Minnesota is the only state where Derek Chauvin could have been convicted of “murder,” under the legal definition of the term. That’s the state in which he chose to live, work as a cop, and kill George Floyd. (Gong!)
The Hill explains (here),
“Many homicides – during robberies, bar fights or sometimes even due to careless driving – start with assaults.”
For those deaths to constitute “murder,” prosecutors usually must “prove a guilty mind.” The exceptions are the “felony murder” cases.
“Thanks to felony murder laws, someone who burns down a building and kills an occupant will be guilty of murder even if the arsonist thought the building was empty.”
That’s because these laws, when they apply, don’t require prosecutors to prove intent to kill, or in other words, show “the defendant was in a specifically homicidal state of mind when he harmed someone else.”
But felony murder statutes typically incorporate the “merger rule,” which excludes prosecuting deaths from assaults as felony murder. That’s because then prosecutors “would hardly ever need to show a guilty mind,” effectively eliminating the intent element from most murder prosecutions. That would make killing someone by accident while assaulting them the same as intentionally killing them. Our laws make a distinction based on the killer’s intention, both in defining the crime, and severity of sentencing.
“But not Minnesota,” The Hill says. Unique among the states, there “an assault that kills is a murder even if the perpetrator was unaware that his assault risked the victim’s death.” And that makes Chauvin a convicted murderer, instead of someone who merely recklessly killed a person he was trying to arrest.
But wait! Isn’t it obvious from the now-famous video by a black teenage witness that Chauvin intended to kill Floyd? After all the horrified onlookers were gasping, “You’re killing him!” Which, in fact, he was — from hindsight. And there’s the rub. The defense could argue that because he had training and experience they lacked, he felt “confident that he knew best,” and if he was wrong, it was an honest mistake. If prosecutors had to prove homicidal intent, a juror might have bought that argument, and it takes only one holdout juror to prevent a conviction.
Minnesota is the only state where prosecutors could get a murder conviction without proving homicidal intent. (And how do you prove a cop intended to kill someone he was trying to arrest, unless he admits it?) That’s the state Chauvin chose to live, be a cop, and kill George Floyd in. He didn’t do his due diligence. That’s his bad luck. And the point of The Hill article is that a “lucky legal accident” made it possible to convict him of murder for Floyd’s death.
At what point, and under what circumstances, should cops be held criminally responsible if someone dies as a result of police use of force? There’s no simple answer, because cops kill people for many different reasons:
“Like ordinary citizens, police who kill do so in a wide variety of mental states. Some intend to kill. Others believe they must kill to prevent immediate harms or future crimes. Still others kill when they are deeply frightened, their perceptions of the risks they face shaped by that fear. All of these psychological states can be magnified and inflected by racism and other forms of bias.”
And that complicates efforts to reform the legal system to restrict police use of force to necessary force, and punish cops who kill citizens who didn’t have to die:
“Criminal law everywhere is designed to address these psychological differences; that’s why the law categorizes these homicides differently.”
However, reforming or at least improving police immunity laws can be done. Washington just made it easier to prosecute police for using excessive force, as part of a slew of police reforms.
But legal reform isn’t enough.
There are nearly 18,000 police agencies employing roughly 700,000 police officers in the U.S., and the vast majority of these officers do a good job and deserve our support. When nothing bad happens, that isn’t news. Media report the “bad” incidents caused by “bad” cops, which are relatively few in number. But not that few; U.S. cops kill about 1,000 people a year, or roughly 3 per day. (By contrast, violent criminals kill about 40 or 50 cops a year.) A series of high-profile (made so by media coverage) police killings of black men, many of these unjustified, have aroused the nation — and properly so. This needs to be addressed.
With better laws, yes, so killer cops don’t get away with murder (especially race-motivated murder). But even more imperative is getting bad cops off police forces — taking away their badges and guns. “Bad cops” is a broad category that includes racist cops, rogue cops, abusive cops and bullies, cops with a history of using excessive force, and cops who simply aren’t temperamentally suited to the job. An important part of this is limiting the influence of police unions and their ability to prevent police agencies from removing unsuitable individuals from the force.
Police agencies themselves need to do a better job of screening, recruiting, training, and supervising police officers. This need is especially acute with smaller police agencies, which tend to be underfunded, and therefore are prone to hire other agencies’ rejects to save training expenses. To prevent this, there needs to be a national database of “bad cops” (with, of course, due process mechanisms) and more rigorous state oversight in the form of certification processes and effective means to decertify bad cops so they can’t work as police officers again. There’s also a role in this for remedial training, and for civilian oversight (which already exists in the form of court-imposed supervision of troubled police departments).
So, there’s no single “silver bullet” that will solve all our policing problems. Probably nothing ever will; proper policing will always require the ongoing efforts of many people, both in and out of uniform. American policing has some structural issues that can be addressed with structural reforms and internal improvements, and those should be pursued.
Meanwhile, the convictions of former cops like Michael Slager, Derek Chauvin, Amber Guyger, and others (see a list here) who displayed a wanton indifference toward human life play a key role in protecting the lives of civilians from rogue cops by serving as a deterrent to other violent cops. Police unions and conservatives point out that reforms are driving cops to retire or quit “in record numbers” (see, e.g., this article). But is that necessarily a bad thing? It is, if it leaves police departments understaffed and streets unsafe. But to the extent more stringent standards and enhanced scrutiny drives people out of the profession who, from the public’s standpoint, shouldn’t be there in the first place … good riddance. That’s the whole point and purpose of police reforms.
Intent though could well raise its head on appeal. If the jury fully bought into the prosecutions [argument that] intent does not matter then Chauvin was denied justice. If the defendants defense depended on the jury at least taking seriously a police officers duty to do his job, and that police officer is not [a] citizen, [he] has to be judged as a police officer who is in a profession that may do things a regular citizen cannot. Police officers can assault people. They can arrest, ect. These all come with an element of intent. Relieving the Prosecution of having to show that Chauvin’s actions were outside of reasonable actions an officer can do was stripped away by the [Minnesota rule on intent]. It is also problematic that Minnesota blurrs the line between murder and manslaughter.
As far as police reforms this case is not helpful. Police rely too much on firearms, militaristic tactics, and aggressive tactics. We the people have gone along with this. When officers kill they do it in our name. When the military kills it is done in our name. The blood is on our hands. … The majority of [police] do not need a firearm, and should not have one normally. They can have a billy club. This simple and effective policy would mean police would reform and use more reasonable tactics and would have to be more judicious in the choice of tactics. [But] it won’t happen, because it is counterintuitive and goes against the American grain. High Noon is part of our American psyche, but the real streets and American life is not really a movie, even with all of today cameras, and they don’t [depict] life as in [a] movie. [This comment has been edited for clarity — Ed.]
All these cops get appeals. Chauvin has a good chance of getting a second trial. Often it is appeals that overturn the few cops convictions who are found guilty by a jury. A few hold up, but I think this one will not.
I don’t know whether Minnesota’s intent rule has been tested in the courts. I would guess it has, in which case an appeal won’t succeed on the grounds you describe. Chauvin has nothing to lose by appealing, and he surely will, but arguments probably will focus on evidence issues.