The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - George Floyd

Episode Date: April 25, 2021

  Lara Bazelon is a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law where she holds the Barnett Chair in Trial Advocacy and directs the Criminal & Juvenile Justice and Racial Justice Clinics.  Her first novel, a courtroom thriller titled A GOOD MOTHER, will be published next month.   Seaton Smith is a comedian and actor. His special, The Lockdown Special can be seen on EPIX.

This is live from the table, the official podcast of New York's world-famous comedy cellar coming at you on Sirius XM 99 Raw Dog. And on the Laugh Button Podcast Network, Dan Natterman here with Noam Dorman, the owner of the world-famous comedy cellar. Barry L. Ashton, our producer, is here sitting right next to me in the bathroom. It's a long story. And we also have Seton Smithith is with us he's a comedian comedy seller regular he's an actor his special the lockdown special can be seen on epics

and how is everybody tonight this is a crazy crazy week we'll get to all the craziness uh in a little bit though first should we explain to the people watching on YouTube by period and I are sitting next to each other in a bathroom You go ahead. Well, we're doing the studio at The comedy cellar. However, the studio is not set up. So we have to do it in separate rooms So that we don't hear we can't all sit in front of the same computer so seton's in another room we're in the bathroom so that we don't hear him when he's talking and then hear him

a second later on our screen which would be disconcerting so we have to be in the bathroom well wait but it's supposed to be at the table but it can't be at the table because there's a comedy show going on in the olive tree because they're using the olive tree as a room to show i think as no one was trying to squeeze a few extra i don't want to say dollars let's just say a few extra a few extra seats so he's doing shows in the restaurant because he can only do a third capacity right so he has i kind of thought i was just trying to find a way to give some more spots to comedians but you're right dad i think i think we should just stop these shows wait and then with the comics used to zoom in because once covid happened we just started

doing it by zoom but now the comics can't just zoom in anymore because people are starting to perform again so we wanted to come on but seton couldn't do it unless you had a place to do it you know you should be thanking me that i'm going through these hijinks to figure out how to do the show can you read the bubble over my head it says perriel's husband is a saint. That's all I'm thinking of right now. Like, oh, my God. Imagine having her yell at you in the bathroom. Oh, my God. Can I get my joke out? I guess not.

I'm sorry. I couldn't hear your joke. It's not to do a podcast. It's not good to talk over each other to Zoom, guys. Anyway, I was at the, I did want to, before we get into this week's craziness, I did do a show here Saturday, my first show back. And I just wanted to give you my impressions, if I may.

Okay. It was good. You know, everybody's separated by plexiglass, so it's a little weird. it was good um you know everybody's separated by plexiglass so it's a little weird and there's only a third um

a third of the normal audience but everybody seemed happy to be there and I had some great new jokes absolutely killer uh that I had been

backlogged you know throughout the pandemic pandemic related and otherwise I had a good new joke about um the second amendment, which I won't do here, but suffice it to say it did well.

And it's quite timely, you know, given everything that's going on. Seaton, we haven't seen you. I'm good to see you. I guess we've seen you. You've been on the podcast before. By the way, I just spoke to Wayne Fetterman today, who did our show a few weeks ago. His book is selling well. And he said our podcast was the best one that he's done. Nice.

So I don't know if that means anything. Seaton, any news on Seaton's special? How currently? The lockdown special? News, man, news. I've had the best COVID of my life. I'll admit that. I've done a lot of fun things.

Let's see. Fun news. I got a special that came out on Epix. I did this fun commercial series for the NCAA tournament. That was really dope. I don't know. I think I might do an MMA fight this summer. Or maybe just a kickboxing fight. Just enjoying the life.

Are you an MMA fighter? I didn't know that about you I might do an MMA fight this summer. Or maybe just a kickboxing fight. You know, just enjoying the life. Enjoying the life. Are you an MMA fighter? I didn't know that about you. It's just a hobby. I just can't help. It's just one of those things. Some people, you know, no one plays the guitar. I tend to kick people sometimes.

It's an art thing. That's all. So I was listening to Sam Harris' podcast in the car the other day. And apparently he was saying that he was recommending that all the police forces in the country be taught jujitsu because apparently he thinks it's the most effective, close range way of subduing somebody without hurting them. And that it gives people an advantage despite a tremendous size disparity. For instance, Chauvin was 145 pounds and Floyd was over 200 pounds. Apparently, with jujitsu, Floyd – Chauvin would have been able to control Floyd

even with that – with those skills. You know anything about that? Is that true in your opinion? I mean, yeah. Even as a – even – I mean, when we saw that happen, even my jujitsu friends, we looked at that situation like, if George Floyd knew some rules, he would have gotten that knee off of him and been okay. But, like, yeah, I do believe cops need to learn how to, I'm trying to be careful with this language here. Because I see a lot of cops actually doing that. For example, San Antonio, they actually put cops in, like, a ring and actually make them, like, you know, put them in the worst situations possible

in order to make them comfortable in these situations. And it just seems like a lot of these cops we see in videos seem to be, like, two or three years on the job and have no training, and they just go, like, just do dumbest things possible. Except Derek Chabot is completely different. That was some personal shit that got into the racial atmosphere, but that was a personal beef that was completely, I don't know. I mean, they knew each other for months.

They were fighting for months. This was just like, that's why it was so ugly to me. We've heard that, but that didn't come up at all at trial, as far as I know. So I, you know. It wouldn't have helped anybody to bring that up. It wouldn't have helped the prosecution to mention that they knew each other, because then the race angel was gone. And then it would not help the defense to know because then it just gives,

it makes them even more guilty. So it just was pushed out. But they specifically knew each other. They knew, and like, they beat us off. I know George, I know they had like a fight, like a close to fight, because they were both security guards for that club. And yeah, he was, the cop was doing security guard for like, I don't know, night and day.

What was it? He was being, you know, your cop during the day. And just, what's that phrase when you're like, have a second job as a cop? Moonlight. Moonlight. Yeah, he's moonlighting his head. My bad. And then I think George was also that. So, nah, that was... I don't know.

It was just... But wouldn't it have helped? It felt personal, too. I don't know. I've just had cops... I've had guns... I've had cops put guns on my face. I've had racist situations. It never feels that personal. It's always they're on their head. It's always disconnected. That've had cops put guns on my face. I've had racist situations. It never feels that personal.

It's always there on their head. It's always disconnected. That was some personal murder shit. Wouldn't it help the prosecution to be able to show that Chauvin was acting with intentional animus there? You'd think. It may, but, I mean, that would just add another layer to the narrative of already this dude is racist. Let's just put him out. Like, I just don that would just add another layer to the narrative of, already, this dude is racist. Let's just put him out for rea-

Like, I just don't think you need it. It's almost like the reason why O.J. was let off. It was like, yeah, the evidence was iffy, but also, we put a lot of black people in jail by accident, so let's just say sorry. That's what this is. This was like, yo, he is a murderer. He's completely wrong. We've been wrong for a long time.

We got to put him in jail. Or let's have a bunch of right. Can I ask you a really deep question? And I don't know how I feel about the answer to this. I know that some people will find the very question offensive, but human nature is tricky. Do you think that the people who are most invested in the narrative that America is hopelessly

racist and based on white supremacy, those people who spend the most time in their lives devoted to fighting for that, do you think they were in their gut happy with this verdict? Or do you think they were in their gut happy with this verdict? Or do you think in some way, and I'll say one more thing. Do you think in some way they were like, not happy to see that narrative chipped away at a bit? And I'm going to tell you why I always think that. Do you remember when OJ got off? Do you remember the, they had shots of all over the country,

the jubilation, especially in the black community. I mean, it came from the gut. It was like, wow! Like, it was exclusive happiness when OJ got off. That was real. I didn't see that. I didn't see that when Chauvin got convicted. I didn't see the happiness. And it made me think maybe there was at least ambivalence

about how they wanted this to come out. Because it is, it does i mean i've had it i've had these dark human reactions to things sometimes where i didn't want something to happen because i want i didn't want to be proven wrong even though it was better if it would if i'd be wrong you know what i mean yes i'm going to say your interpretation of apathy may be a little misinterpreted in that. Here's an analogy. When one of my relationships was falling apart and we all knew it was over, I knew it was over when she said, hey, let's have sex later. And I remember going, yeah, I just don't care anymore. And I just walked and went to bed. It's like one of those things like,

well, it's been a long time. It's been, like, structurally speaking, the internet really started introducing, like, police murders around 2014. I was watching. 2014 is when it started to get heavy. 2015 got super heavy. Now it's been, that's like seven years of heavy videos every day

of people like me getting shot by the cops. At one point, you start to break and you're like, I don't give a fuck what the fuck you do. I'm gonna murder, I'm gonna kill everybody in here and I'm gonna kill this, like it's just like, it's like a snapping point. So that's what I'm saying, you might be reading. But on the flip side, and this is a bigger picture to me,

because this is me, this is my own, I've been in my own little personal kind of understanding of this whole race thing. I grew up, let's be clear if anybody's listening, my father was a political science professor, he wrote seven books on this, the systematic oppression of race. I grew up, let's be clear, if anybody's listening, my father was a political science professor. He wrote seven books on the systematic oppression. I grew up doing protests. I think about race constantly.

