There is a curious belief that there is some duty on the part of the court to make trials available for all to see from the comfort of their couch, as if this lends legitimacy to a trial that wouldn’t otherwise be tolerable if unless every person who wanted to watch had complete access at their fingertips. It’s not about the case, or even the defendant, but about you, random watcher, and your entitlement. Strange days, indeed.
But without detached explanation, do people understand what they’re watching? The prosecution called the teenage clerk at the store where Floyd passed the counterfeit $20 to testify. While the testimony is proper and necessary as background for what followed, that wasn’t the part that’s being emphasized.
At the counter, Mr. Floyd can be seen offering the teenage clerk, Christopher Martin, a $20 bill in exchange for a pack of cigarettes. Mr. Martin said he quickly realized the bill was counterfeit; the blue pigmentation gave it away, he testified. For one brief moment, Mr. Martin thought to let it go and put it on his own tab — the store’s policy was that fake money would be deducted from the paycheck of the employee who accepted it, he said. But then he changed his mind.
Why would a teenager eat the loss for the sake of some random guy passing a counterfeit bill? Makes no sense, but then the testimony comes after the fact of Floyd’s death, so it’s colored and reimagined in that light.
Mr. Martin became emotional in court when shown surveillance video of him standing outside the store, clutching his head as Mr. Chauvin knelt on Mr. Floyd’s neck.
“Disbelief and guilt,” he said of what he thought at that moment. “If I would have just not taken the bill, this could have been avoided.”
That Martin feels guilt about a death that he, in part, set in motion is understandable, but what relevance does this have to the case? It’s emotional. It’s inflammatory. It’s utterly irrelevant to the question of whether Chauvin committed a crime. And here’s the kicker: the case is still in the background phase. There has not, as yet, been any evidence offered to show that a crime was committed or that Chauvin committed it. Minor details, like cause of death, remain an unknown at this point, even if we do know the pain and regret of a store clerk.
But there is method to this madness. The problem is that people watching the trial, and reporters writing about it, don’t get what’s happening or why. Even inexperienced lawyers, or those too caught up in the outcome to step back and take a detached look, seem unable to figure it out.
I wonder if this will play as well to the jury as it does on twitter.
I suspect not. https://t.co/a1JjTYJPS4
— Scott Greenfield (@ScottGreenfield) March 31, 2021
From the prosecution’s perspective, the first few witnesses are primarily offered to inflame passions. This could be because they want to win the trial, but the fact that this trial is being televised likely explains the strategy better. They’re playing to the public, because these witnesses establish no fact necessary for conviction. Even worse, they may tend to help the defense more.
On cross, Williams was evasive, belligerent and dishonest. Of course he was angry. “I was being professional” is going to come back to haunt him in summation, because it’s nonsense. But as much as Williams’ testimony contributed little for the prosecution beyond feeding the public desire for melodrama, it assists the defense in establishing that while the four cops, including Chauvin, were atop Chauvin to restrain him, their attention was divided between Floyd and screaming, angry bystanders.
The point isn’t that Williams said mean things to police who were busy killing a guy, boo hoo. The point is that the police who were restraining a guy had to concern themselves with a growing mob of onlookers, including this increasingly agitated martial arts instructor, Williams, screaming obscenities at the cops. Would he lose it and attack the cops? How would they know, but they had to be ready because it could happen. What that means is that the crowd’s actions contributed to their lack of focus on Floyd. What that means is the prosecution gave them their witness to prove this point. And Williams did exactly that.
And one additional detail that appears to elude most watchers. Cops restraining a guy, even with a knee on a neck, happens all the time without incident. Whether it should isn’t the question, but that it’s hardly unusual is an important point that will certainly be established by the defense when it puts on its case. The witnesses’ feelings on what happened, as well as the observations of most people watching, is to indulge in a logical fallacy. At the time they’re watching Chauvin and the other cops pinning Floyd to the ground, nobody knew he would die as yet. What happened later, that Floyd died, might be known now, but Williams didn’t know that at the time he was screaming at the cops.
It might be snarky to react, “Oh look, Williams was being mean to cops while they were murdering,” but what does that contribute to the public understanding of what they’re seeing? None of this is to suggest that the cross was particularly well done or that the strategy will be effective. There’s plenty of trial to come. But what’s clear is that the public would rather argue the point than understand what’s happening and why, and lawyers are either arguing their motivated ignorance, or they lack the ability to understand trial tactics, to contribute to the public’s ignorance.
Chauvin won’t be convicted by twitter jury. It’s understandable that so many baby lawyers want to play to the emotions of their passionate pals on social media, who only want to hear how guilty Chauvin is and how terrible the defense of this killer cop is. If that’s what televising trials is going to produce, then it fails miserably to serve its purpose in making people understand the law and trials, and instead is just another soap opera to vent emotions and validate one’s priors.
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SHG,
While you are correct on much of what you have written in your post, I still hold out hope that some of the TV-watching public will learn and internalize what real criminal trials look like. I acknowledge that my point may give too much credit to the viewing public. That said, any sensible lay person will see that a criminal jury trial is a long, tedious, rule-driven proceeding overseen and participated in by fallible people and quite different than that seen in the TV melodramas.
For example, the off-duty firefighter-EMT who had a penchant for sticking it to Chavin by volunteering unresponsive answers on cross was called down by the trial judge for her over eager attempt to help the prosecution and thereby damned her credibility. Instead of being seen as a “Good Samaritan” she came off, at least to me, as an avenger.
As a further example, causation is likely to be hotly disputed and especially fact intensive given the Minn. coroner who did the autopsy will say, in effect, that Chavin didn’t kill Floyd. Floyd was a drug addled guy with a bad ticker who decided to fight off the cops when they tried to put him in the squad car. Floyd killed himself, not through lack of oxygen but by his own exertions, so will imply the defense in hushed tones. If carefully followed, the viewing public will learn how exquisitely complex a criminal jury trial can be when the rubber hits the road on the cause of death.
