George Floyd's murder and racism

[tango]

Suffice it to say, I'm not convinced that the possibility of civil unrest factored in when assessing the charges against Chauvin--especially given the BLM atmosphere and George Floyd being so central to it. (You yourself questioned whether the evidence was commensurate with the charges against him).

And this should worry us. Again, a trial is supposed to determine guilt by the weight of the evidence, not come to a politically expedient decision.

Like the current Trump trial. Nothing political about going after the GOP's front-runner, right? It's all about justice.

Except in 2016 it seems the decision was made not to pursue Hillary in order to avoid influencing the election.

[Fenris]

So i'd like to go back to this, which was appearently the basis for your opinion. It is clear that you didn't know that what Chauvin was charged with and you were not aware of the relevant minnesota statutes.


and
I guess, I'd call it doing the basic amount of work to inform my opinion, which you obviously did not do.

I am once again baffled by your inability to disagree without being disagreeable. If you're interesting in having a discussion withe me, please at least make an attempt to be civil. Thank you.

Now as to the specifics, I wasn't aware that he was charged with felony murder. This is connected to your next comment, below-

Weirdly, Chauvin isn't charged with assault 3. Which is unhelpful.

Is that weird?

Yes, it's weird. Because he's being charged with murder in the commission of another crime, in this case an assault. But he's not charged with the assault itself.

What are you basing this weird characterization on, if its like your initial opinion i'd say it's based on your misguided belief that you know what you are talking about without doing the bare minimum verification work.

I have 20 years of relevant experience in the field. Again, please stop with the insults if you want to continue this discussion.

[Oscar_Kipling]

So i'd like to go back to this, which was appearently the basis for your opinion. It is clear that you didn't know that what Chauvin was charged with and you were not aware of the relevant minnesota statutes.


and
I guess, I'd call it doing the basic amount of work to inform my opinion, which you obviously did not do.

I am once again baffled by your inability to disagree without being disagreeable. If you're interesting in having a discussion withe me, please at least make an attempt to be civil. Thank you.

Now as to the specifics, I wasn't aware that he was charged with felony murder. This is connected to your next comment, below-

Weirdly, Chauvin isn't charged with assault 3. Which is unhelpful.

Is that weird?

Yes, it's weird. Because he's being charged with murder in the commission of another crime, in this case an assault. But he's not charged with the assault itself.

What are you basing this weird characterization on, if its like your initial opinion i'd say it's based on your misguided belief that you know what you are talking about without doing the bare minimum verification work.

I have 20 years of relevant experience in the field. Again, please stop with the insults if you want to continue this discussion.

I regret that you felt insulted, I was just expressing my observations regarding the apparent efforts or lack thereof that you took to inform your opinions, conclusions and arguments. I believe that you do have 20 years of expirience in the field, and I have no wish to diminish that fact, however based on the actual content of our discussion it is evident that your expirience did not impart you with knowledge of basic and critical facts regarding the subjects that we were discussing, and imo only served to provide you with an unjustified sense of confidence in an awareness of facts that you did not actually have. Perhaps it was unfair of me to hold you to a standard of fact checking that I would expect from myself because my expectation that information of the kind that we were discussing will be trivially easy to access is not necessarily something that is second nature to you.

Having said that, it could also be the case that I was unconsciously harsher than I needed to be because just as some of my arguments in the Antisemitism thread were provocative to you because they were reminiscent enough of the arguments that racists make in order to denigrate, marginalize, demonize and/or damage the credibility of jewish people, your argument regarding this case shares some aspects with arguments used by racists to similarly damage the black community. To be honest it is hard for me to tell if I was particularly harsh due to the emotional load of the subject matter or not, but I do not doubt that it is possible..


Anyway, back to the meat and potatoes. On a cursory search I found only 2 other cases and neither had the underlying felony as an additional charge, so I took that to mean that there was nothing unlikely about this manner of charging. Regardless, it isn't super important to me that we find common ground on the weirdness of how minnesota charges the underlying felony in second degree unintentional murder as I think it's ancillary really. As I understand it, you felt that the charges were unwarranted and that the jury's verdict was an inexplicable injustice based on your understanding of the evidence. Please pardon my incredulity regarding the thoroughness of your review of the evidence given the trajectory of our conversation, but even so upon considering the charges and relevant statutes that you are now aware of do you still hold to this conclusion?