And I will legitimately start to breathe and think to myself, I think there's something bigger going on that we're not, as all Americans think. And like every group has figured out a way to believe that another group is all trying to kill us. And like just on the small level of things, the gun issue really seems to be more the name narrative of everything. the gun issue really seems to be more

the name narrative of everything. Everybody, like, yes, cops, like the fact that cops say, listen, we're not killing that many black people. We're killing white people just as much. That's their best offense, nigga? That means there's more time in there. So Justin Chabon, or that's right, Derek Chabon gets convicted,

but then the next day or that night or night before, another black woman gets shot, right? But then if you turn the paper, you also see there's been, what, 40 mass murders in the last three months? Like the record, we're not even, we're like, you know, lapping the records we've had in 100 years within like three months.

So I mean, there's just more and more evidence of this whole mass murder of gun things just getting to the point. We're going to pop, though. There's, like, too many people dying. Like, one day, school's going to get shot. A building's going to get shot. A black man's going to get shot.

Everybody's going to die one day. Everybody. Not everybody. There's going to be every one of these stories going to happen in one day, and we're all going to lose it. And I think we're getting close to Australia, in my opinion. I think we're getting close to this.

It's going to be, like, a big overall. Like, fuck it. But I don't know. We've been saying that for going to be like a big overall, like, fuck it. But I don't know. We've been saying that for years. But right, like, okay, last point. Have you noticed every time a cop says, I had to shoot that person, it's because we thought they had a gun.

You take that argument out of there, what else is there? Well, a couple times lately was with a knife. Like today, this girl got shot, was it yesterday? I don't know, when did you get shot? Yesterday, yeah, she got shot yesterday. I don't know. It was yesterday. Yeah, she got shot yesterday. Body cam shows her stabbing her friend or stabbing the woman she's with.

Yeah, yeah. I mean. But you're right. But usually it does do way more damage. If we just had the knives, it would be a different ballgame altogether. Yeah, if there was only a knife country, we'd be tasering up people like that. So, I mean, I'm not in that situation. I don't want to judge i know i'm afraid i know again i don't know whatever i'm sorry what you're gonna say one question i asked on my facebook page and it

didn't get an answer because my my questions never get answers on facebook i never get actual discussion i just get hollering but but um not that people necessarily know this but i was wondering in england most of the cops don't have guns. If they had confronted a situation like the situation in Columbus where the young girl had her hand up with a knife in it, looked like she was about to stab her friend,

how are the English cops trained to deal with that? Or would they have sent a special unit with guns if they had gotten a call that said something instead of knife? We don't have to do that. We don't have to go Or would they have sent a special unit with guns if they had gotten a call that said something? We don't have a knife. We don't have to do that. We don't have to go to, like, England to do that.

All we have to do is literally look at a white guy with a knife and go, well, how do you treat that guy? Because they don't shoot that guy. They don't shoot him as much. They really don't. Like, I know I'm negating my point, but, I mean, there's so many videos online right now. There's a video literally I can show you right now of a white guy with a knife just swinging at a cop and they're all going come on

guy like it's it's it's uh this is a good example this is a good example of the kind of the the point i made at the beginning which i'm not sure of so this there was this case not long ago this mass shooter and people were all in front of it because they they um they killed they they he they took him alive is that right and um and they oh, he must be a white guy, right? And here comes another white mass shooter, blah, blah, blah. And then it turned out it wasn't a white guy. And you would think that people who are upset about white supremacy and about white mass shooters would be like, oh, good, it wasn't a white guy.

But no, they were disappointed to find out it wasn't a white guy. They wanted it to be another white guy. And they were disappointed to find out it wasn't a white guy. You know, they wanted it to be another white guy. And they were disappointed that the non-white guy didn't get killed. Because they wanted it to be that only the white guy doesn't get killed, you know? So they're so invested in the narrative that even though the life is saved, they're disappointed. Well, that's a, your situation you just brought up is more or less like a broken clock is right twice kind of situation. I mean, the likelihood of a black dude getting, like, let off in that situation, we just know just practically that's, that's low. He wasn't black. He wasn't black. He was Arab.

Oh, see, that's even more interesting. You're right. That's interesting. But it's like, even the fact that we're gonna have this conversation going, what do you think a white cop's gonna shoot more like and we all can honestly have our own different opinions on the shit makes you speak of the bigger problem like yo we've uh our violent our capability of violence is getting to the point of the tipping point as i'm saying like yo we yo i really i don't know i don't know why people make fun i don't know why arabs are not white i mean i mean i know some of them are not white but steve Jobs is Syrian. Was he not white? I mean, there's that argument of, like, once you make a certain amount of money, you stop.

Color is not an issue anymore. Why are Jews white, but Arabs not? I mean, a lot of them are identical. First of all... When Jews transported, though? Am I confused? Everybody has a different definition of what white is.

White is a term that's fluid, that's changed over time. Some people would say white. Some people would say Jews are not white. Some people would say an Arab is, you know, is white. Some people say an Arab is not white. Some people would say it depends on the Arab. There's no clear answer. And it was convenient because, of course,

we never heard the term white Hispanic until Trayvon Martin, and it was important to define George Zimmerman as white and not Hispanic, right? The term white didn't really come to start until there was slavery. White didn't exist until there was an oppressive system. So it's actually the term. So your argument of Steve Jobs being white, it does fit because he fits in the oppressive system. And yes, like, again, that zimmerman got off of the white system so yeah he became

white once the government said it's all right man kill as many blacks as you can well i mean that that that that case was um that case reminded me of the mike tyson. Mike Tyson, I thought, was improperly convicted. And I think that George Zimmerman was probably the right verdict, only because nobody could tell you what really happened. You know, you have conflicting stories, and you're supposed to presume the guy innocent. It's not easy to do that. But you had one witness said this guy was on top,

and the other witness said the other guy was on top. I don't know. I mean, what are you going to do? I don't know. Hmm. Hmm. I would sit in the jail. I mean, George Zimmerman, we could say,

what the fuck is this stand your ground law? What the hell is he out there looking for trouble? What kind of gangster wannabe is this George? I mean, all that. There's nothing about George Zimmerman that's not on paper reprehensible. But the fact is, under that law, it was stand your ground. And the question was, who was on top of who? And you saw the photo of George Zimmerman all bloodied up,

you know, what are you going to do? I don't know. I don't know how to say beyond a reasonable doubt I knew what happened. I don't know. Mike Tyson was an outrage because how does anybody know what happened in that hotel room? Oh, man, you just conflated a race crime with a rape crime, and I don't want to defend either one.

I'm going to go back to the race side. It's a notion that we take our system seriously, which is that you don't convict somebody unless it's proven. Hi, Laura. Do you pronounce Laura? Because I always spell Laura. It always confuses me. Laura.

Like Tara. Like Tara. It's one of the few times I get to really express myself. Go ahead, Dan. This is sort of my gig on this show is I do introductions. Lara Bazelon is a professor of the University of San Francisco School of Law, where she holds the Barnett-Mondren Trial Advocacy, directs the criminal and juvenile justice and racial justice clinics.

The first novel, a courtroom thriller titled A Good Mother, will be published next month. Congratulations. Oh, thank you. It's too hard. I'm Kirkus. Thank you.

I appreciate you saying that. I want to say a word about Laura Bazelon. Preemptivelyively because I don't know how the rest of the conversation will turn out. But I do want to say the following. She is one of my heroes, whether she knows it or not. And I think we don't agree on a lot. I think we probably do agree on a lot when it comes to criminal justice, at least in terms of civil liberties. But she is one of the rare, if not one of the only people I know who was courageous with her principles in her milieu where people don't really appreciate her being courageous with the principles, such that despite that she despised, despised Donald Trump as much

as anybody could despise Donald Trump she did write that column that we had her on last time about exposing um some uh very uh uh very improper things that Kamala Harris did uh um keeping guilty people in prison while she was in California. And that took tremendous courage to do. And she got a lot of flack for it. And so I just want to say that, like I said, even if we have a terrible fight and you call me names, I will always never say a bad word about you because you proven yourself in a way that very few people ever do. And I'll tell you one other thing. I asked the guy Yasha Monk from the Atlantic, Yasha, he's my kind of friend. And I was asking one time, I said, do you think you would have the courage to risk your life in a war? You see people,

they go off to war. And I can't imagine myself risking my life, signing up to go fight. And he said to me, he says, well, you'd think, he said, but actually if you look at history, people do that quite easily. He said, it's people standing up for their principles among their peers, which is really the rarer form of bravery. And then he spun that out. And that point hit me right between the eyes. People go off with their friends, they sign up, we're going to go off to war, there's camaraderie, whatever it is, but people who stand

up in a room full of people say, no, no, no, and expose themselves in that way. He said that's a much rarer thing to do. So, anyway, that's enough puffing up Lara Basel. So much love, so much love, Noam. I can't believe it. I really feel that

way. I wasn't here last time Lara was on. I forgot where I was, but nice to meet you. Nice to meet one of Noam's heroes. Nice to meet you too, and I love the way you said Barnett, like when you were saying the Barnett chair. It sounded very important. I said Barnett, rightett right yeah but you just had a little like ah in it that just gave it a little lift my boston brahman accent even though i'm not from boston all right let's talk about the chauvin case now let's let's talk about first of all uh the good things i'll list a few good things the good good things are clearly that they call it the thin blue line. What's that analogy for the police that never testify to each other?

