 All right, now, we're back with the Law with Lawson. Like I told you all, this is our second show. So I got my Cracker Jack team back at the studio, Eric, and now I'm gonna be bringing you this show today. So last week I thought the show was like an hour, so I was kind of like, you know, going off on different rants and stuff like that when I was bringing you the Law Raw. But this week I've been told it's a half hour show. So I gotta get a lot in in a few minutes. But what we want to talk about this week is some of you may have seen in the news that one of the police officers in the George Floyd murder is gonna claim self-defense. You know, his lawyer went to court and, you know, filed documents on what his client's defense is gonna be to this murder of George Floyd and one of it was self-defense. And so people, you know, Twitter world went crazy, right, Facebook world, just social media went nuts about this, and actually it is nuts. I'm gonna explain to you why. But also, you know, why it is I still think it may be difficult to convict all four police officers. Now we know Chauvin, right? And if you can put up the screen for me to Eric. All right, so that there's our first slide, right? And so again, will self-defense allow some officers to walk? I don't think self-defense is gonna fly. I'll explain that in a minute. Let's go to the next slide. Eric, yeah, there we go. And so the first thing we had to understand is a lot of people think that the sole reason that George Floyd was killed is because as you can see here in his photo that officer Chauvin had his knee on his neck and that did, that had obviously caused his death. But also, if you go to the next slide Eric, you'll see these three officers all together. So you see Chauvin on the left hand side with his knee on his neck. In the middle you see this officer named Cunick. And then all the way down towards the passenger door on the car is officer Lane. Now, if you may not be able to see from that photograph but Cunick actually is kneeling next to Chauvin with his knee on George Floyd's back. And when we talk about positional affixiation and what that means is if we can go back to the last slide, Eric, real quick, the one that says positional affixiation. What that means is when you put somebody down in a prone position, right, you have them flat on the surface and you put pressure on them. The person can't breathe. And so when you hear Eric Garner from New York say I can't breathe, when you hear George Floyd say I can't breathe, that's because when you're putting pressure on the back and the person is laid in a prone position, Eric's coming out. And when they try to breathe in, they can't expand their diaphragm. So Eric's not coming back in. So you sometimes, and you'll hear the policeman says, well, you're not having, you're talking so you're able to breathe. And I think there was one mayor from, who made this comment about George Floyd in the press. Well, obviously he could breathe because he was talking. That's not the issue. And then that actually being choked like physically choked around the neck, right? To where you can, it's the pressure and the diaphragm can't come and expand. And it causes the person, a lack of oxygen to the brain, the person passes out and then just dies from lack of oxygen, okay? And so now let's go on to the next slide Eric. So now that we know all these three individuals, they got charged with aiding and abetting second degree murder, okay? So you got Chauvin who's charged with his knee on his neck. Chauvin gets charged with second degree murder, okay? And the other three, the one standing up, towel, and the other two all get charged with aiding and abetting Chauvin in second degree murder. Let's flip. Now what is that? Let's go to the next slide Eric. What is second degree murder? And it kind of shows you right there, right? Second degree murder. And then I highlighted in yellow, right? Whoever does either the following is guilty of unintentional murder, right? It's unintentional. That's what they have. I still believe it's first degree murder, but that's another show. Because I believe that Chauvin, when he knew that Chauvin knew after people kept saying to him, he's unconscious. When Chauvin knew, Chauvin won with his knee on George Floyd's neck when he knew, right? That Floyd had no pulse anymore because he had been told that. He still kept his knee on his neck. That's after, for two more minutes, a little over two minutes after he was told that Mr. Floyd had no pulse, Chauvin still kept his knee on his neck. I think it was premeditated at that point that he knew the man had no pulse. He continued to keep his knee on his neck. He knew the man wasn't moving. At that point, I believe that he intended to cause Floyd's death, but that's neither here nor there because he's only charged his second degree murder. So getting back to what the second degree murder is, if we can put that slide up there one more time for our viewers. I'ma bring you to law wrong, right? So whoever does either the following is guilty of unintentional murder in the second degree. It may be since the imprisonment phenomenon. So if he gets convicted, he'd