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I’ve never studied law, I think I’m too pragmatic to be a lawyer. I would struggle to compartmentalise fact from duty, especially if I were to be a defence lawyer.
Derek Chauvin, the ex cop who balanced a knee on George Floyd’s neck for nearly 10 minutes, pinning him against a dirty asphalt street and eventually killing him, is on trial. His lawyers – optimists, gluttons for punishment or morally vapid opportunists – are playing the reasonable doubt card, insinuating that the smartphone camera footage we’ve all seen somehow can leave doubt in anyone’s mind about what transpired that day in front of Cup Foods.
I’ll just say it and get it out the way: there is nothing, nothing George Floyd could have done to warrant this kind of treatment.
Pedophiles and sexual deviants get less brutal treatments.
Our worst murderers and serial killers face more humane forms of corporal punishment, many of them permitted to live out the remainder of their days in prison, with the luxury of being able to die from natural causes.
We put down sick and incurable pets and prize-winning equestrian heroes with more…
