Whether they will or not is a different question, of course.
If Minneapolis had no “duty to intervene” my guess is that the other cops get off and Chauvin is the only one held accountable.
Would love to be wrong about that.
My rough understanding is that if guilty, it’s generally a bad idea for the defendant to take the stand. The judge explicitly tells the jury they can’t use the fact that they didn’t take the stand as any evidence.
I’m not sure if they can or not, but yes it’s the other officer trial I was referring to. You obviously can’t be force for testify in your own case or if your testimony can incriminate you in another case. But being convicted I don’t think they can force him to testify but they can ask him, possibly in exchange for lighter sentence or some other quid pro quo,
Do you think that’s on the table? My guess would be that it’s not. Prosecutors frequently offer those kinds of packages as part of a plea deal, but Chavin has already been convicted, and now his sentencing is entirely in the hands of the judge. I wouldn’t think they would be making a trade in this scenario, but again, IANAL.
I think they can issue a subpoena and he is compelled to show (and if he’s in prison it’s pretty easy to physically force him to show).
The quid pro quo would be getting him to say what needs to be said to garner convictions for the other officers.
How much weight his testimony would actually carry… that I’m not sure of.
They will probably let him be sentenced first and then seek a deal to reduce the sentence… if they think his testimony is sufficiently valuable in bringing down the other officers.
My guess is that the public is probably NOT especially supportive of reducing his sentence though, and this would be a really risky strategy. Better to let the other officers skate and at least have the big fish frying if you’re a DA who wants to be re-elected.
Are you sure they can do that? I’ve never heard of a judge sentencing someone, only to then later revisit the case and reduce the sentencing. Judge rulings are usually pretty final except for appeals.
I mean it happens on Law & Order like every other episode and if it’s on TV it must be true.
In all seriousness, yes, I’m fairly certain that if the DA and the convict mutually agree to a sentence reduction those are almost universally allowed. I think it does have to go before a judge but in most cases it’s a rubber stamp hearing that takes like 90 seconds.
Of course if ever there was a case where it wouldn’t be quickly rubber-stamped, it would be one that received international attention and might see the judge at the receiving end of a lynch mob.
So honestly I’d be slightly surprised if it happens in this particular case. But legally I’m pretty sure it’s allowed.
Method 2 seems to address this:
Seems that you are right. I couldn’t make it through the whole page, though, as that page is clearly intended for people who are currently in prison to read, and it just made me more and more depressed the more I read it.
From what I’ve heard, some the other officers are trainees. Intervening might not have been a bad choice.
That’s because 100% of white supremacists believe that he was wrongfully convicted.
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How will he help bring down the others? Is he going to say I was waiting for someone to tell me to stop and no one did so it’s their fault?
That’s why I wrote:
I guess maybe he could testify that since no one was stopping him, he assumed that the other cops were in agreement with his actions.
YankeeTripper was the one who initially brought it up though. Guessing that’s what he was thinking, but he can clarify.
Hillary’s deplorables?
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The line I heard on this was that there was skepticism around the trial being fair as the jury could not possibly not consider the violence that might occur with a not guilty verdict.
I saw a really good article recently about police and the trauma that comes with the job. Basically, they are not trained and given the resources to deal with job-related trauma and so you have trauma-affected officers patrolling trauma-affected neighborhoods and it’s a recipe for disaster.
But now I can’t find it. Anyone else see it?
That is the line that the the conservative media has been pushing since the moment he was charged.
This is more and more proof of how Fox News and the like are rotting the brains of the republican party.
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There is indeed a lot of trauma.
My ex had a case where the husband of a gay couple chopped off the other husband’s and his daughter’s heads.
Though, every cop that I’ve met seemed perfectly normal. I think they’re either desensitized, or just immune, or are suppressing it.
Then again, I faint at the sight of blood and gore, so I can’t really be a doctor either.
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