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Is This Any Way to Run a Railroading?

A report in Legal Insurrection [1] this evening, all things being equal, should bring a lot of the arguments to a halt:

George Floyd Autopsy: “no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation”

..
So this case about the knee to the neck may not be a criminal trial about the knee to the neck. A lot of people aren’t going to want to hear that.

Yeah no kidding. In fact, without that, there is no basis for a murder charge as far as I can see. Nor is there a basis for the charge of manslaughter. Sorry, there just isn’t.

Bill Jacobson says, and correctly…

I’ve not commented so far, because I’ve learned from covering numerous prior cases to wait for the evidence to come in before discussing criminal culpability. From what I’ve seen so far, it’s hard to understand or justify the actions of the police in pinning Floyd down for so long, or of putting a knee to the neck.
But criminal liability would require a causation element — that the conduct of the police caused the death.

Exactly so, and hallelujah that somebody actually recognized this. In fact, I speculate that it might explain why charges were so slow in forthcoming. This is going to be an important case too, in the idea that the video evidence didn’t tell the whole story.

Jacobson’s point about waiting for the evidence, also tends to play large here. I’ve seen an awful lot of people, including people I respect and who ought to know better, jumping all over this with both feet. They would have been far better off as with the rest of the country in sitting back and waiting for this thing to play out.

Meanwhile, there was a shooting involving the police the other night in Geneseo New York. The (Caucasian) suspect in that case was also actively resisting arrest. Should I be surprised if there isn’t any rioting surrounding that incident? I mean based on what I have found the guy was something of a kook, but isn’t that kind of beside the point in a free country?