be in Chauvin, he's gonna look at 40 years. But here's what it is. Causes the death of a human being without intent to affect the death of any person by doing what? While committing or attempting to commit a felony offense. Okay, so what felony offense was Chauvin engaged in when he caused the death of George Floyd according to the prosecution? Third degree assault, okay? Now that's what Chauvin's charged with. Causing the death of George Floyd by engaging in a felony. What felony? The third degree assault. Okay, now how do you aid and abet somebody in second degree murder? And Eric, if you can go to our next slide for our lovely law class. So here's aiding and abetting, all right? So if you look at this slide that talks about aiding and abetting. A person is criminally liable for a crime committed by another if the personally intentionally aids, advises, hires, counsel or conspires with or otherwise procures the other to commit the crime. What are you talking about, Lawson? Go ahead and take that slide out because people getting mad. They're like, hey, man, ain't nobody trying to learn all that fancy lawyer language? What the hell does that mean? Here's what it means. It means that you have to know that the person that you're helping is committing a crime and you are agreeing to aid and abet them in committing that crime. Let me give you an example. Y'all know Jay Fidel, who does all this stink text stuff. So let's say Jay, you know, and Jay kind of looks highly suspicious, but let's say I asked Jay to give me a ride to 7-Eleven. I say, Jay, you know, give me a ride to 7-Eleven. He takes me to 7-Eleven. So I say, Jay, keep the car running. I'm gonna run in here and buy me a soda and come back out. So Jay says, okay, I'll be here when you get back. So Jay's sitting out in the car, car is running. He's listening to music. And I go in there and I robbed a 7-Eleven. Yeah, I robbed 7-Eleven. I come back out in the car and I tell Jay, let's go and hurry up. And Jay takes off. Right, we go about two blocks and the policeman pulls us over and they arrest me for robbing a 7-Eleven. And Jay's like, hey, man, what's going on? They tell Jay, hey, put your hands behind your back. You getting the rest of two. But what, aiding and abetting. Now, what do you think Jay's defense is gonna be? His defense is gonna be, I didn't know that he was committing the crime. Yeah, I drove him. Because in reality, factually, I helped him get away. He jumped back in the car. He told me to drive, I drove, right? But I'm not doing that to help him commit a crime. I was not agreeing. Right, to help him commit a crime. And so when we talk about aiding and abetting, if you can put that back up there real quick from the air. So now, when you look at that aiding and abetting slide, it makes a little bit more sense to you. The personally, intentionally, A's advises, hires, counsel or conspires with or otherwise, procures the other to commit the crime. Right, you have to know. And so what's the officer's defense gonna be? Well, we kind of know. So Officer Cunick is the one that was in the middle. And so we, Erica and I showed you that slide earlier, where you can see Officer Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck. In the middle, there you go. In the middle is Officer Cunick. He's the one in the middle. And then all the way down by the passenger door, it is Officer Lane. And why is that important? Because Cunick actually has his knee on the back of George Floyd, on George Floyd's back. And he's putting pressure on it. He is contributing to the death of Floyd, right? Because Floyd can't, he cannot expand his diaphragm. But the question is, does Lane and Cunick and Tal know that they're actually aiding and abetting Chauvin when he has his knee on George Floyd's neck and committing the crime? Or are they saying that we're just ignoring policy? And so let's go to our next slide, Eric. So in order to prove that the officers aided and abetted, the state has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt these two things, that the officers knew that Chauvin was going to commit a crime and they intended their presence or actions to further the commission of that crime. That's a heavy burden, isn't it? In other words, again, going back to my example with Jay, you had to show that Jay knew that I was going to commit the crime of Robbie when I walked into 7-Eleven. And you had to show that Jay intended his presence to help me commit that crime, right? And so again, that all three other officers, their defense is gonna be, we did not know that he was engaged in trying to kill this man. So how does, how do I want to say this? Okay, so I had, like, you probably, can you see this? Look, I had all these documents right here. These are the actual transcripts from the body counts. You got the officers had the body counts right here. So these are the transcripts from the body counts that Cunic's lawyer, the defense lawyer who claims that his client killed George Floyd in self-defense. We'll get to how crazy that is in a few minutes. So Cunic's lawyer filed all these documents with his defenses. And so when you read through the body cam