What do you think of Maxine Waters' call for more confrontation?

Her comments were very appropriate, generic, and mild.

Her comments, like those of so many others, are of a lawless mob mentality.

@kritiper I agree 100%.

Let me put it into musical terms

Sounds reasonable to me. Confrontational does not mean violent.

I have a problem with her comments. I have no problem with calling for protesting and saying the issue will not go away, and that people need to persist in their pressure to make change in policy and law. “More confrontational” is too easily taken the wrong way. If Trump said that Democrats would be all over the airwaves. We can’t say it is different, because there are lunatics in every group.

Since he’ll probably catch jail time !

No problem with what she said . . . .

I know who is all upset about.

A call for confrontation arises from the simple recognition that no gains can be made without struggle. Her comments were NOT a call to march on the capitol and overthrow the government

I suspect the majority of Minneapolis will be severely damaged if Chauvin isn’t found guilty and I wouldn’t blame the damage on Maxine Waters.

@LostInParadise So what does it mean exactly?

@JLeslie All the protesters are doing is trying to put pressure on a sequestered jury, just in case one or more of the jurors catches wind of what is going on. And, if they do, the trial may have to be redone.

If Trump had said something similar before the Jan 6 insurrection, he would have been convicted by the Senate. Maxine Waters in my opinion should be removed from the House.

@jca2 There is little difference between you and similar posters, and Maxine Waters. You people seem to have the results of the trial predetermined in your heads.

Did you know there are two murder charges and one manslaughter charge against Chauvin. What if he is acquitted of the murder charges and found guilty of manslaughter?

@crazyguy I would think a sequestered jury won’t be aware of what is going on in the world. regarding the trial. Aren’t they supposed to be protected from that during the time of the trial?

@jca2 I think there will be a huge uproar no matter what also, so why did Maxine bother to put herself in a position to be blamed? I think she was foolish in her choice of words. I wonder what the entire quote was. She said we’ve got to get confrontation and let them know we mean business. Something like that.

It was not a good choice of words given the highly charged atmosphere of the trial but it’s ludicrous to suggest she should be “punished”.

I have a typo above, should be confrontational.

@crazyguy: I don’t have the trial predetermined. Who knows what the jury will decide. For me (personally), if he gets found guilty of one charge that puts him in jail for the majority of the rest of his life, I’d be happy. I know that won’t please everyone. I know at the beginning, the community wanted him to be charged with first degree murder. Fortunately, the District Attorney did not give in to pressure because there’s no use charging him with something that they can’t prove.

@jca2 Chauvin is now 45. So you would be happy with a sentence of 40 years, which will probably be trimmed by good behavior to about 25?

@flutherother Ludicrous, eh? After trying to impeach the former President for even less?

@JLeslie I am not sure you can sequester a jury from all contact with the outside world.

Maxine Waters should be kicked out of Congress. Then she can join the organization that has her heart – BLM!

@crazyguy: Yes. Every day he spends in jail will be torture and he’s lucky if he doesn’t get killed while he’s there. He knows it too.

@crazyguy: “Maxine Waters should be kicked out of Congress.”

@crazyguy is always so open about his hostility to uppity black people and democracy.

@jca2 _Maximum sentences for the three counts Chauvin is charged with are as follows:

1. 2nd degree murder: 40 years.
2. 3rd degree murder: 25 years
3. 2nd degree homicide: 10 years.

If Chauvin is found guilty of all three, or two of three, his sentences will run concurrently. So the maximum combined sentence is 40 years. Since you have indicated that you will not be happy with anything less, you want him convicted of second degree murder. All the Prosecution has to prove beyond reasonable doubt to all 12 jurors are the following:

1. Chauvin was in the process of committing a felony when the death occurred.
2. Chauvin was the direct cause of Floyd’s death.

2 may have been proved, but good luck with the first.

Murder in the third degree requires conduct that is eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind. That may be hard to prove also.

That leaves the manslaughter charge. So you and thousands of protesters are most probably going to be screaming for the judge to invoke sentence increasing modifiers. If the judge chooses to, he can increase the manslaughter sentence to 15 years. I would say that is extremely unlikely to survive appeals.

All I can say to you and others like you is to be happy with a good prosecutorial effort, and then let the chips fall where they may.

