The members of the jury declared that Derek Chauvin was guilty of murdering George Floyd. Could any different verdict have been expected? The case was clear. After all, everyone saw that the police officer was kneeling on the detainee’s neck and he died.
One can ask, however, whether the culprit wanted to murder the victim, as that would’ve been direct intent. He probably did not want to murder Floyd. Did he at least, not directly wanting to cause death, have an awareness of the possibility of causing it, and did he accept the potential consequences of his actions, so-called oblique intent? He probably also did not.
The case looks more like unintentional guilt, which appears in two ways: as recklessness — when the culprit is aware that their behavior may lead to someone’s death but has some baseless hope that it will not happen — or as negligence — when the culprit did not foresee the possibility of causing the death of the victim, although they could and should have foreseen it.
Personally, I believe that this was negligence; but what was a fairly simple case became a political one, and therefore, it stopped being simple.
Twenty-six years ago, O.J. Simpson, the star of American football and later a famous actor, was declared innocent of his wife’s murder. Simpson was an African American (like Floyd) and his wife was white (like Chauvin and the police officers who conducted the investigation). Simpson’s wife was stabbed multiple times; the guilt was intentional.
Simpson had previously physically assaulted his wife, his DNA was found at the crime scene, and the victim’s blood was found in his car. He was acquitted because the police officers were made out to be “racists” and also because three years earlier, four white police officers had been acquitted of charges of assaulting African American Rodney King.
Carrie Bess, a member of the jury in Simpson’s case, admitted years later that this had been “retaliation.” Retaliation for many unjust verdicts in cases in which African Americans were the victims and white Americans were the perpetrators. In the case of Rodney King, the jury was comprised of mostly white people, while in Simpson’s case, they were in the minority.
This is “racial justice,” almost like “social justice” in communist doctrine.
Not much has changed in America. All of “progressive America” awaited Chauvin’s sentence (because it is hard to call it a verdict) and has now reached borderline ecstasy. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi thanked George Floyd for “sacrificing his life in the name of justice.” Really?!
Elon Musk will not have to bother sending a rocket to Mars. Some are clearly already flying there on their own.
Title image: Demonstrators gather outside Cup Foods to celebrate the murder conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the killing of George Floyd, Tuesday, April 20, 2021, in Minneapolis, AP Images.