The what? The thin blue line. Yeah, the thin blue line, at least for once, was crossed. The cops seemed to testify against each other. As a matter of fact, I had a friend who's a cop and just left the NYPD, and he was texting me. He said, this is terrible police work. He seemed happy that the cops were testifying. So that was good to see. I think it's also good to see more and more how much body cameras have changed the world. We said seven or eight years ago, when Obama was still president,

I said that if he wanted to do one thing, he should see to it that every single police interaction in the country was videotaped. And you can imagine, can you just imagine the kind of beatings that were going on regularly, wanton, statistic beatings before these cameras. I mean, I mean,

that was one that actually did go, did result in a conviction. I mean, how many years ago was that? That's because he had medical evidence of a plunger in his ass, but that's what it took, you know? And,

but I'm saying like this, and I see it on the street as a little boy, I would see cops, not to this level, but I would see cops, not to this level, but I would see cops roughing people up. I saw cops smash a cab driver's head into his taxi at six in the morning when he was trying to get a falafel sandwich simply because he didn't move his car fast enough. And the guy just crumpled to the ground, like, I don't know if he totally knocked out, but, you

know, seeing stars for nothing, just just nothing you think that anybody would have believed them uh the cop would have said you resisted arrest or i mean who knows or you know it would have had a story black people on the block would have believed them well that's right and we talked about oj before and that's why they cheered oj getting off right that it was it's this reality so i i've never been naive uh that. And, and I would also say, cause I want to get into what I think the parts of the verdict I'm uncomfortable with, but I would also say just at the end of the story, those last three minutes or so when,

when Chauvin was on top of Floyd and Floyd was just going limp, there's no way that Chauvin knew he wasn't killing him. Meaning that, I want to focus a little bit on the causation and my misgivings about that case. But without regard to the causation, this guy had no way of knowing whether the guy was dying of a fentanyl or what he was dying of. All he knew was that life was leaving this guy, right? And he did nothing. He did nothing. And

so in that sense... You talking about Chabin did nothing? What's that? You talking about Chabin did nothing? No, I think he did something very specific. He put his knee on his back. He killed him. I mean, maybe I'm not being clear. I'm saying at the end,

when it was clear that he wasn't screaming anymore, he wasn't ready, you give him the benefit of the doubt, he said he could still have gotten up because all the excited delirium, all the things he's claiming, there's some point at the end, and it's like a third of the thing,

where none of those excuses line up anymore. Even your partner said, hey, maybe you should ease up, right? And he did nothing. And that is just important to bring that out no matter what you think about all the other issues that I want to talk about. So I'll stop there. Laura has any comments about what she thinks, And then I want to go to some of the issues. So are we doing this pre-recording? Yes. We recorded. Yeah. So now I'm wasting these insights and giving you ammunition to rebut me by previewing my comments. What do you mean? Is that how this is going to work?

I don't know what you mean. We're not pre-recording. No, no, this, we're recording now. Okay. I mean. We're not pre-recording. No, no, this we're recording now. Okay. I mean, we're not, we're not live is what I meant. So, I mean, I want to, at some point, cause you had Perry Ellis send me the study. So I do want to talk to you about that. Cause I have a feeling you're going to want to talk about that. But I mean, I think, I think, uh, it's, it's really important to think about what he was actually charged with and convicted of. He wasn't charged with a crime that required intent to kill. In fact, the opposite, the most serious charge, second degree murder, is an unintentional killing.

Unintentional during the commission of a felony. So all the jury had to find was that he was committing a felony i.e assault and i think that seemed pretty overwhelming at least to me that you are assaulting someone when you're holding them down in the manner that the whole world saw in that video and then as a result of that act he died now you it sounds like maybe believe but i'll say there's an issue with the causation but there's no requirement that he ever intended to kill, not for any of the charges. I didn't say there was.

I didn't mean to imply there was. Yeah, but okay. It's good to explain that. That's why I said I wasn't saying he didn't intend to kill. But, I mean, you also seem to be suggesting that in some way, you know, maybe there wasn't a direct causal relationship between the action and the death, but it seemed to me like the medical

testimony on that point was overwhelming. And then the jury instruction said, look, there can be multiple causes, but if his knee on Mr. Floyd's neck was one of them, he can't escape responsibility. And so at that point, I don't know how you don't find causation. Let's get into the causation, but I don't want to start with it, but let's don't find causation. But maybe other people disagree with me. Let's get into the causation. I don't want to start with it, but let's get into the causation. So this is how I, this was my uncomfortableness with the causation thing. And let's, Laura understands what I'm about to say, but I just want everybody in the public to understand that when you go to law school they teach you

that you have to prove something beyond a reasonable doubt it's not enough to say you're really really sure he did it i'm really it's really i mean come on it's overwhelmingly probable that he did it or that it happened you have to be able to prove it with with what you would regard as certainty the kind of certainty I kind of think about, like would I trust my kid's life on a certainty like that, you know? So having said that, well, how do I want to start this?

So the way I saw it was this. Oh, by the way, let's frame it this way also. So just yesterday, we found out that this guy Sicknick, the Capitol cop, way let's frame it this way also so just yesterday we found out that this guy sick nick the capital cop didn't die of the um fire extinguisher or the spray you heard that right and i was having arguments at the time when people said listen we don't know what he died of i made a kind of a smart ass argument that every person that drops dead was somewhere the day before and it's it's it's not the correlation is not causation.

They have to prove that he died because of that spray. And people say, you're crazy. Like, I got in bad arguments with it about it. And sure enough, it came out, well, there's no evidence. Actually, on the contrary, actually, the evidence shows that he didn't have a reaction to the spray. So that's the kind of difference between reasonable doubt and probability. We're all pretty sure he died from what happened at the Capitol, but to say we

had reasonable doubt would have meant to look pretty dumb. And Laura actually defends a lot of people getting them out of prison who were sent to prison by people who closed that loop just a little bit too easily okay so what i saw in the trial was the following one expert said this hold was enough to kill anybody this positional asphyxia would have killed a perfectly healthy man it would have killed somebody with bad heart condition it had nothing to do with any of his defensible nothing it was just i was tobin instead was that to do with any of his, the fentanyl, nothing. It was just. That was Tobin that said that. Was that Tobin?

Yeah. Tobin that said that. Yeah. The next person said this was positional asphyxia. He didn't say neck, by the way. He said pressure on the chest and back. And it was exacerbated by his conditions, but this was positional asphyxia. And the third guy, Baker, who was the only one who examined him,

actually said there was no evidence of asphyxia. And the third guy, Baker, who was the only one who examined him, actually said there was no evidence of asphyxia at all. And I wrote here what the- I remember that. That was hilarious when that came out. Okay. So it says, this is from the New York Times, the defense asked Baker whether fentanyl could have caused the long abnormalities. Baker said it was possible, but less likely than other causes. The defense. Now, when I see a less likely, my next question would have been, so it's possible. You're saying less. You didn't say no, it didn't cause less likely.

But more importantly, when I see three different experts on causation have three different opinions. Two of which are mutually exclusive. The first and the last are mutually exclusive opinions. I say to myself, how is that not reasonable doubt? Yes, they all are of the opinion that he caused the death, but they don't have the same opinion, which to me undermines all their opinions. Just like if you ask three economists, what are the causes of the Great Depression? And they give you three different opinions, you don't know what to do. But the fourth thing they do all agree on is, and I'm almost finished, that the amount of fentanyl in his system was three times a lethal dose. Now they say probably didn't kill him. He had a tolerance to it,

but here's what, here's how the times reported. Dr. Baker says, Dr. Baker said the level of fentanyl found in Mr. Floyd's system could be fatal in other circumstances, but that in Mr. Floyd's case, it was less likely cause of death than others. Doesn't say it's not the cause of death, less likely. That might be enough there to say reasonable doubt. Anyway, during Mr. Nelson's cross-examination, Dr. Baker acknowledged that he saw no physical signs of asphyxiation, that Mr. Floyd had a level of fentanyl in his system that could have been called an overdose

in other circumstances, and that his heart condition combined with the exertion played a role in his death. He had an enlarged heart for his size, Mr. Baker said. It required more oxygen to continue pumping. These events are going to cause stress. I guess that's about the end of the fentanyl there. So I'm listening to that. I said, three opinions. I'm not listening to results.

