With regular people if a person is killed during a felony they are all charged with murder,should be the same with cops imo.
'I can't breathe:' Death of unarmed black man George Floyd leads to firing of white police officers
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With regular people if a person is killed during a felony they are all charged with murder,should be the same with cops imo.
First, there was no felony committed in arresting the guy. Felony murder is murder committed during another felony commission like rape or robbery. Arresting someone is not a felony.
The question is the murder charges in the State of Minn for the cop who kneeled on him.
1st degree murder is out.
2nd degree murder is out.
3rd degree murder is pretty close but might have tough time getting to requisite elements.
Voluntary manslaughter is out here as well given intent factor.
So we are left with INVOLUNTARY MANSLAUGHTER which usually refers to an unintentional killing that results from criminal negligence or recklessness. This fits the bill really well for the kneeling officer.
What about the 3 cops standing around. I think the best they can be charged with is INVOLUNTARY MANSLAUGHTER but they get off. They had no shared intent to kill George, they can easily prove they did not believe the actions were going to result in death. You would have to prove they were negligent in not stopping the officer but then you would have to really prove beyond a reasonable doubt they knew it woudl end badly. Otherwise defense attorneys for the other 2 or 3 would really beat down the charge and it would be hard to get something like that to stick.
So I suspect the other 2 or 3 will be pleaded out to some lesser charge in exchange for testimony to charge the main officer of INVOL. MANSLAUGHTER.
All 4 do subject the police department to a civil lawsuit where the threshold to prove negligence is much lower than criminal negligence and it will be settled out rather fast.
There was a felony in torturing and murdering the guy and 3 cops stood by and let it happen.
And thats the problem and thats why these incidents will continue and only get worse.
In another state cops bursts into an innocent womens apartment and murdered her,charged her boyfriend with attempted murder while the cops aren't facing any charges
It cannot be about emotion, it has about the law.
The act they were committing was an arrest. So felony murder is not a proper charge and if they do go that route, I can take a law student to defend the cops and he will get them off because you can only convict if you meed the charge threshold requirements and they would not. DAs are smarter than that to simply throw a serious charge to appease the masses that would lose in court.
They did it recklessly and negligently that cuased his death, you will never be able to prove they intended to kill him. So the only real charge available is Involuuntary Manslaughter for the kneeler and the others might be tougher.
Well the issue is police officers have a certain level of authority to use force. Therefore when they use it inappropiately in a situation that leads to death and there is no video camera, it becomes a clouded mess of facts that makes it harder for a DA to get there.
If I recall the cops who burst in were at the wrong address and the guy they were looking for was already in custody. I think there was so much negligence before they even kicked in the door, the criminal action is already established.
The real problem is negligence that leads to death is harder to establish criminal culpability while it is often easy to establish civil negligence penalties. Police will always have the argument about life and death situations and fearing for life to fall back on in response to seeing someone in the dark or someone "resisting arrest". This is where the lack of training and proper rules and regulations creates the problem.
As horrible as it is what happened, it might be the result of 1 or 2 out of hundreds of arrests daily so the law is not set up to really address these issues. Police have implied authority in many situations unfortunately to circumvent laws we are forced to follow in order to due their jobs. When the line is crossed and someone is killed, it becomes a shit show to prove criminal mens rea to get a conviction.
I think the laws should be reviewed to see how to address this.
Use of excessive and unnecessary force should be enough to arrest and detain the officers. They should charge them of that and being accessories for the others. Just saw a video from the opposite angle. It turns out 3 of the officers were on top of this guy, George Floyd. So, the fact that Officer Chauvin put his knee on his neck, totally unnecessary and excessive use of force. The two officers beside him to his right, did not stop him nor the officer standing over all of them.
Do you have a link to the video from the other angle? I have not seen it yet. Thanks.
This is I believe the video showing the opposite angle. Makes it clearer where all 4 officers are positioned.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/video-appears-show-george-floyd-045549101.html