In short, once you have viewed sausage being made one seldom looks at the meat in the same way as before. Here’s hoping that the televised Chauvin jury trial will serve as a cautionary tale to sensible members of the public.
All the best.
RGK
On social media, the EMT was a hero for her efforts, and the judge and defense lawyer were villains for trying to silence her “truth.” I fear that the ability to watch the sausage being made from a detached perspective is not a serious possibility.
For sensible members of the general public, perhaps. I’d like to gather all these sensible laymen together in one place so I can get to know them, maybe we can rent out a phone booth for that purpose?
I wonder whether I, having decided that the gov’t failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, would vote to acquit, knowing that the outcome of that vote would instantly be beamed around America and lead to new riots, untold millions in damage to people’s livelihoods, probably some deaths. Could the defense rely on me to stand firm? Do the nice progressives expressing their shock that Chauvin’s getting a trial at all grasp that their every outrage tweet helps bury the jury – and not just this jury?
I’m generally in favor of cameras in the courtroom, as a transparency measure. European governments like to hide politically sensitive trials away, lest public opinion develop in the wrong direction. But it’s hard to escape the conclusion than in trials like this one, cameras help replace the jury with the mob.
Most jurors try their best to focus on the trial before them, render a sincere verdict and not be influenced by outside considerations. One of the things lawyers find, much to our amazement, is that no matter how right or wrong jurors are, they try their best to do their job.
Good! Here’s hoping.
I’ll back that up. I’ve been on two juries, one civil (child custody, which is the worst) and one criminal.
In both cases, despite serious disagreement over one aspect of one of the cases, everybody in the room was trying their best in good faith to come to a reasonable outcome.
Whether that’ll hold up in a politically charged case like this I don’t know.
It would be a very brave juror that votes to acquit, despite the evidence. I know jury deliberations are secret, along with the ballot, but you have to believe that anyone not voting for life plus cancer is going to get outed to the media and their life is over. Who could live with that outcome?
That’s probably the most serious threat, being outed to the mob as the juror(s) who voted to acquit if there’s a hung jury.
Interesting that the first sentence in your comment already assumes that all the evidence yet to be presented will automatically lead to a guilty verdict and that an acquittal vote is automatically a wrong vote this early into the process.
Based on the discussions I am seeing on the Court TV site, a lot of viewers aren’t understanding televised events very well. The media is mainly hyping the emotionalism, and the defense is letting in a ton of irrelevant commentary from the witnesses without objection. It probably wouldn’t be any better if the cameras weren’t there. The media reporting would likely be about the same, except they would interview the tearful witnesses about their personal traumas outside the courtroom.
You may be right, but I still think the impact of seeing it happen makes people believe they now “know” how trials work.
I think the televising is primarily at the judge’s urging, so people will see everything that comes in during 4 weeks of this, and perhaps be more accepting of how the jury ultimately sorts it out.
For many people the trial is very emotionally charged, and I don’t think those would get much out of televising it – nothing that they don’t already get by lapping up the daily twitter schlock about the case. But I think there’s a sizeable group, maybe even a majority, who are only interested in the trial because of the riots, the media attention and the controversy. For those, I think it would be a fascinating and rather unique look into what happens in a courtroom. I still remember how thought provoking watching the Jodi Arias murder trial was, and I think that’s what hooked me into reading law blogs.
You just don’t get the same kind of forceful yet courteous confrontation out in “the real world” – that usually devolves into a shouting match and sometimes even violence. You also don’t get to appreciate the complexity of the factual pattern, when all you’re used to is just bite-sizes hot takes from social media. I think it will be a good thing overall, even with the prosecution and defense playing it up for the cameras. I don’t think watching one trial will make people think they “know how the courts work”, at least not significantly more than they already did – armchair lawyers are already dime a dozen.
Being abstractly fair, even to the point of putting their fears of huge riots following an acquittal out of their minds, might be possible for some jurors, but what about the fear their own city, Minneapolis, will burn?
A big national case in my backyard, the trial of subway policeman Johannes Mehserle for killing Oscar Grant, was moved out of the area,, but the local DA’s office continued the prosecution, claiming they were unbiased. It came to light, soon before the verdict, in anticipation of possible acquittal, the DA’s office had made extensive provisions for security to protect it’s staff – not the trial attorneys, all it’s staff – from attack by people unhappy about a Not Guilty verdict.
Of course, at all phases of the matter, the DA insisted she was completely impartial in all her decision making -so she anticipated physical harm coming to her staff if things did not go as the feared mob hoped they would – – but it did not effect her decision making at all – I guess her staff should admire their boss for not taking their safety too personally?
There are any number of possibilities, and that’s one of them.
How do I say this as kindly as possible? Here goes. A young (but not really young anymore) lawyer whom you’re very close to twitted this:
He got a few hundred “likes” on twitter for his effort. Does he really not grasp what Nelson was doing or was he playing to the woke lawyers on twitter?
I saw and wish I had a good answer. It is disturbing to me.
I know what my answer would be, but it’s not what I could call a “good” answer.
O. J. Was guilty but got off.
Chauvin is innocent but will get convicted.
Two sides of the same coin.
Don’t do that here. That’s what reddit is for.
An unnerving bulk of the commentary I’ve seen so far, including from very well educated people who should know a lot better, is along the lines of “We’re having to sit through all of this, listening to judges and lawyers victim-blame, but George Floyd didn’t even get a trial. How is that fair?”
This is a blood money, blood feud conception of justice. “You take one of ours, we get one of yours.” Seems like the only thing televising this trial is doing is making people angry that we even have a legal system.