I usually get laughed. Three opinions. They don't all agree. And one opinion says it's less likely he died of a fentanyl overdose. And my next question would have been, doctors, how do you know he didn't die of a fentanyl overdose? He had enough fentanyl to kill him. How do you know beyond a reasonable doubt

that it didn't kill him? If I was a doctor, I would be like, well, if you look at the video and we see how he choked to death, then that would be the number one evidence. This phrase of there's no evidence of is a very tricky phrase. If a doctor answered that, Chauvin would get off. The doctor's got to answer me scientifically.

Doctors can't just say, look at the video. He's got it. When the doctor says it's less likely, do you think this fentanyl killed him? Well, that's less likely. I'm saying, well, you need to know because I'm about to put a man in jail for the rest of his life. Right.

Was that doctor the state police doctor? Because that's what the state coroner said. They said there's no evidence of vexation. They said it was like probably something else. If that's the state, then I think that their evidence would be, any statement from them would be totally tainted since there's a clear history of many people off, right? Let Laura answer me. If I was in a law school class and you're my professor, what are you going to tell me? Mr. Dorman, you're wrong because...

Because that's not what the jury instructions say. So I'm going to read you the jury instruction on causation, and then we can talk about the experts. To cause death, causing death, or cause the death means that the defendant's act or acts were a substantial causal factor in causing the death of George Floyd. The defendant is criminally liable for all of the consequences of his actions that occur in the ordinary and natural course of events, including those consequences brought about by one or more intervening causes, if such intervening causes were the natural result of the defendant's acts. The fact that other causes contribute to the death does not relieve the defendant of criminal liability. Yeah, but it could have been the fentanyl by itself. He just said it was less likely.

I don't think that any doctor excluded the video and the pressure on the neck as a potential cause of death. That's not how I listened to the testimony. I thought that the stakes experts were unanimous in saying that he died from a lack of oxygen flowing to his brain as a result of the pressure being placed on his neck. No, that's not. No, I just read it. He said there was no evidence of asphyxiation. That's what Baker said. Now, listen, if I get anything wrong, then I would actually be pleased to come

back on next week and correct me because I that's my worst nightmare. I literally have dreams about saying something wrong. As a matter of fact, but I think we're talking past each other because you're focused on this word asphyxia. And what I'm telling you is that the medical testimony was that he died in plain English, because there wasn't enough oxygen getting to his brain to allow his body to function. And on that point, I believe everybody was unanimous. And even the doctor that was called by the defense, who was also just ripped apart on cross-examination,

didn't dispute that that was a cause. No, can you die? Just because he didn't die... Fentanyl can do that too. That's how fentanyl kills you. You're shut down. That's an awfully big coincidence that the fentanyl comes in and kills him

as he's lying there with someone's knee pressed on his neck for nine and a half minutes. But coincidentally, the fentanyl kicked in at that exact same moment and caused him to have a problem breathing. That brings me to my next point. I have a reasonable doubt on that. That brings me to my next point. And this a reasonable doubt on that. That brings me to my next point.

And this is where I think you actually will agree with me. So I would say that people die within a certain time zone of when they take their drugs. If you take a lethal amount of drugs at the time the cop is arresting you, you're going to die while he's arresting you. So it is quite a coincidence. Just like the guy Sicknick died the day after he was at the Capitol, pleasing got sprayed. But this is the thing. And this is the thing that bothers me most of all about this whole trial. Floyd was in a car with his, I think they say allegedly drug dealer, Hall, right before Chauvin came. And the state would not give this guy immunity to testify. Now, I believe, and I know Laura agrees with me, that we're supposed to give

the widest berth possible to a defendant to bring in evidence that they think will help their case when they are trying to keep themselves out of jail. If I'm trying to make the case that drug use was what was really behind all this. And by the way, there's a guy, the guy right over there, he was in the car and he can tell us how much drugs he's taken. He can tell us whether he's ever taken as much drugs before. He can tell us whether Floyd was passed out in the car or was fully awake just 10 minutes beforehand. And the state says, nope, we're not giving him immunity. When we know goddamn well, if that guy had something to say to help the prosecution's case, they would have given him immunity in a heartbeat.

Now, where am I wrong on that? You're not wrong on that because immunity is at the almost sole discretion of the prosecution and they wield it very, very selectively. And so they will give immunity to someone who is facing legal jeopardy and not charge them if it's helpful to their case. And they will decline to do that if it is not helpful to their case. And that is just standard operating prosecutor procedure. It's horrible. I'm sorry, I'm going to just dominate for a second and I'll to do that if it is not helpful to their case. And that is just standard operating prosecutor procedure. It's horrible. I'm sorry, I'm going to just dominate for a second and I'll stop. It's horrible. It's no different than withholding evidence. It's just a technical way of doing it.

And when you put those two things together, these kind of, like, listen, if the prosecution had three experts all with exactly the same theory of how he died, if they could have said, no, this is not a lethal dose of fentanyl, or here's how you prove that he had a tolerance. There's so many ways that could have been tired. But to have all this fuzzy stuff and at the same time not give immunity to this guy, I was like, this is not okay. And I would say, where is the ACLU when they're not giving immunity to a guy who could

make us feel better in either direction actually about what really went on here? I think it's reprehensible. If I were in a Supreme Court, I would have to overturn a conviction based on that. Go ahead. I feel you. I think the ACLU wanted to come, but the cop had the knee on the back.

No, that joke didn't come out right. I was trying. Dude, everything you just said was crazy. You know, you're telling me, so you're telling me, George, you're sitting there buying drugs, and then for some reason, he was like, hey, drug dealer, and he put all the drugs in his mouth at that point, and then he gets arrested

and then happens to have just a random old D, and then this innocent white man who happens to have just a random OB, and then this innocent white man who happens to just want to put his little knee on a white man's back just happens to get the wrong idea. It's just your whole narrative. None of what you're saying. Hold on, no, I'm not done. No, no, let's stop.

No, I sent you the video day one. Day one I sent you that video, and your very first reaction was, oh my my god that's the worst thing i've ever seen in my life a year later now that's time to talk about it you're like well let's put some evidence in there because it's not on my side of my thought i'm like no i think you're staring at your heart here i'll tell you hold on hold on i'll answer everything first of all that's that has nothing to do with a with a with a courtroom i don't i'm not you You put a ridiculous narrative in my mouth

that I never said, and I'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is that I can read into the fact that the prosecution didn't give him immunity. I read into that the fact that they thought he would hurt their case.

That's what I read into that. If the Central Park joggers had wanted someone who was in the vicinity to have immunity, that they thought he would hurt their case. That's what I read into that. If the Central Park joggers had wanted someone who was in the vicinity to have immunity to testify on their behalf, I wouldn't have to convince you what the fuck is going on here. Why won't they let these people testify? It must be because what they might say

is not what they want to come out in that courtroom. I'm not saying... No, I gotta go do your show. I gotta leave. Can I read you something? This is Justice Douglas. The principle of Mooney versus Hallahan is not punishment of society for

misdeeds of a prosecutor, but of avoidance of an unfair trial to the accused. And here's the next part. Society wins not only when the guilty are convicted, but when criminal trials are fair. If they are not giving immunity to somebody, we have every right to read into it a reason for that. And it wasn't because they thought this guy had committed a crime

that was so great that it would be some sort of travesty to society to let this guy go free. It was for one reason only. Because of what he might say. And that bothers me. Go ahead. Okay, Lara.

Go ahead, Dan. Lara, if what he was doing, if what Chauvin did, the hole that he had placed on Mr. Floyd, if that were in accord with the Minneapolis police procedure, would that basically exonerate him? Even if it was the cause of death, would that have exonerate him, even if it was the cause of death? Would that have exonerated him? Good question. So if it had been part of their procedure and training, and at least one person would have testified to that, then it would have gone to the reasonableness of his use of force and whether or not it was reasonable with respect to the perceived threat that he was facing. And I feel like

it would have been a closer question, but you have to deal with the second half of that nine minutes where you're talking about someone who's proned out on the ground and is not resisting in any way. And so I think even if in some way it was allowed, maybe earlier on when you're talking about someone who's being combative, I still think it would have been a problem because it seems unreasonable once the person is motionless, helpless on the ground, begging for their life. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, I agree with you on that. That's why I'm not focusing on it. But I will tell you, I read that manual. And as like a boss who writes manuals to try to make sure that things come out the right way print that there's such a thing as positional asphyxia but the main you know emphasize things are the picture of him holding it holding him

just like this they use the word non-lethal hold it quotes a legal opinion that that emphasizes that even in handcuffs it is reasonable for an officer to think that somebody could still get up and do harm as opposed to the way I would have written the manual, which is big, all caps, be very careful with this hold. You can kill somebody this way. Instead, the big caps are like all the different things of excited delirium and how superhuman strength and if you look at it it's like of course these people of mediocre iqs and and little attention didn't get the message or could have gotten the message wrong you know it's you you wonder if they had written a proper manual and just did what i said would showman have done it you you know? I don't know. Of course he would have. He knew he was killing him. He didn't fucking care.

