During my time as a deputy sheriff for San Diego County, California, during the mid-1980s, I saw quite a few restraints applied by San Diego police officers, California Highway patrolmen (I never knew a patrolwoman), and sheriff's deputies to suspects resisting arrest, and no deaths from the proper application of those restraints resulted from their proper use.
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Derrick Chauvin: The Sacrificial Lamb Thrown to the Ravenous Wolves by a Derelict Judge
On learning that 19 year Minneapolis Police officer Derrick Chauvin was accused of murdering resisting criminal suspect George Floyd by the misuse of an approved arrest and control restraint, I began intricately researching the incident to ferret out the salient and cogent facts.
After examining the effect of the reporting of the liberal media on the racial overtones of Floyd's death, I had immediately surmised that had Floyd been a white man in the exact same set of circumstances, the media would have found no interest, whatsoever, in the death of a white man from police restraint while resisting arrest.
The first three weeks after Floyd's death and autopsy, during which the media accused Office Chauvin of causing the death of Floyd from affixation by using a departmentally-approved shoulder-neck knee restraint, resulted in false accusations to be leveled against Chauvin, that he had cut-off the air to Floyd by the application of the knee restraint, and that the restraint alone, applied for nine minutes, was the cause of Floyd's death.
That gave the media enough time to produce headlines to bias and prejudice the minds of most of the people of Minneapolis as to the guilt of Officer Chauvin for “murdering” George Floyd.
By the time the sixth week had elapsed in the criminal pretrial discovery process, enough credible evidence had been adduced by Chauvin's defense team from Floyd's forensic autopsy and toxicity-screen to indicate that the “but for” premise for lack of criminal culpability would apply to the actions of Chauvin and the physical condition of Floyd prior to his death.
Simply put, but for the lethal level of illegal drugs in Floyd's body and the severe physical condition that Floyd was in prior to his death, the nine-minute knee restrain applied by Officer Chauvin would not have caused the death of George Floyd.
As such, the criminal culpability, or guilt, of Officer Chauvin was essentially negated, as Chauvin acted as he would have with any other suspect, of any race, who would have been resisting arrest prior to the application of the knee restraint.
He, therefore, could not be accused of first-degree murder, second-degree murder, third-degree murder, or manslaughter since he had applied the departmentally approved knee-restraint for nine minutes without causing the death of George Floyd.
The exculpatory fact that Floyd claimed to have difficulty breathing fifteen minutes prior to the application by Chauvin of the knee-restraint, made it crystal-clear that Chauvin's knee-restraint had not caused the breathing difficulty, and that the officers would not have necessarily believed Floyd's resisting complaints, since it is a proven fact that criminal suspects will say anything to cause police to go easy on them.
Then entered the politically motivated Minnesota judge, Peter A. Cahill, who very improperly allowed the Derrick Chauvin trial to be televised, and began to egregiously and inexorably stack the scales of justice against Derrick Chauvin with bias and prejudice.
In effect, Cahill made it impossible for Chauvin to receive a fair trial through his intentional acts. A second-year law school student would have clearly recognized that what Cahill was doing to allow Chauvin to be charged with second-degree and third-degree murder was totally improper and that the elements of those crimes did not fit what Chauvin had actually done.
Cahill had to appease the hungry wolves threatening severe violence on the streets of Minneapolis if Chauvin were acquitted.
I'll put it this way, if recently appointed SCOTUS Justice Amy C. Barrett had been chosen to preside over the trial, she would have done things in a completely different manner, and she would have granted the defense request for a change of venue and would have sequestered the jury from the start of the trial.
She would have sought justice for Derrick Chauvin and not political and racial appeasement for the black mobs of Minneapolis. Finally, if Barrett had been in charge, there is certainly no doubt that she would have declared a mistrial based on what the very stupid Maxine Waters did to invoke violence on the Minneapolis streets if Chauvin were acquitted.
The old American aphorism advanced by such dedicated attorneys and judges as Clarence Darrow and the Honorable Learned Hand, “It's better that twelve guilty defendants go free than one innocent defendant falsely convicted,” does not apply in the grossly unjust conviction of Derrick Chauvin.
There is no doubt that if a Minnesota appeals court does not reverse the Chauvin conviction and order, either, an acquittal, or an unprejudiced new trial in another venue than Minneapolis based upon the egregious errors of law allowed by Judge Cahill, the standard of justice in the State of Minnesota will be forever tarnished.