transcripts and you can hear what the officers are saying to each other, so again, keep in mind that the knee was on Mr. Floyd's neck and he was in that position for eight minutes and 46 seconds, all right? And so a couple of minutes after they get him into that position, you can hear the officer Lane. Lane is the one who's all the way at the end near Mr. Floyd's knees holding down, right? Lane turns his shoulder and says, shouldn't we move Floyd over, turn him over? Because Floyd at the, all the time, all during his time, Mr. Floyd is saying, I can't breathe, I can't breathe, I can't breathe, I can't breathe, mama, mama, I can't breathe. So Lane looks to Floyd, looks to his shoulder and says, hey, shouldn't we turn him over? Because I'm concerned about excited delirium and again, for lack of time, but excited delirium happens when you have a person in the prone position and because they're having trouble breathing, it could generate a heart attack. And so the police training, I did one of these cases in 1994 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Many of you may know that I used to do these types of cases in pseudo police when they killed unarmed men, women and children in Cincinnati and other parts of the tri-state area. And one of the first cases I did involved a man named Daryl Price in Cincinnati. And Daryl was built a lot like George Floyd, and just watching this video of George Floyd reminding me of that case. And I remember going down to the coroner's lab and looking at Daryl Price's body and I had the coroner turn Mr. Price over in the prone position so I could see if there were any marks on his back. And I could see the knee prints that the officer had left on Mr. Price's back and the pressure they had put on him. And then they claimed because he had traces of cocaine in the system that he'd done from excited delirium. After that case, the city of Cincinnati and that police department changed their training and most police departments did throughout the United States that whenever you put somebody and you have them secured in that prone position and they're handcuffed and they're secured, you have to immediately roll them over or sit them up or stand them up so that you don't kill them from positional fixation. That is standard training. So why are you saying all this Lawson? Because when Lane, right, the officer that's on Mr. Floyd's knee and hold his knee area down turns the chauvin. After everybody keeps hearing Floyd say, I can't breathe. He says to Chauvin, don't you think we should turn him over? I'm concerned about excited delirium. What Lane is saying to Chauvin is, look, man, we ain't supposed to leave him down here like this. That's what Lane is telling Chauvin in front of CUNY. He didn't say it and he didn't say our training tells what he says is I'm concerned about excited delirium. And what did Chauvin say when Lane says it? Chauvin says, that's why we have him down here like this and we're gonna leave him like this until the ambulance comes, right? This ignores your training. Now, that's a couple of minutes in. And so minutes and minutes continue to go by. Go ahead and put up our next slide for me, Eric. All right, so the first defense that CUNY is a lawyer found, and I'm laughing because actually it is laughable, is the self-defense. And I'm not even gonna go through all this stuff, but yeah, I kind of have an understanding with self-defense is, you know, you have to, oh my God, you can only use that force necessary to stop the forces coming at you. A police officer's right to use self-defense for the most part is no greater than yours or mine. Right, you can only kill somebody or take human life or cause serious physical harm if you believe that person is trying to cause you serious physical harm or death, but they escaped, they may do that to the public, right? And so I don't know why, and maybe the lawyer hasn't been paid a lot of money. I don't know, but I mean, this is the dumbest defense based on the facts that we know that you could put up. All right, so what's the second defense? Eric, what's the second? So the lawyer files these motions in court. And if we can go to the second slide, the lawyer files these motions in court or CUNIC, or CUNIC, I don't know how they, I don't know how y'all pronounce, look, y'all see his name up there, let's call him former officer K, CUNIC Allen. So okay, so some of you all are new to my teachings now you're gonna learn that my pronunciation of names and need some work. So I'm gonna mispronounce a whole bunch of names, but you're gonna understand all along. So anyway, so this guy, this lawyer, God bless him. I mean, one day I'm gonna tell y'all about the K-Loha trial here in Hawaii and some of the lawyer and I seen, you know, I was the expert witness for Hawaii News Now. So I got to watch that whole K-Loha trial last summer. And you wanna talk about some comedy lawyers, but let's get back to this guy up in Minnesota fouling this defense, so his second defense. So the first defense was, hey, my client was acting in self-defense. In other words, and self-defense means this, it means I meant to kill you. When you're talking about self-defense