He wanted to kill him. I mean, it's like, it's so obvious to anybody who has two eyes that he knew exactly what he was doing. Why did he want to kill him? They knew each other, you know? They knew each other for a while and they had a beef. Yeah, but I mean, he knows he's being videotaped.

I mean... Well, so what? I mean, so he's a videopath. I can't say the word he wanted to kill, but I would say that you probably couldn't prove that he wanted to kill him. Again, let me go back to where I love him. This is what is always impossible about this.

If you want to tell me, do I think he probably very, very, very, very, very likely killed him? I'll say, yes, of course. I saw the video like everybody else. That's not the conversation I want to have. That's not the conversation we're trained to have in law school. I'm trying to have the conversation about what it truly means to have proven something beyond a reasonable doubt. Like I said, that the fact that they wouldn't give immunity, I can't get past them. Like, what is it they thought he would say, which would knock them off, knock us off reasonable doubt.

That's a fair question. Why don't these experts all see this precisely the same way? Why is he saying it's less likely to be fentanyl? It's, you know, it's... I'm not saying ridiculous stuff. I'm only saying ridiculous stuff because in this is a case that you're simply not supposed to talk this way about it.

If this was about Abu Jamal, nobody would look at me and say, you're right, you're right. Those are good points. Is it possible, no, the reason they didn't give him immunity is because he had nothing to say that was of interest either way and they want to

nail him. That's for the judge to decide. The judge can decide if what he's going to say is inappropriate or prejudicial. As Douglas said in the rest of the quote, he says the prosecution is not supposed to be the architect of how the case goes. The judge is supposed to be the architect. Lamar just said that he died

because there was not enough oxygen to his brain and all three experts agree on that. Yes, but that can be from various causes. When the heart stops, you don't get enough oxygen in the brain. But it might not have been, the heart might not have stopped. It's less likely that the heart stopped from fentanyl.

Again, let me say, if all three had said, nope, couldn't have stopped from fentanyl. Again, let me say, if all three had said, nope, couldn't it be the fentanyl? All right, that's good enough for me. If all three, but is it one guy saying it had nothing to do with his heart condition? One guy saying it was his heart condition, but it's also positional asphyxia. And the other one saying, no, it's the adrenaline. His heart has to pump faster because of all the stress he's under and the heart gave out. This to me is like, well, it seems to me that nobody's really sure what happened here, but the only thing you all agree on is that

if you had found this guy in his room with this amount of fentanyl, you'd all agree, yeah, it was an overdose. You wouldn't be like, wait a second. It was enough to have been an overdose, but because it happened on the heels, and I think Baker even used the word heels, it happened on the heels of what he was going through. We put this together, just like Sicknick died on the heels of being at that insurrection, whatever you want to call it. These are ways that assumptions can lead to injustices. And again, but it's not, that's not the only thing. But then again, the one witness who would have perhaps, maybe not,

insight into Floyd, his drug use, his tolerance, when he took the drugs, that witness was not given immunity. And I'm just saying, listen, I'm happy the guy is in jail for a moral reason. This guy does not have any moral claim to saying I don't belong in jail. This is a tragedy. Don't get me wrong on this. I'm just trying to be different than everyone else I seem to know who is pressured, pressured into not bringing the things up that I'm saying, which would be ordinary course of business in a law school class. If this was just a written hypothetical, everything that I'm saying, I'm not brilliant, this would have come out of two-thirds

of the mouths in the law school classroom. Exactly what I'm saying. Do you think, Lara, that Tobin was being truthful when he said that even a healthy man would have died under these circumstances? I do. I do think that. Now, when you say truthful, you mean truthful or accurate? Accurate. Accurate. Do you think he was being accurate? Look, you're talking about one of the better credentialed people. My question is, is that would mean that Shulman has never done this before. He's never done that particular move before, because if he did, the person would have died.

So what was so extraordinary about this situation that he did something that he never did before, and that could lead to Seton's theory that they knew each other. Well, I guess the other thing is he could have done it before, but just not for that long. I mean, there was something so extraordinary and excruciating about the minutes ticking by.

I think it would be one thing if someone was super combative and you're afraid for your life and it's a matter of seconds or even maybe like a minute or something. But when you look at these circumstances and you look at this action, I think Dan, probably he had never done that before because I don't think it's survivable or at least I think it was a substantial contributing cause as to why Mr. Floyd lost his life. Now, Laura, I sent you those three studies that I found. I think two of them were peer-reviewed. And I don't want to get into the

studies, obviously, because I don't know anything about them. So these studies throw cold water on the notion of positional asphyxia. And actually, one of them calls it junk science, right? So my question is this. Why do you think those studies didn't get introduced? That's really my question. Is the lawyer so bad that he missed it? It's really, really hard to second guess the attorneys. And I think that everything that I know about this case leads me to believe that Derek Chauvin had very competent representation. And just to be clear, you don't actually introduce studies. You don't move them into evidence. They don't come in and the jury goes back and reads them. It's that the expert that you call in their

training and experience can rely on a study and then they can talk about a study and that becomes part of their testimony. It becomes part of the evidence that way. So I guess your question is, why didn't their experts talk about your studies? Well, one of them did. I know one of them did mention one of the studies, the author, but then the defense counsel seemed to not even realize what he was talking about. Like he didn't say, oh yes, I'm happy you mentioned that. Let's talk about that study. You know, it really seemed like he was oblivious. I mean, these studies, I don't know how to put them up. If you read them, you can, again, if you're concerned about justice, you certainly say to yourself, wait a second,

I would like to know whether these studies are legit or not. Because if these studies are legit, and some of them have been cited, or if they're not ridiculous, if they're not debunked, this is kind of a way, a path to reasonable doubt as well. It's really, I saw those studies. I couldn't believe what I was reading. Okay, next question. Well, wait, can I say one more thing about that

before we move on? Because I do want to just talk about one of the studies that you sent to me and it's behind a paywall, but I read the excerpts that you sent me. And even in the studies that are most supportive of your position, they still have language. Not my position. Not my position, but go ahead. Go ahead. Sorry. The point that you're pressing, which is there's a suggestion in the literature that

positional asphyxia is junk science. One of the studies that you sent me said, as found in the medical literature, positional asphyxia is a condition which does exist, but applies to circumstances where a subject cannot escape a position, where the head is flexed down and trapped, or the person's chest is compressed, causing asphyxiation due to the inability to move out of that position. So if I were the prosecutor and the defense's expert was studying that study, that would be my question on cross examination. You're saying this is junk science. How do you explain your own studies conclusion that says it does exist and exists in precisely the circumstances that we're looking at on this video. And that's probably why they didn't use it. No, because no, I don't want to get them wrong,

but I think that's the study that said it had to be over 220 pounds compared to, um, it's happened with, uh, with soda machines falling on, um, on people's backs. It actually gives a, a, a precise weight, uh, which of where that would be the case, but all right. I, you know, um, and, and one of them actually, one of the studies actually says, if you hear positional asphyxia, you should probably assume that excited delirium is the key variable. Listen, this is what people are going to do. I got to keep saying it. These are not my positions. I certainly don't have any opinion on positional asphyxia and whether it exists or not.

I just know that if I was in a jury and I saw those studies, I'd want some kind of explanation. Like, what's your answer to this, Dr. Tobin, Dr. whatever, because, you know, this is reasonable doubt. No, if you were on that jury, do you think you would have just held out and made it a hung jury? I was going to ask that, Dan. Thank you for asking. Well, this brings me to my next question, actually. Wait, so what's your answer? Well, I'm going to answer it, but I'm going to answer it in a cowardly way. So just hold on. All right.

They asked if this case was not appropriate for change of venue and or for sequestration, are those concepts essentially forever dead? I mean, is there any case, again, that will be appropriate for a change of venue after this or sequester the jury after this? So that's an interesting question. And prior to the Tsarnaev case, I would have said that change of venue is dead. Now, that's a federal case. But the Second Circuit did overturn Tsarnaev's conviction and death sentence, saying that there should have been a change of venue and that there was no way for him to get a fair trial in Boston as the Boston Marathon bomber.

And it was a mistake not to move it. And I guess you're saying, well, if that's true, wouldn't it also be true in this case in Minneapolis? And I guess the problem really, as I see it, is that where on earth were you going to find 12 people who hadn't seen that video? Like, do you honestly think he would have been better off in Colorado Springs, Colorado? Billions of people watch that. Would he have been better off in London? Okay, so let me tell you my answer.

