Legal Insurrection via Instapundit
Today’s testimony began with the continuation of the direct questioning by Prosecutor Schleiter of Sergeant Jody Stiger, of the Los Angeles Police Department, who has been retained by the state prosecutors as an expert witness on use-of-force tactics and policy.
You’ll recall that the direct of Stiger began yesterday afternoon and ran for 30 minutes, until Judge Cahill decided to call it a day. That direct continued today for about another 45 minutes, before the witness was turned over to the defense.
Here’s a leading indicator that state-paid use-of-force expert witness Stiger was ultimately more favorable to the defense than he was to the prosecutors who’d paid him $13,000 to provide his expertise to help convict Chauvin: Whereas the State spent about 75 minutes questioning their own expert, Defense Counsel Nelson spent more than 90 minutes doing so.
That’s right, so fond was the defense of the State’s expert, so strongly did the defense believe that the testimony of the State’s expert favored Chauvin, that they spent 20% more time engaged with that expert in front of the jury than did the prosecutors.
...The first shocker in all this was that despite the huge significance of this case, and the national profile it has seized, the state apparently managed to choose as a use-of-force expert witness someone who had never testified in any state or Federal court as a use-of-force expert witness.
On the third hand, he's African-American
...Then Nelson dove into Stiger’s personal experience in making arrests of suspects. Isn’t it true that sometimes suspects lie in an effort to avoid arrest? Yes. They’ll bargain? Yes. They’ll make up complaints of distress? Yes. Should an officer consider not just the words, but also the actions, to see if those are consistent with the words? Yes.
When Floyd began saying that he couldn’t breath, wasn’t he at that moment violently fighting with the officers to prevent them from putting him in the squad car? Yes. Isn’t that conduct inconsistent with not being able to breath? Yes.
Lesson: the officers had good reason to believe that Floyd’s claims of difficulty breathing were a fabricated claim of medical distress.
Diving into Stiger’s personal experience on this issue, Nelson asked him if while making an arrest Stiger had ever had a suspect feign a physical ailment. Yes. Fake a heart attack. Yes. An officer has to consider if those claims are lies? Yes.
...Later in the day, with a different witness, BCA Special Agent Reyerson, whose testimony I won’t spend much time on because it was so boring, Nelson would play the same video, and ask the same question. This time, the witness will agree—yes, Reyerson answers, it sounds like "I ate too many drugs" to me.
And, IMO, they'll still railroad Chauvin - unless, somebody on top have decided that "The Moor has done his duty, the Moor can go".
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