still important, from a legal perspective, whether the overdose did kill him? Not only might it be the case that Chauvin did kill him, but as Chauvin didn't know he would have died from an overdose, his restraint can be construed as attempted murder.

krispy kremlin._._._._. wrote:

baa baa wool wrote:

You know what the difference is? I'm not sitting here defending Fentanyl abuse or fighting police. You are defending an officer of the state kneeling on the neck of a passed out man. How can civilians reform that?

How do you restrain a cracked-out, 220 lbs, violent criminal? How do you stop him from being a danger to you, your fellow officers, bystanders, and himself after he's moved the conflict into a busy road?

Do you want us to bring back widespread us of baton sticks? Close-range pepper spray or tear gas? Throw a bag over his head? Tie up a suspect like a hog? Joe Bidden suggests shooting people in the leg - what's your idea?

I'm not sure what you mean by "bring back widespread use of" as these methods are all quite widely used. There was quite a lot of pepper spray and batons used during the summer and some tasers too and these weapons are all used to apprehend individual criminals as well.

I don't think anyone was arguing that keeping Floyd on the ground was to protect Chauvin and his three fellow officers. At that point the argument seems to be that Chauvin was restraining Floyd to prevent him from harming himself. As earlier posters on this thread have said, he might have just started thrashing around and banging his head into the ground. Couldn't Chauvin have safely let Floyd sit up after a minute: just call for the three officers to stand behind him, tell Floyd he was going to sit him up, but warn him if he attacked, they would use pepper spray, or tasers, or hit him with batons. What's wrong with that? How would that have been unsafe? Floyd is handcuffed and they are four men with weapons. I think they can stand a few paces back, ready to use their weapons if necessary.

If you are restraining someone for their own safety (as I noted above, everyone else is safe now) and they indicate they aren't safe, shouldn't that prompt you to consider whether the restraint is the safest course of action?

Wait, you didn't like my numbered list in response to your question "why would he have knowingly taken a dose which he expected to kill him?" I was hoping you would add to that, man. But you just moved on to the next batch of speculations. I'm frowning as I type this.

I was using the 100 foot cliff as a way of illustrating the unlikelihood of an extraordinarily rare factual circumstance, but that seems to have completely escaped you. If I change the example to 500 feet, will that help? 500 feet and the light bulb comes on?

I didn’t say I’d guess knee restraints aren’t or can’t be fatal. I said I’d guess there are many cases in which they are not fatal. I base that guess on the fact that we know the police use knee restraints all the time, and you have only listed three deaths you attribute to them (Floyd, Timpa, and someone else). If knee restraints were often fatal, we would know about it.

I think it is highly unlikely that anyone survives that much fentanyl. The sources are easy to find, and include the medical examiner’s notes that you posted. The poster named “comdeyre1i3f 2” also posted a source in response to YOUR post that discusses lethal levels of fentanyl. You should go back and read it.

My point, and I really don’t understand having to explain this over and over, is that if the fentanyl killed him or even if it is likely that the fentanyl killed him – and it sure looks like it did – then it doesn’t really matter what Chauvin did. There is reasonable doubt.

That article you cited speaks for itself. I don’t know what to tell you, man. You are starting to remind me of David St. Hubbins (“I believe virtually everything I read, and it makes me a more open minded person.”)

The author, from the publication Asharq Al-Awsat, says, after pretending up front in the article that THC (marijuana) levels are what people are concerned about, that “He also had 11 nanograms of fentanyl in his blood. That number, in and of itself, doesn’t tell us much.” He’s wrong. The entire reason levels of drugs are even measured is because they tell you A LOT. 11 mg/nL of fentanyl, the most dangerous drug available in America, is a LOT. We can learn A LOT from that measurement.

I say that I don't think those scenarios are reasonable because 11mg/nL of fentanyl is fatal, whether you, Armstronglives and Asharq Al-Awsat feel like believing it or not. I say I don't think those scenarios are reasonable because it would one bizarre set of facts if a guy dying of a fatal overdose of fentanyl, which is a drug that shuts down one’s respiratory system and causes unconsciousness, also just happens, at the exact same time, to be one of the few people ever killed by a knee restraint. We are getting close to, or exceeding, the crazy cliff shooting hypothetical I provided, that unfortunately went flying over your head.

It’s fast. Rapid onset. It causes respiratory distress, then unconsciousness, then death. It’s not a couple of hours. Sources are easy to find.

Its not correct. He’s wrong. In fact, if he said that, he’s bananas or ridiculously biased. The entire reason drug levels are even measured is precisely because you can draw strong inferences from them. We wouldn’t waste time determining drug levels if there was no information to be gained from the measurement. And man, if you really believe autopsy determinations of drug levels and overdoses is “quack science” then I can’t help you any more after this post. That would be a LOT of medical examiner’s around the world practicing quack science nearly every day.