My answer is not precise legally, or maybe it's, I'm worried, even though I went to law school, I might be speaking kind of like an amateur here. But I put them together because, first of all, yes, I think that someone in, not just the video, someone in, in, in Minneapolis, um, has felt the full anger of that city. Number one, number two, they might have preconceived notions about the police force, but at the same time, the lack of sequestration, they also know that it's their city that's going to burn, that it's their friends' businesses. They also know that their names are likely to come out. And who knows what could happen to them in their city. In Colorado Springs, you might survive that.

In Minneapolis, if your name's going to come out and you're the one who hung the jury, I mean, who's got the courage to do that? So putting that all together. So getting to the answer to your question is, Dan, if I was on the jury, I don't know if I would have the courage. I think I might have been a hung jury on the murder. I think I would have had sleepless nights about whether or not I would have done that if not for the tremendous moral and reasonable fear for my safety and for my city and what my peers would say. I think I might just say, okay, manslaughter. But if this is an anonymous verdict, like an online thing, given what I've just said, I think I would say, no, I don't trust that prosecution for a minute. Why didn't they introduce, why didn't, why didn't they give this guy immunity? Why are these experts not quite sure? Now I'll, I will tag that by saying that I'm not, Laura may be right. I may be wrong about my impression of the, what the experts said.

Maybe they are speaking more in one voice than I got. Cause I didn't watch it. I just going from snippets in the times and, and comparing like key paragraphs, right? So maybe there are all reconcilable in some way, and maybe that would lead me to a different verdict, but based on the arguments I'm expressing here today, to whatever level of ignorance I have of the facts,

all these things together, I don't feel comfortable. I feel comfortable with Chauvin in jail. I don't feel comfortable where we're going as a legal system. And, you know, combine that with this, you know, the ACLU today tweets, the system allowed Georgeorge floyd to be

murdered remains fully intact moments after we celebrated a win columbus police and it murdered they say the aclu says columbus police murdered a 15 year old black girl now of course you can go on to the body cam on cnn and see that actually they shot her as she was stabbing somebody and as coleman hughes, I bet you that her parent, the parents of the girl being stabbed, is not thinking that the cop murdered somebody. So this kind of, where Laura Bazelon is still on the case, the ACLU sure ain't.

And we're just slipping and sliding into a kind of discrediting of what used to be honorable, which is to have to have an unpopular opinion of defending the possibility that an unpopular person might not be properly convicted, even though he's probably guilty. Look how the ACLU proudly stood up for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Proudly, nobody gave,

you could stand up for a 9-11 terrorist and you go to cocktail parties and you'll be perfectly kind of fine. But you cannot stand up and say, hey, why didn't the prosecution give immunity to this guy? You can't say that on TV. It worries me. It worries me. And I know Laura doesn't think

I'm crazy. I guess what I'm saying is that even though Laura disagrees with my end outcome on the final, but she knows what I'm saying here. This is what you're devoted your whole life to is fighting these exact things that I'm complaining about. It's definitely true that I have represented some extremely, extremely unpopular people. But I also just question your premise that a lot of people ever really thought that that was noble or were ever willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I feel like 12 Angry Men is a movie for a reason. It's fiction. It's this idea that you really are going to have people who are the Atticus Finches, right? And in the jury room, that same person. And that's never how our system really operated. You are right. I retract it. It was considered noble among

the people that used to be in the ACLU and that type. It was the right that would ridicule an attorney for defending Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. It's not the right anymore, or the right might still in the case Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, but I'm saying among the people who would have respected that. They no longer respect it.

It boggles the mind that the ACLU will call somebody a murderer without a trial. This is a total rewiring of everything that we ever knew about the ACLU. They wouldn't call Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a murderer 15 years ago. They'd say, we don't know yet, you know?

And what's incredible, Dan is one of the that this woman is on is stabbing somebody it's not like you know there's no there's no doubt what was going on there and and so so this i mean it would be helpful for somebody on the left to say at least raise these issues even if even if they think, say, I think we got the right guy. I think we got a guilty man, but you know what? There's a lot of things about the way this trial was held that we really shouldn't be so gleeful about. We really shouldn't think it's so, we shouldn't be so like casual about the fact that they did this by suppressing a witness. It's, you know... Is it possible that that person just didn't have anything useful to contribute?

That's up to the judge to decide. Well, according to Laura, it sounds like the prosecution is the one who ultimately decides where to grant immunity. So it's not ultimately up to the judge. I mean, I know nothing about- You are a perfect example of what I'm saying, because like I said, and I'll let Laura answer. If this were a different case, I wouldn't be having to convince

you of this. If this was a case of, like I said, Central Park Five, and I told you, well, actually there was a witness, but he was selling drugs at the time. So the prosecution is not going to let him testify. Would you ever say, well, I suppose that's because the prosecution knows that he's got nothing worthwhile to offer. Listen to how you're bending your natural instincts in order to make this okay. It's not okay. That's all I'm saying. It's not okay what they did that. It's just not okay. Maybe legal. It's not okay. That's all I'm saying. It's not okay what they did then. It's just not okay. Maybe legal. It's not okay. So, Laura, what do you want to say?

Well, I confess that I do not know the ins and outs of Minnesota state law. I can tell you that in the Ninth Circuit, so that's the state where I live in, I think, eight other states. In federal court, there's a way for the judge to force the prosecution to grant immunity if the judge determines that the failure to grant immunity would deprive the jury of testimony that would distort the fact-finding process. So, you know, it has to be extreme. And I don't know that that was a law that was operational in the state of Minnesota.

So I have no idea whether they, like, listened to this guy talking camera or not. I mean, I will say, I guess I just kind of as a practical matter, don't find your argument very convincing because like, what is he really gonna say? You know, he's gonna talk about the time that he spent with Mr. Floyd in the car a full 10 or 15 minutes before we saw this video.

And I guess I honestly just keep coming back to the video because I believe that the prosecution could have played the video and sat down and they would have gotten the same result as if they had had a three-week trial because it literally is um it literally is about common sense because you're just watching one person extinguish another person's life in real time it's it's not common sense if somebody has a lethal dose of drugs in them. It's not. It can be. It's also not common sense because I don't know enough about neck holes. I watched the video and the only thing I knew for sure is that Chauvin had his knee on the guy's

neck or close to the guy's neck and that George Floyd lost consciousness. But I don't have the expertise in that particular neck hole to know. I couldn't tell you that neck hole lost consciousness. But I don't have the expertise in that particular neck hold to know. I couldn't tell you that neck hold was fatal. If somebody had told me that neck hold actually doesn't cause any harm at all, I couldn't, an expert said that, I couldn't have said you're wrong. The only reason I know that neck hold is fatal is because Tobin told me it was fatal. Otherwise, I really don't know. But also because you watched this guy get murdered.

No, no, no. But you're saying, I watched a guy lose consciousness in front of my eyes. And die. But I don't know that it was, but I can't say that the neck hold is a fatal hold because I'm ignorant about neck holds. Somebody, I read, well, it's got to be both sides of the carotid artery to have an effect. I don't know. It looked bad, but if an expert had said, no, this neck hold is non-lethal, I would have said, oh, well, all right. I mean, I wouldn't have thought that, but sure. The reason I know it's lethal is because Tobin told me it was lethal.

Cyrus Khambatta, So, listen, we're going back and forth here, and the question is whether we're- Robby Barbaro, Well, just saying, like, the people that say the video tells you all you need to know, I just don't agree with that line of reasoning. I needed to know whether that neck hold was fatal or non-lethal or not. And I had to rely on Tobin and others to tell me. Yeah. I assumed it was lethal. That's why Seton referred to when I first saw it, I was like,

this is a Nazi, you know, that the first time I realized not happily that there was more than meets the eye was when we saw the body cam refrigerator. He was calling for his mother and saying he can't breathe before he was ever on the ground. It's like, okay, well, that's disturbing because now I could see how they're going to claim that they didn't believe him when he said he couldn't breathe. Because actually he was saying he couldn't breathe, you know, when they weren't even touching him. So it's like, oh, shit, that's, that's, that's complicating things now. Right. God damn it. And then they, they offered to open the window for him when he said he couldn't breathe in it.

It's like, Oh shit, they don't, they didn't look like they were out to really, you know, manhandle him because they, they could have just thrown him in the back of the police car. They, they chose not to, he said he wanted to lay on the ground. So they laid him on the ground. Like it was so many things like, Oh shit many things like oh shit this is it's not as it's just not as clear i wish that didn't these other facts hadn't come out right something oh maybe i gotta keep an open mind that there's not everything that meets the eye here still looks really bad but then all of a sudden now i think with the experts are not really saying the thing. And then, well, yes, it's not likely.