@crazyguy: I know what the sentences are for each charge. At this point, I’m not nervously sweating about what the outcome will be. It’s in the hands of the jury. I’ll be happy if Chauvin goes to jail for decades. That’s all. I’m not screaming for the judge to invoke anything as you state above. I absolutely agree let the chips fall where they may.

I know the Defense and the Prosecution did the best they could and I also know that sometimes juries come to conclusions that are sometimes not logical to us (which is what I felt after the OJ Simpson trial).

There was a lady on TV this morning (CBS, April 19, 2021) who was a Civil Rights attorney who was talking about the “murder of George Floyd” and my first thought was, “Murder?? No one has been convicted yet” and, as an attorney, she should know better. Everyone is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty.

I don’t really care. I’m not going to pretend I’m outraged. And quite honestly the part of me that wants to see the world burn got a little excited. But this reminds me a lot of Trump and the January 6th storming of the Capitol. Maybe Waters needs to tell Antifa to “stand back and stand by”. The Right has Trump, the Left has Maxine Waters. She’s definitely the closest thing we have to a rabble-rouser right now.

@jca2 The only reason I care what the Jury will find is that thousands of would-be protesters are waiting to burn down Minneapolis. I have a feeling that, like @Demosthenes, they want to see the world burn. I personally do not, and hope that the authorities will bring out the heavy artillery to prevent a repeat of late May 2020.

@kritiper I agree 100%. The attorney probably had to commit to making that statement before CBS would put her on.

@crazyguy I don’t agree that CBS, or any news organization, would make anyone say anything like that. She said it all by herself, no prodding or coaching required.
As a respected news source, any source, it would be best to be wholly neutral and not biased in any way.

I think it’s irresponsible. Men, especially, see confrontation as a challenge to beat down.

@crazyguy: Two things: the sentences don’t have to be concurrent. It’s likely the Judge will make them concurrent, because they’re for the same crime, but they don’t have to be. You wrote (above) that the sentences will be concurrent, which sounds definite, but it’s not. Also, I was just googling and found this from a CBS article (cut and pasted): “If Chauvin is in fact acquitted he still could face federal criminal civil rights charges. A grand jury has been meeting to consider those charges, and if he were to be charged and convicted in federal court, that sentence could be up to life in prison.” That’s reassuring.

@kritiper You are probably right. However for an attorney to say what this lady did: it takes unbelievable stupidity.

@jca2 Thanks for your post.

You are absolutely correct. The judge can indeed decide if multiple punishments should be concurrent or consecutive. However, multiple punishments can only be handed out in very specific circumstances – see
https://www.lawyers.com/legal-info/criminal/criminal-law-basics/how-do-multiple-convictions-affect-my-sentence.html

The key passage, to my non-lawyerly mind, is:

When juries return verdicts of “Guilty” for two crimes, one of which is a lesser-included of the other, both convictions cannot stand. The judge will not enter a conviction for the lesser, only the greater crime. And, the defendant will not be sentenced on the lesser, either.

As far as the federal investigation goes, proving a civil rights violation after a jury finds Chauvin not guilty is almost impossible. As found by Obama’s DOJ in the Trayvon Martin case.

@crazyguy: I believe (but I admit to not being positive and not inclined to research at this time) that OJ Simpson was found guilty of a civil rights violation for the deaths of his ex wife and Ron Goldman, after being found not guilty in the criminal trial for their deaths.

@jca2 you are half-right. I lived through the OJ criminal trial and was shocked at the verdict.

The second trial was a civil lawsuit brought by Nicole’s Dad. He won that suit. As far as I know, OJ is still making payments against the judgment; and he is living fairly well at the same time.

As good as Trump’s: “Stand back and stand by”.

The Dems wanted to hang Trump for a whole lot less.

@crazyguy I believe OJ is behind bars right now. He was caught trying to steal OJ memorabilia on display at some casino, I believe. Something ridiculous like that.

”2007, however, he took part in a bizarre robbery in Las Vegas. The NFL alum and his accomplices broke into a hotel room because they thought the sports memorabilia dealers staying there had items belonging to Simpson.”
But he’s not in jail now.

OJ has been out of jail for over 3 years now: https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/o-j-simpson-what-is-his-net-worth-is-he-still-in-prison.html/

Disgraceful.