with deadly force, what you saying to somebody is I meant to kill him, but I had a legal right to do it. See, if you've tried to break in my house and I shoot you dead, that wasn't no accident. Me shooting you dead, that was no accident. I meant to kill you because I thought that you were trying to cause me death or serious physical harm. So self-defense ain't no accident. What this goofy lawyer did in this case was, he says my client, tune it, the one with the knee on Mr. Floyd's back in the middle, acted in self-defense. In other words, he's saying my client, yeah, had a right to kill Floyd because if he didn't kill Floyd, Floyd was gonna kill him. Now, I don't, I mean, if y'all go to YouTube and just Google defendant punches lawyer at council table, you're gonna see all these videos or these defendants getting mad at their lawyer because their lawyer sucks and just knocking them out right at council table in front of the jury. You can see that happening in this case, but let's go, let me get back to this. I'm easily distracted. We only got like eight more minutes left. So let me, Eric, you gotta keep me focused, man. So all right, so what we doing here is, so his second defense is tunes attorney's side of the statue. It's a Minnesota statue, right? This says deadly forces justify only when necessary to protect a peace officer or another from a parent death of Bali Han. Here's what, it's gonna be number two. So y'all can see, it's gonna be number two that he's gonna argue to affect the arrest or capture prevent the escape of a person when the peace officer knows or has reasonable grounds to believe as committed or attempted to commit. And so what they're gonna say is, look, you can take that down here. Here's what they're saying. They're saying, look, if you go back to the video, we were trying to put Floyd in the police cruiser. And some of these, when you look at the, when you read the transcripts to all the white account talk that was going on, there's a time when they're trying to put Mr. Floyd in the cruiser. And Mr. Floyd had been shot by a cop before, right? Unjustifiably, but he'd been accidentally shot by a cop before, intentionally shot by a cop before. And so he's telling him, look, I've been, he was claustrophobic, he was paranoid and he didn't wanna get into the van. And so he's stiffening his legs. He's not fighting with the police or anything like that. You know how, if you're trying to, you know, get somebody into a position and they keep their legs stiff, it's hard to move them. So that's what Floyd is doing inside the van. So they pull him back out. They put him down in the prone position and you kind of hear, right? And so all that time, what they're gonna claim here is that he was resistant. He was trying to get away. And so we used that force necessary to capture or prevent him from escaping. And in doing so, and trying to keep him from escaping because we tried to arrest him and put him in the car. And now that we put him in his position and we were just gonna hold him until, holding there until the ambulance came. We had no idea he was gonna die. Okay, I'm gonna tell you what that one is gonna fail. All right, so what's the third defense? The third defense, you know, somebody got to tell me, yeah, I think that's Q, right? K-U-E-N-G. The third defense Q will use, if it's right or wrong, that's what I'm calling. All right, so the third defense Q will use according to the documents, it's authorized use of force by a police officer. Right, reasonable force may be used upon or toward the person of another without the other's consent under certain circumstances which relevant we include when a police officer is affecting a lawful arrest or executing, right? So that's gonna be his defense, right? But I've highlighted reasonable. And so a police officer can use reasonable force to arrest a person. And what Q-NIC is, and so what Q-NIC and the other ones, look, we were using reasonable force. When you look at the, here's the argument. When you look at the entire video, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, and you see that we tried to put him into the cruiser and he wouldn't get in the cruiser. We tried to get him to sit there and he just refused to bend his knees and be placed in the cruiser. And he's becoming so rigid that he's resisting. He's resisting us being able to transport him. And because we're using reasonable force and we use reasonable force, we wasn't beating on him or anything like that. When we had him on the ground, we just holding there because no matter what we said, we just didn't believe that he was gonna comply with our commands to get inside the vehicle. That's gonna be their defense, okay? And what you have to show is reasonable force and what does reasonable mean, right? And going to the next slide. Under Minnesota law, reasonable force may be used upon or toward the person of another without the other's consent, right? And again, it talks about that lawful arrest. And so you can see that I'm still in the photograph. Again, at this point, everybody knows that Mr. Floyd's not resisting whatsoever. And so is that force at that point reasonable? And