This would have been a drug overdose, but the, the converse or the obverse or whatever of not likely is it's possible. It was. And I don't think that's a stretch that I'm saying. As soon as I hear out of the mouth of an expert saying, no, that's not likely what I'm hearing and not say is no, that's not possible. And when I hear him say, it is possible that I, as I understand it is reasonable doubt as to that fact.

Now you can say, we don't want to believe that expert. We don't believe the other two, the jury's free to do that. Right. I don't know, but let's not pretend there wasn't an expert there who said something which, if that was all that was said, the prosecution's expert, you know? And so the reason,

so what could the guy in the car say? The guy, as I said, the guy in the car could say, he was totally laid out, just basically passed out. He rose to the occasion because he was under stress. He could say, I never saw him take that much drugs before in his life. That's the most I ever saw him take. That might go to the idea of tolerance. He could say he took it exactly the time that he took it. I guess they could probably figure that out by going backwards by how much was in his blood sugar, or maybe not. I don't even know how it works.

I don't know what he could say, but all I know is they didn't want to let him testify. And I don't think it was illegal in the Minnesota law. The ninth circuit is the only one that does that. But I do know that I have a problem with that sort of thing. I always have. I always have. I always thought that prosecutors that withhold evidence should go to jail. I told our friend Flom that on our podcast, and he told me about this concept of prosecutorial immunity. I

didn't even know about it. And I couldn't process it. And I had to go and look at it. I said, how could a prosecutor who keeps out evidence not go to jail? They should go to a special place in hell for that. And if you have a witness, I think the assumption should be that if you're on trial, unless there's a really overpowering, compelling reason, you should be able to bring in any evidence you want to show your innocence. That's what I think. But as you know, that's not the way the law works. And there's a big distinction between manipulating a law that works in your favor, which is what you can do as a prosecutor by deciding not to give somebody immunity, and hiding exculpatory evidence, which is against the law, deprives people of their freedom. And you're right, it's completely maddening because they have absolute immunity. People are talking all day long about qualified immunity and how terrible qualified immunity is.

At least you can leap over qualified immunity. You can do zero, zero civilly. No matter how horribly they behave at trial. And that to me is maddening. It's absolutely maddening because it reinforces the worst kind of behavior with no consequence. But we're talking about two different kinds of behavior. But I see them as the same morally.

And I see that, in other words, if this prosecution knew one fact, one fact that might've been important to the jury and they use their legal position to keep that fact out, morally, they are no longer on the side of justice. Now they are no longer on the side of justice now they are no different than the prosecutor who withholds exculpatory evidence it's just there's no law against it the law is on can we uh can we talk can i say something i haven't been here in 15 minutes can i say that every court has ever worked like that since the beginning of courts so i mean like i feel like you have a problem with

the judicial system which i agree i do i agree i. I hate the whole system. This is why our first fundraiser was for the Innocence Project, right, Perry? That was the first one we wanted to do anyway. This is something I take very, very seriously. And the very thought pattern, which I've always taken seriously, I'm somehow now being forced to put out of my mind, as I see similar issues in this trial, under tremendous pressure to do that. And I'm having trouble with that because there are sequestration, change of venue, keeping out witnesses, causation. There are real issues here to me. And I just, you know, but like, again, I'm happy he's in jail. I don't think a nice person got off here. Like I said, he thought he was killing him.

He had no reason to think he wasn't killing him. I get that. But the law is, you know. Who is in charge of sentencing? Is it the same judge at trial that presents him? Do we, anybody have anything? Yeah, you have to talk, Laura, because there's some people who are just listening.

She's nodding yes. Yes, it's the same judge, and he is going to go through a very sort of set analysis where they're going to file this memo in a couple weeks called a Blakely memo, where the prosecution lists factors that they are going to say are aggravating and mean that the judge should go up from what the standard guidelines say, and then the defense obviously is going to argue for leniency. They're going to talk about Officer Chauvin's lack of a criminal record and other kinds of background information. And then the judge is going to decide. I think the guidelines, the way they are, the max for the top count is 40 years, but it looks like under the guidelines, he's looking at 11 or 12 if the judge hands down

the kind of traditional guideline sentence, but he could go up or he could go down. If it's 11, he can be out in seven, you say? I don't know how much good time you get, but that might be right. Do you think that will provoke the worst possible reaction if he gets 11 years? Do you think we're looking at riots or something resembling that? I mean, I know that's not necessarily your field, but do you have an inkling? That's an interesting question. I mean, so the best analogy I can give you is, do you remember the Brock Turner sexual

assault case that happened at Stanford, the swimmer? And do you remember that the prosecution asked for six years of the sentencing and the judge gave Brock Turner six months. And then there was a campaign to recall that judge from office and it succeeded. He was, he was recalled for that single sentencing decision, which I personally disagree with. I do not like the idea that we're interfering with judicial independence and mobilizing a mob to throw people out of jobs that they have because we trust them to make certain decisions whether or not we agree with them. But it goes to your

point, is there a risk that there could be tremendous backlash if there's a consensus that Officer Chauvin did not get enough time? I think, yes, there probably is a risk of that. And that makes me uncomfortable. I think I'm just not, I'm just not a carceralist. Like, I don't believe that anybody should be getting effective life sentences. Really, almost anybody, almost anybody. And it makes me uncomfortable, this idea that we demonize and hate certain people so much that we want their heads cut off. We want them electrocuted. We want them locked away for the rest of their lives. And if judges aren't punitive enough, they're going to have to pay some kind of price for it. And I think, honestly, that that's such a dangerous precedent. And it's really, it should not be a progressive value. It should not be a progressive value because the only people who end up getting fucked over by that, excuse my language, are people of color because they're the vast majority of people that end up getting sentenced. And so I just don't, it makes me deeply uncomfortable when people are screaming and yelling for blood. So I agree with you. I am totally against the death sentence. I think the judicial system is totally fucked up. If you're against the death sentence, it means life sentences in prison. beyond measure. But I also really, really don't understand

how, and even with this, you know, what just happened with Nakia Bryant, you know, people are saying, oh, well, she was stabbing somebody. And it's like, yeah, she was, but she's also a child. And aren't police supposed to fucking de-escalate situations?

How do you de-escalate a stabbing? I don't know. I'm not a cop. I have no idea. So you know... You can watch a video and know for sure what, you know, exactly the causation of... But you can't...

But you can't look at someone being stabbed and realize that it requires instant stopping when someone's gonna get killed? That's not what I said. That's not what I said. That's not what I said at all.

You can't deescalate a stabbing. Come on now. I think you can actually. I think there are ways that they say, I'm not saying that I could do it. I'm saying that they argue they can. I'm saying that videos of white people doing it. No, there's so many videos of white people

being stopped with knives. I can send you one right now on Instagram. It is a campaign right now. I don't know if it's a conspiracy, but we're sending out a shitload of videos right now. White people's getting off of being crazy. I always believe in conspiracies of like, you know how the social media makes you think crazy shit? I see black people being shot and white people being off of my feed. And I know you're seeing something different on your feed.

That's all I'm saying. If somebody was stabbing your daughter and the cops were there, and they could stop the next stab with a shot. I don't think they had yet stabbed her. I think she was going for her first stab. First stab, first stab. Of course you want, have we gone so far from-

I'm gonna say, no, I don't want people shooting. No, I don't want- The cause used to be unarmed, undangerous, sometimes innocent. In other words, like really minding their own business. Black people being harassed,

beaten up and shot by the cops. Have we morphed this into the fact that somebody caught in the act of stabbing somebody is the same issue? This is not the same issue. Yes, yes, it is. I'm saying it's the same issue. I said at the act of stabbing somebody is the same issue? This is not the same issue. Yes. Yes, it is. I am saying it's the same issue. I said at the beginning of the story that we have a bigger issue of violence in this country

that is not race, it's not based on women, it's not based on terrorism. It's based on a psychotic level of we need to kill people. Like, you listen to cops, they always say, I mean, we gave them a chance, we gave them a chance. And it'd be like, like the Atlanta student. Remember the drunk Atlanta dude? He was for an hour. He was trying to leave, and they wouldn't let him leave. And then he got shot when they grabbed their taser. They shot the fuck out of him.

So, yes, I'm saying that this is a violent problem that's bigger than what you're saying. Yeah, that's my point. I'm astounded that you would think that somebody stabbing somebody deserves the same consideration as an innocent person. I'm saying that because you look at everybody as evil, you make an evil decision. I look at you. I'm saying that the cops need to stop looking at everybody as evil. That way they can actually distinguish it. Because I'm saying the cops look at everybody like that stabbing woman.

They look at me like that when I have nothing in my hand and they'll shoot at me because I've got the guns in my head. I'm saying that policy moves in. Yeah, that's the problem. But that's not, I agree with you on that actually, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the person who was stabbing somebody. That is evil. What I'm asking is, is there no other way that police officers are trained to de-escalate that situation. Well they can tase. Okay, but why did they tase her? Why did they shoot her four times?