Yes, it’s very important from a legal perspective “whether the overdose did kill him.” I’d say it’s the most important issue, from a legal perspective. If it can be reasonably concluded that it did kill him – and it sure looks that way – then there is reasonable doubt as to Chauvin’s guilt.

If you are really interested, and aren’t just punking me with this weirdo speculation act, then focus on the fentanyl. Learn about the drug, what it does and how much Floyd had in his body. Then think about reasonable doubt. Don’t fly off on random speculations like you’ve been doing, just consider whether 11mg/nl of fentanyl in a person that has just ingested the drug a short time ago, and who is complaining about respiratory distress, and then falls unconscious, and then dies soon thereafter, raises reasonable doubt as to whether a knee restraint was the cause of death.

Good luck to you Boryat, in your future intellectual endeavors.

Too bad Floyd wasn't a big white guy, maybe he would have gotten this treatment:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/11/us/johnny-damon-dui-bodycam-video-spt-trnd/index.html

wow, new york times falls to new lows.

death causes fatal levels of fentanyl in blood opines some bloke at nyt.

and then claiming gf was acting rationaly????? watch the video. deranged.

What makes it tricky though is the fact that these opioid receptors exist in close proximity to the center of the brain that is responsible for regulating breathing. As a result, higher doses may deprive the body of the vital oxygen supply.

Prolonged lack of oxygen can ultimately result in serious brain damage, a condition known as hypoxia, and even death. Almost 90 percent of individuals who have experienced a fentanyl overdose are not likely to fully recover.

In most cases, deaths associated with a fentanyl overdose occur due to respiratory depression. Another fatal consequence of a fentanyl overdose is cardiac arrest, as the drug slows down the heart rate and lowers the blood pressure. [4]

If the victim was an upstanding member of society - and white - or even a little old lady, God forbid - no one would be coming forward to justify Chauvin's actions. It wouldn't matter what the victim had in their systems. But the police wouldn't see the need to "restrain" a white suspect like they did Floyd - especially a "respectable" suspect. There would be outrage from whites all over America that the police killed a person over an alleged fake 20 dollar bill. But not here. Because the victim was a black American male. He must have deserved it. That's how it's always worked in your country, hasn't it?

pupil3142 wrote:

https://www.addictionhope.com/blog/fentanyl-cause-death/

What makes it tricky though is the fact that these opioid receptors exist in close proximity to the center of the brain that is responsible for regulating breathing. As a result, higher doses may deprive the body of the vital oxygen supply.

Prolonged lack of oxygen can ultimately result in serious brain damage, a condition known as hypoxia, and even death. Almost 90 percent of individuals who have experienced a fentanyl overdose are not likely to fully recover.

In most cases, deaths associated with a fentanyl overdose occur due to respiratory depression. Another fatal consequence of a fentanyl overdose is cardiac arrest, as the drug slows down the heart rate and lowers the blood pressure. [4]

.. when Chauvin’s trial for his alleged role in Floyd’s death begins, much of the argument will center instead on the autopsy details, most specifically whether fentanyl and underlying health conditions — not the police officer’s actions — stopped Floyd’s heart and lungs.

Seven experts in toxicology, cardiology and illegal drug use consulted by The Washington Post largely disagreed with that idea, most of them strenuously. All but one said the autopsy findings and other court documents, coupled with the well-known chain of events that evening, made death by a fentanyl overdose unlikely to impossible.

“It’s just complete garbage to call it an overdose,” said Kimberly Sue, medical director of the Harm Reduction Coalition, a national advocacy group, and a Yale School of Medicine instructor. In an opioid overdose, “a person is basically blue, unresponsive. … It happens usually from the moment people use to 10 minutes.”

“From my review of the video and the autopsy report, I see nothing that makes me think he died of an opioid overdose,” said Kavita Babu, chief opioid officer and chief of the Division of Medical Toxicology at UMass Memorial Health Care in Worcester, Mass. Instead, she and others said, the defense uses events out of order and medical findings out of context to deflect blame from Chauvin to Floyd.

You didn't give the example of falling from a cliff as "a way of illustrating the unlikelihood of an extraordinarily rare factual circumstance." You gave it as an example of something "from which they will surely die."

I pointed out that the distinction between falling from a cliff or a dose of fentanyl definitely being fatal or probably being fatal is important and you resort to insults rather than acknowledging your error or clarifying your claim. Also, whenever I ask for sources, you say they are easy to find. Why not just provide them?

"It is theoretically possible to murder someone who is about to die of other causes. The example I’ve been given in the past is that if someone falls off a 100 foot cliff (from which they will surely die), and someone shoots them through the heart on the way down, that would still be an illegal homicide, despite the fact that the person would have died seconds later from the fall. The prosecution may decide to argue that Chauvin’s knee restraint was the cause of death before the drugs killed Floyd. It’s possible that could be the case, but there seems to be reasonable doubt there too. He was going to die in minutes or seconds, then Chauvin jumped in and killed him before he was going to die anyway? Seems like a stretch to me. But it could work."

You say he was going to die in minutes or seconds anyway, but this is what you have to prove - i.e. you are question-begging.