the answer is no. The answer is no. If you go to the next slide, real quick for him. So you see that, so when the jury, when the jury hears this case, the judge is gonna say, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I'm gonna tell you what the law is when it comes to defining reasonable, right? And the judge is gonna read to the jury this law. And it says, as I have a highlight, to determine if officer Chauvin, if officer Cummins and the officer Lanes and Tau's force was reasonable, right? To determine if the actions of the peace officers were reasonable, you must look at those facts known to the officer at the precise moment he acted with force. Given due regard for the pressure faced by peace officers, you must decide whether the officers actions were objectively reasonable in light of all the circumstances totality of the facts and circumstances confronting the officer without regard to the officer's own state of mind, intention and motivation. Do you understand what they're saying? No, because it's all that, you know, when I went to law school, man, I used to hate reading all this language because to me it was just like, why don't y'all just tell me what the hell y'all mean instead of using all these big words? What they're saying is, look, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you can't get into what Chauvin then was thinking. It could have had evil intent. That's not how you can judge it. You have to look at what was going on at that time from a reasonable officer's standpoint, okay? And it talks about looking at the facts and circumstances confronting the officer without regards to the officer's own state of mind, right? And so again, I think going to our last slide before I close this out, right? So you've seen all these defenses and put me aside by side of that error. Because what the lawyer is doing is they're throwing all their defenses at the wall and hoping something sticks and that's not a good defense. Because really what it's saying to you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if you don't believe acting in self-defense, okay, then say that I acted reasonable with respect to this issue. Or if you don't believe acting reasonable with respect to this issue, just say I didn't know what was going on because I'm new to the force, right? I think, again, it's hard to convict police officers in the United States. Over 95% of the police, first of all, it's hard to even get them charged. Over 95% of them, the ones that are charged, 95% of them are found not guilty by jurors and by judges. So it's hard to convict. Here, I think the key is going to be this. With two minutes and I think 53 seconds left remember they were on top of Mr. Floyd for eight minutes and 46 seconds. At two minutes and 53 seconds, Officer Cuny, the one who found all these goofy defenses on behalf of his lawyer, Officer Cuny tells Chauvin that he checked for Mr. Floyd's pulse and Mr. Floyd had no pulse. For two minutes and 53 seconds after Cuny, after Lane, after Chauvin, after Tau, knew that Mr. Floyd had no pulse, they continued to put pressure on him. In other words, you notice man ain't breathing and he ain't got no pulse. And for you to sit there and say at this point, and you hear people around saying he can't breathe, you're killing him. Citizens are screaming at these officers. And at one point, citizens start to approach to intervene and Chauvin, the one with the knee on his neck, pulls out his mace and tells the citizens to get back. They don't get up off of him. I'm talking about two minutes and 53 seconds longer. After knowing he had no pulse, they stay on his neck. Now, at that point, I don't think that Lane or Cuny or Tau can say we didn't know that continuing to let Chauvin keep his knee on his neck was killing. At that point, you know a crime's being committed and you have a duty as a police officer to stop it and you didn't. And therefore that's why I believe they're guilty. But like I said, we got to watch the trial itself and see what happens. Because again, a lot of people that sit on a jury believe that the police are there to protect them. And they'll look at Mr. Floyd and say, you know what, I'm gonna close out with this, Eric. I know I gotta go. But here's what happens in these trials. The defense will paint the black man as a villain. Look at his record. Look at his prior and he was on drugs. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you know that these police officers protect you night and day. When they get up in the morning, they're risking their lives for you. And for you to sit there and second guess them in the moment of all this chaos going on. And really what they're saying is, do you want to convict these officers who protect you for this person over here who ain't got no record? And that's the reason why black lives matter has come to the forefront. Because no matter what, no one deserve to die like that. All right, so until next week, next week we're gonna talk about defund the police and abolishing the police. And once they're different, right? So, but until then, this is the law with Lawson bringing you the law wrong. And I'll see you guys next week.