larry culpepper said:

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BourbonAg said:

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pdc093 said:

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aggiehawg said:

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larry culpepper said:

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aginlakeway said:

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larry culpepper said:

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aggiehawg said:

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BourbonAg said:

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I am not ready to opine either way yet but this concept of "innocent until proven guilty" only applies to the government (the prosecutor in this case). I think it is a a great concept to use in your daily life but people act like everyone in the country is supposed to use this standard.

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If one is serving as a juror in a criminal trial that is the law. You are completely wrong and misguided.

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the way I see it, in a courtroom, it's innocent until proven guilty. in the court of public opinion, it's preponderance of the evidence.

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Correct. So you then assume the cop is innocent until proven guilty then? Right?

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of course. I've said that from the get go.

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Geez! Get off of my thread and start your own.

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Get 'em, 'Hawg!

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I really messed up what I was trying to say there. I meant innocent until proven guilty only applies in criminal proceedings. It does not apply to the media, public opinion, etc. Sorry about that.

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It's true. Casey Anthony and OJ are prime examples of this. When the evidence is so strong against them but for whatever reason the prosecution fails to prove their case. But of course it's a good thing that the burden is so high in the courtroom.

It sounds like society's mind is made up about Chauvin. But I'll wait and see what happens.

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Several key facets of Martin's testimony could really only be characterized as favorable to the defense, including:

• Floyd had indeed passed a rather obviously fake counterfeit bill (after his friend had failed to pull this off in the very same store)
• Floyd appeared substantively impaired while in the store ("He did look high," as Martin put it)
• Floyd was an unusually large man (it was what made Martin take exceptional notice of Floyd in the first place)
• Floyd had refused repeated offers to simply make good on the bad bill, pay for his cigarettes with actual money, and the whole incident would be forgotten

Certainly, it's hard to imagine how any of that testimony could be characterized as favorable for the prosecution.

That said, the testimony was going to happen, so the state did its best to underplay it. While Floyd may have high, for example, he wasn't so high that he couldn't communicate verbally with enough dexterity to order cigarettes. On the other, Martin had told police investigators that Floyd's speech was noticeably delayed, and that Floyd struggled saying words like "baseball" while in conversation with Martin.

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Naturally, to the extent that Floyd was intoxicated, that state is favorable to the officers, as it would be consistent with privileging them to use a higher degree of force in the face of non-compliance than would otherwise be the case.

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On cross-examination by defense counsel Eric Nelson, Martin was obliged to re-affirm statements he'd made to police investigators that Floyd appeared to him to be intoxicated during their interaction in Cup Foods.

Nelson also had Martin affirm that the store manager carried a pistol in his back pocketthis pistol is quite clear and obvious in the surveillance video reviewed during Martin's testimonywhich undercuts the insinuation the state has made with previous witnesses that the neighborhood of Floyd's arrest was reasonably safe, and in no way high crime in nature.

Naturally, to the extent that the neighborhood could be characterized as unusually dangerous, that again would contribute to the officers' reasonable perception of the need to use perhaps more force and be more focused on the gathering angry crowd and thus distracted from care of Floyd, than would otherwise have been the caseso, again, good for the defense, rather than the prosecution.

Further, Nelson had Martin recount to investigators how he described the neighborhood around Cup Food as a "hot block," to indicate that "a lot of situations" occurred in the neighborhood. It's perhaps worth noting here that Martin not only worked at Cup Foods, he and his mother lived in an apartment immediately above the store, so he would be intimately familiar with criminal events in the immediate neighborhood.

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Nelson also managed to get Martin to describe how he physically restrained another bystander witness who was apparently sufficiently heated and angry to require physical restraint. This undercuts the state's claimsand the claims of the same sort by the state's witnessesthat the crowd was in no way conducting itself in a manner the officers might reasonably perceive as threatening.

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First, at one point, for example, the prosecution is rolling body camera footage showing the officers moving towards Floyd laying on the ground, as they position themselves to do a full-body restraint, and Floyd deliberately kicks out at the officers with both legs. It was this conduct that led to the officers sending Thau to look for ankle hobbles, and why they were so determined to restrain Floyd's legs from that point forward.

Second, while being questioned by Prosecutor Eldridge, McMillian was asked how Floyd appeared to him while being restrained, with Chauvin's knee on Floyd's neck. I expect Eldridge was hoping for a reply along the lines of "he looked like he was being killed."

Instead, what Eldridge got was McMillian stating that Floyd had foam running out of his mouth. A perhaps stunned Eldridge responded with, "Foam in his mouth?" and McMillian immediately affirmed, "Yes, foam in and out of his mouth."

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In particular, the defense wanted to admit into evidence fuller-length versions of the body camera and city surveillance camera footage than the state had offered into evidence.

Further, the defense wanted that video introduced in such a manner that it could be manipulated by the MPDs own software systems, which allowed for a zoom and pan ability not equaled in the versions the state had offered.

Nelson offered his version of the videos to Cahill for review. The state had no objection to the video on foundational groundshow could they, they just conducted a very lengthy direct questioning of Rugel precisely to establish foundationbut did say there would likely be admissibility objections later.

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Why would the prosecution want to object to the admissibility of the video gathered by the body and surveillance cameras owned and controlled by the Minneapolis Police Department itself? Good question. Things that make you go, hmmmmm.

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