April 7, 2021 - Dennis Prager Show
09:11
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| If there were an award for what you're doing, you should get it. | |
| And I'll tell you exactly, Andy, what I believe that it is. | |
| You are actually watching, listening, reading the trial of the police officer in Minneapolis. | |
| You are doing the work that I should be doing, and I'm not. | |
| I want you to know. | |
| I am acknowledging a lacuna in my responsibilities to my listeners. | |
| And I thank you for filling that hole. | |
| Well, Dennis, thank you so much for the kind words and for having me. | |
| And I think you're doing plenty of service to your listeners by doing what you're doing. | |
| And somebody's got to watch this trial. | |
| I will say this. | |
| It's a different experience watching it. | |
| I've been reading the coverage of it, and it's not like I've never done anything like this before, but I must say when I had my own trials to prosecute, I never paid any attention to what was in the media. | |
| And since I've been more in journalism than in the practice of law, I've mainly relied on coverage of trials. | |
| And not paid any attention to what was actually going on in the day-to-day, because like you, I have a lot of things to do and I can't just sit and watch a trial. | |
| But this time I thought it was important to watch this trial, not only because coverage is often inaccurate, but also because it seems not to matter to many people what the actual facts are. | |
| It seems like the political narrative is more important. | |
| Okay, then let's start with this point, which is of overriding significance. | |
| Can you give an example or two of the difference between what actually is happening in court and what is being reported? | |
| Yeah, I think I can. | |
| You would not know it to read the coverage, but I thought that the most important witness in the trial was a use-of-force expert. | |
| Who was kind of fronted by the prosecutors. | |
| The name, by the way, is Lieutenant Johnny Mursell. | |
| He testified yesterday. | |
| And he was, the prosecutors in the opening statement conveyed the idea pretty confidently that the use of force experts would dispense with any conceivable doubt that Chauvin killed. | |
| And I don't want to minimize the evidence against Chauvin because there's considerable evidence against him. | |
| But I don't think, Dennis, did you know that the top state use-of-force expert testified on New York yesterday that Derek Chauvin never put George Floyd in a chokehold? | |
| No, I did not know that. | |
| Yeah, so that seemed to be like a pretty big deal to me. | |
| Wait, so was the prosecution unhappy they had this man as a witness? | |
| It's hard to tell. | |
| I mean, they certainly didn't, you know, they had good poker faces. | |
| Yeah, no, I understand. | |
| But you would have thought that he had been called by Floyd the way he was expertly examined by Eric Nelson, who is the defense attorney for Chauvin and who's doing an excellent job. | |
| And, you know, basically what he drew from Marcel is that the hold that Floyd was put in by Chauvin is called a neck hold, not a choke hold. | |
| And there's an important difference between the choke hold. | |
| Yeah, no kidding. | |
| Right. | |
| Yeah, right. | |
| So a chokehold cuts off your ability to breathe from the thorax, basically in the front of your neck and throat area. | |
| Whereas a neck hold, there are two different kinds of neck holds that are permissible under police procedures. | |
| One is called an unconscious neck hold, and that's when you're dealing with a situation where... | |
| A person is using potentially deadly force against the police officer, and you intentionally try to render the person unconscious. | |
| So you're not allowed to do that unless the officer's life is actually in danger. | |
| And then there's something that they call... | |
| So that's an unconscious neck hold. | |
| And then there's something that's called a conscious neck hold, which is simply... | |
| Something where you're not trying to get the person to lose consciousness, but you're trying to gain control over the person. | |
| And you're also allowed to do that. | |
| The idea is that you're supposed to, once you have the person under control, then you're supposed to take some steps to make sure that their airflow is clear so that they can breathe. | |
| But I think that most people would have been quite, given what the coverage has been, So, | |
| I told my listeners, contrary to what I said before, I do follow it, but not nearly as much as you, and I watched the whole video months ago of what preceded the neck... | |
| The knee being on the neck. | |
| I told my listeners months ago, and now the head of the police, the chief of police in Minneapolis, seems to have said the opposite. | |
| So either I was wrong, and my listeners must know that, or the police chief is being disingenuous, and I don't know which it is. | |
| But I told my listeners half a year ago that everything I read said that this was normative policy on the part of the Minneapolis Police Department. | |
| Was I incorrect? | |
| You mean that what Chauvin did was incorrect? | |
| Yes, correct. | |
| Okay. | |
| You're partially correct and probably partially incorrect, although the... | |
| The scenario is still playing out, and I'm not trying to give a lawyerly answer. | |
| What I mean by that is the holds that he used were... | |
| It's permissible to use a neck hold, and what they've said about the way that he administered it with his feet is that they don't train that, but there's nothing illegal about it. | |
| So you're allowed to use a neck hold. | |
| He did it in an unorthodox way, but nothing... | |
| In terms of their training, it says that you're not allowed to do that. | |
| Now, here's where it gets difficult. | |
| When somebody is unconscious and doesn't have a pulse, the police have a duty, first of all, to render medical assistance if it's safe to do so under the circumstances. | |
| So the big problem that Chauvin has with that is for the last four and a half minutes or so of his detention, Floyd's breathing had slown down and then ceased to be evident, and they checked his pulse and he didn't have one. | |
| So there's a good argument that at that point he should have begun chest compressions if it was safe to do that. | |
| The big argument that he's going to try to make in this is that the crowd situation was such that it was not safe to do anything other than what he did. | |
| And then the other big issue, Dennis, that they're arguing over is... | |
| If Floyd was neutralized in the sense that he was not resisting, handcuffed behind the neck, they are supposed to, at that point, roll him out of a prone position because that makes it difficult to breathe and put in what they call the side recovery position so that he can breathe again. | |
| So those things are going to be hotly contested issues, but I think the main idea that most people have... | |
| Is that this police officer intentionally choked this man to death, and that simply didn't happen. | |
| So in answer to my question, it is Minneapolis police policy, or at least not contrary to it. | |
| However, the charge will be that he went too long. | |
| Right. | |
| Okay, good. | |
| I can't tell you how much clarity gives me relief. | |
| Wonderful, wonderful man, Andrew McCarthy. |
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