Finally, whether or not your opinion has evolved with this new information, I am curious about how this all looks to you internally. Quite a few years ago I was out at the reservoir with some friends flying my new drones, my friend ended up crashing my (really cool and expensive) drone into the water because she saw a snake and was reasonably distracted from the controls by the shock of it. To calm her, I told her that there were no venomous snakes in the state that we were currently in. My other friend looked at me like I was insane and said "That doesn't sound true at all"...nevertheless I persisted because I was certain that I had read that fact and that I too was initially incredulous of it so I double checked with other sources. Seconds later we all had our phones out, and as it turns out I was completely and spectacularly wrong even though I had the memory of not only reading this fact, but not believing it initially and checking other sources, obviously I hadn't...I was sad about my lost drone for a few days, but i'm still devastated about my venomous snake assertion to this day (you may think i'm exaggerating, but the shame and embarrassment is as fresh as it ever was right now upon just remembering it), it changed me. Anyway all that to ask, have you thought about why you believed that you knew things about the case that you did not actually know, and how has this affected you if at all?



 

[Fenris]

I regret that you felt insulted

You regret my reaction to your words but not what you said?

Yup, another conversation with you I'll be bowing out of.

Have a great day.

[Oscar_Kipling]

I regret that you felt insulted

You regret my reaction to your words but not what you said?

Yup, another conversation with you I'll be bowing out of.

Have a great day.

I was wagering that you were actually okay with regretting that circumstances caused someone pain without regretting the actions that caused the pain, as it turns out, not really. Anyway that's a shame, I really do wish that you were not too insulted to continue, because I really was curious about how learning that the basis of your opinion was erroneous had affected your opinion. I guess I'll just have to wait to see if your behavior or opinions seem to have evolved based on future interactions...which I suppose is what I was going to do anyway, but man it's so rare to actually get first hand commentary from a person confronted with their ignorance essentially in real time, I would have really liked that. I hope you have a good day too.

[DavidGYoung]

Oh, surprise surprise!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67722479

For the first time, we now know that this story is of a black child shooting a white teacher.
Can you imagine how this story would have been reported if the colours had been swapped?

[tango]

Oh, surprise surprise!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67722479

For the first time, we now know that this story is of a black child shooting a white teacher.
Can you imagine how this story would have been reported if the colours had been swapped?

The howling would have been far louder than this, and you can be sure race would have been a dominant factor in all of the howlings.

[Sojourner]

Sadly, race is often a factor in mainstream news reporting, almost always mentioned in reports of white-on-black crimes, but frequently omitted in black-on-white crime. Another example: in South Carolina in 2007, a young white couple--Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom--was kidnapped, raped and tortured before being murdered by a group of blacks. The ordeal endured by the female was particularly horrific. News agencies at the time were sharply criticized for downplaying the story due to potential backlash from the black community for "perpetuating a stereotype." Had the roles been reversed, there would have been a media frenzy, and Revs. Jesse and Al would have called a press conference to express their outrage.

Everyone's familiar with the Trayvon Martin incident, which quickly became international news. But I bet you never heard of Bob and Nancy Strait. Less than two weeks after Trayvon Martin instantly became a household name, 20 year-old Tyrone Woodfork broke into the home of the elderly white couple from Tulsa, and not only robbed them but beat and sexually assaulted the 85 year-old Nancy, who died 2 days later, and savagely beat 90 year-old Bob, shooting him in the face with his own pellet gun. The D-Day veteran was hospitalized due to his injuries, and died a few months later. So, why was Trayvon sensational world news, yet coverage of the Straits' ordeal (outside of Fox news), was limited to local Tulsa news stations?

The news media generally deems race more relevant in white-on-black crime than when the roles are reversed, and it's unfortunate that such a distinction is a even a factor when choosing which stories are newsworthy. But I suppose that speaks to the era of political correctness we live in.

[Rebecca]

Floyd chose to use drugs , his body his choice, . The title of this thread assumes Floyd was murdered. Was he?  Or did he die of his drug use. Nothing about the whole case is/was justus. USA is now a nation of mob rule.

[IMINXTC]

Floyd was killed by Chauvin's illegal
placing of his knee on the victim's neck and refusing to move it after pleas for mercy.

Drugs: irrelevant. Race: irrelevant.

A jury convicted Chauvin of murder.

[RabbiKnife]

I agree that race is irrelevant in the Chauvin conviction

Drug status in Floyd is certainly relevant to the charges and conviction

[DavidGYoung]

The due process of the courts found that drug use played no significant role in the death of George Floyd.

That is one of the few noteworthy differences between his death and that of Tony Timpa, although the similarities were more significant.

[RabbiKnife]

The criminal justice system is not just, but it is certainly criminal.

Unfortunately, it's the best we've got.

[Rebecca]

I agree that race is irrelevant in the Chauvin conviction

Drug status in Floyd is certainly relevant to the charges and conviction

Race was not irrelevant Chauvin was convicted because of Floyd' race.

[RabbiKnife]

No
He was convicted because he’s stupid and the justice system is broken