Your brainstorm fits with this assumption. If he overdosed, it is likely he was mistaken about the lethality of his drugs. But if he didn't overdose, it's likely it was a rational decision. I'm not sure there is much to add here. You then reiterate:

"Anyway, I'm not aware of any burden on the defense to show Floyd's deliberations on overdosing. They just need to show it happened. Which I think it clearly did. "

Assume for a moment the defense have shown this. Why weren't the charges against Chauvin dropped when this was shown? Why bother having a trial when the probability of a murder conviction is zero? Why not charge him for some other crime (maybe he could be guilty of assault or something)? Doesn't this lead you to consider the possibility that the defense haven't shown Floyd overdosed?

Let's say the defense are right and it's a travesty charges against Chauvin weren't dropped over the summer when his lawyers requested, due to the presence of fentanyl. But if that wasn't sufficiently persuasive (there are people who think the knee restraint was the cause of death), why not move on to arguments about the knee restraint? Similarly you seem resistant to considering this possibility.

"I didn’t say I’d guess knee restraints aren’t or can’t be fatal. I said I’d guess there are many cases in which they are not fatal."

I agree there are many cases in which they are not fatal. I asked the question whether the reason Floyd and Timpa died was because the restraint was used for so long. If not, it ought to be easy for the defense to provide examples of it being used for much longer without causing harm.

It seems fentanyl and knee restraints are dangerous, so it seems arguable that either could have caused his death. If you or the lawyers made a case that the knee restraint wasn't dangerous (whatever makes it dangerous in some cases wasn't a factor in Floyd's case) then the defense would have a much stronger case.

"My point, and I really don’t understand having to explain this over and over, is that if the fentanyl killed him or even if it is likely that the fentanyl killed him – and it sure looks like it did – then it doesn’t really matter what Chauvin did. There is reasonable doubt."

If it had been established that fentanyl killed him, why would there be a murder trial? If the legal system is so perverse that it allows a man to be tried for murder after it has been demonstrated that he couldn't possibly have survived the dose of fentanyl, why wouldn't you assume he will be found guilty, despite his obvious innocence?

tbh, i will take an article written unbiasedly well before th event over the wapo any time. the language of these two people make it clear that they are not neutral.

Plus, and get this, me old mate - i aint a doctor, but i guess old Kimberley is probably medically wrong that 'it' happens within ten minutes. Maybe if you snort it or inject it, but orally? I find orally takes around 20 minutes or more - which seems to fit well. He might have had a tab or two to keep him happy before the police, then chugged the stash in panic, leading to overdose around 15 to 30 minutes later. also explains the metabolites maybe, how would i know? Not saying i am right, just seems a reasonable direction for the defense to take to help establish reasonable doubt

Not in my hood wrote:

Let it go on the record that Armstronglivs is once again unwilling to answer a simple question.

Amazing that he/she can't admit that maybe, just maybe he/she doesn't know every details about this case.

My opinion is based on the details so far made public. But I am happy for it to "go on the record" (such a pompous pretension on a social media site) that I think you have no idea of what you are talking about.

And I'm not "he/she" or even "they" - just me.

Quite right - you aren't a doctor, so your correction of a doctor on a medical point is farcical.

The experts quoted above were not expressing the views of the WP, but were just 2 of 7 medical consulted by the paper. Their views are independent of the paper and of each other.

If the weight of the evidence is that an overdose was "next to impossible" (according to drug experts) then it is a defense stratagem set up to fail. Fanciful conjecture is not a reasonable doubt.

Oral exposure occurs in two phases. Initial exposure will occur within in a few minutes, with absorption through the intestinal tract occurring over 2 hours.

boom, headshot;

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ershdb/emergencyresponsecard_29750022.html

Would DC's lawyer be able to get information on the body weight and fentanyl level amounts found in the massive number of people who have OD'd on fentanyl and share their names and their statistics with the jurors, or is that some sort of HIPPA violation?

I would think it would be very powerful to have a scrolling of names that have died from that drug and show all those who have died with lower limits in their systems than GF. That would convince me that there was a high probability that he too had lost his life to that awful drug.

George Floyd told cops his mom just died. She’d been dead for two years. He said he’s too claustrophobic to get in the police car. He was just sitting in a car. He said he couldn’t breathe and was going to die while he was still standing.

He screamed “ow” like he was in pain when they were barely touching him. A lot of this is probably because he was high on three different drugs. But the point is that cops hear bullcrap from suspects all day every day. This can make it harder to tell when they’re being serious.

And so when he was on the ground saying he was going to die, it was no different from what he was saying while he was standing, or what he was saying in the car. The cops still may have been negligent but this is all relevant context that will make a murder charge hard to prove.

And to the reflexive “THAT DOESNT MEAN HE DESERVED TO DIE” response: stop. That’s not the argument I’m making. Try to listen to the actual argument and engage with it like an adult. I’m talking about the relative culpability of the officers. That’s all.