She was 59 years old. Because tasing is not as certain to save the other woman's life. I do wonder what an English cop is trained to do under those circumstances. It doesn't happen very often in England. It does. There's videos of that happening, though. I don't know how often. I mean, actually, that's an obscure statement that I'm not going to actually argue yes or no to.

I wish somebody would Google violent death in England right now. A slight amount of violent crime compared to us in England. Laura, can you wait a minute? We're number three in the world, though, no? We're number three next to Afghanistan. I don't think they needed to unload four bullets into a 16 or 17-year-old girl. I don't. I mean, I'd like to believe that there was something short of him doing that

that would have de-escalated that situation. I'm not a cop either. She hadn't yet used the knife. And you really just have to wonder if that amount of force was actually appropriate and that her life needed to be taken that way. It seemed, it was just shocking to watch. And I understand it's not the same situation. Every single one of these situations is different. But to go back to the original point about, Seton's point about just the problem that we have

where cops look at everybody and they see a monster kind of dictates, I think, everything that comes next. And of course, we know some people seem more monstrous to cops than other people. And by that, I i mean when they look at black people they see criminals and they see threats right the point of the whole cops are just to be like oppress people that's the whole point and then like we get scared and we go we need to like if you look at like the 80s we have those 80 movies of just cops going like just

going against the law we just we as a country we just need them to go crazy and i'm just like we need to stop looking at our cops as enforcers. They're not enforcers. I mean, we're also enforcers, mental health workers, drug counselors. There's that argument. Okay. It says they're not sure how many times he's shot. I think that if that was my daughter

about to be stabbed, I would be hugging that policeman now. I would not be, I would be hugging that policeman now. I would not be, I mean, listen, if there was some other way, and it's sure, sure to have saved the life of the person who's about to be stabbed, then I would have to agree with you. It has to be sure.

Otherwise, we're going to have to err on the side of saving the life, rather than saving the life of the person who's stabbing. I don't know if they know that she's 16 at the time that she's stabbing it. I don't know that. But I think that, you know, I think we do have to be careful here

because as we know, murders are going up as cops are less and less as cops are going to become more and more cautious I mean imagine if this girl was stabbed and died what would we say about that would we blame the cop

I don't think we'd make the paper but also I think it's worth noting that if I'm not mistaken she called the cops for help and wound up getting killed. What can the cop do about that? She asked for help. I don't know if it's true or it's not true. At the point where somebody takes a knife and is trying to plunge it into another person at that point we've always

assumed that was when the cop was justified to shoot now we're talking about a totally new world where even where somebody might be about to kill somebody we're not sure the cop should take all action to save the life i don't know yeah that's what i'm saying that don't know. That's up to our legislators, I guess. I'm not comfortable living in a country where it's okay for cops to kill kids. I mean, I'm just not.

I don't know how they could be trained differently, but there has to be a better solution or a better way to handle. Well, I mean, at some point, if you want to be realistic, I don't know what the law of diminishing returns is on how low with all proper reforms, how, how low we can get the number of killings that shouldn't have happened down.

It can never be zero. We can't in the vacuum because the cops are a part of the gun system. No, no. I'm making a point about the law of diminishing returns, meaning that we have 18 black people killed unarmed last year, I think. So you want to get it down to 10. But to get it down to 10 to 5, like, you know,

it gets harder and harder and harder and harder and takes more and more. But one thing is for sure, there is the other side of this problem is that when you have a culture, and this goes to what you were saying, Sid, about guns and all that. When you have a culture like Chicago,

I don't want to bring this up in the wrong way, but just as an example, where you have this tremendous amount of gun violence knife violence tremendous number of kids being shot every weekend young kids the times that a whole story about all the teenagers shot dead in the violence there over the course of years when you have that going on it's not reasonable to think that there's going to be interactions with the cops where the cops are going to kill somebody that's going to happen so we're going to we're going to be interactions with the cops where the cops are going to kill somebody.

That's going to happen. So we're going to have to put some attention also to the social problem. This is not, again, I'm going to go bigger. This is not about the black people in the ghetto shooting themselves. This is a bigger issue of the entire government that there were 40 mass shootings in three months.

I don't think this is, again, looking at this issue as secular to me, I think it's like going in circles because nothing's going to be solved but it's both but it's both because it's both because in the black community they have a like a 12 times greater rate of being killed by white people generally kill white people black people generally kill black people. Black people generally kill black people, right? Yes, that is a thing. But a black person has a 12 times higher chance of being killed in his community than the average white person does. That's just a reflection of our whole entire community. We also have a reason to have higher unemployment.

We also have higher diabetes. We also make great music. We always are front runners of all the things culturally. That's just how we are. I said it's the social problem. I said we have to address the social. I think we're on the same side What I'm saying is that we're also gonna have to find a way to fix all the things I mean, they're all they're all one bouquet what you're discussing. It's not just the shootings the poverty all all of it I'm gonna I'm gonna stipulate to all of everything you're saying but that problem as a whole also drives

This greater problem because there's tremendous violence going on in our inner cities. And when you have people stabbing each other, like last week, it was a 13-year-old got shot right before he threw the gun. I don't think he was black. I think he was Hispanic. But I was like, 13-year-olds are in gun culture, right? Like that is such a national shame for us 13 year olds carrying guns how much how old was the kid that how old was the ridden house kid was he only 16 he was 17 i think i think he was 19 was he 19 okay i thought so let me double check i can i can google that

the columboy the columbine boys were 16 all right, I'm just probably mixing them all up. Hold on a sec. Yeah. I don't want to tell you the wrong thing. I think Rick... But I mean, it's a side note. It's a side note kind of issue. I'm just bringing it up.

But I just... I don't know. I agree with you. Again, it's a social issue. But just the... The only reason I'm only bringing this point up is because there's a tendency to be a whataboutism. They're like, well, they're murdering them,

but what about them murdering them? And I'm saying, like, this is bigger than the two groups of people. This is like, you go to any neighborhood and any group of people in this country, they're motherfuckers murdering people for crazy reasons. We have, I mean,

there's so much murder in this country. It's crazy shit. I mean, everybody assumes that they're murderers. I need to correct myself. When I said 19, he was 17. Now he's 18, but he was 17 at the time.

Sorry. So, so, so, see, I want to say, I think you're right. There is, there is a tendency to, for a, there's a bad faith whataboutism that people on the right will do. When you want to call attention to this problem, let's say, oh, well, if you really care about black lives, why don't you care about what goes on in Chicago? That is not, I think, you know, that's not what I'm not what I'm doing. But there is also a circling the wagons around an issue where I say, well, anybody who wants to talk about the problem is guilty about whataboutism.

And I don't buy that either. There really is a problem. We really do have a tremendous number of kids being shot in Chicago or in is, it is, or in cities. These are our children. I'm going to say the whole country. Hold on. The whole country has been shot. And I've said this before,

and the fact is, nobody really speaks for them. And that's a tragedy. Like there's nobody, it's nobody's cause. These poor, tomorrow, a bunch of, we said this in the podcast,

tomorrow, a bunch um black children will die in chicago and whose cause is that who who is who's devoting their life there's a bunch of marches on that there's plenty of marches and i'm saying like who is out there trying to prevent this in a short-term way in a long-term way so we need to have better schools but these are all things we can do today and maybe see the results 15 years from now. I think there are organizations. Hold on. But the fact is, unfortunately, unfortunately, the only way to save those lives tomorrow is the cops, right?

No! No! Here's the thing. Can we go back to the history of America? The history of America. Everybody keeps bringing up Chicago like it's an anomaly. It is not an anomaly. Let's talk about the biggest massacre that ever happened in this country, the Hackfields and the McCoys,

which was a fucking microcosm of what was happening all in Kentucky and Appalachian Mountains for 100 years. They were killing each other mercilessly for 100 years. They would have killed more people.

They just want more people around. This is a tendency, again, of a main ingredient in our genes and our culture. We are some murdering motherfuckers and it has nothing to do with Chicago, has nothing to do with the cops. It's just involved in the mess,

the fact that we just have 400 million guns in this country. That's the main problem. But there are bad neighborhoods, and there are neighborhoods that don't have shootings. But where? What neighborhood does not have shootings? I mean, like, the people aren't there. But the people have guns everywhere. And if they aren't, like, they're not reported,

but they're... Okay, I'm sorry. I'm going on conjecture because it's not reported, and I'm not going to go that far. But to say this country's not violent is a absurd statement. I don't actually agree. I'm saying that we need cops.

That's really all I'm saying. We need cops to save lives in the short term. This body cam video, and then maybe the cop should have tased it, but whatever it is, but it appears to be a life... It that's a picture that's a life being saved while life is being killed but we do need cops and it's these are these are difficult issues i don't know i don't know what i'm saying okayops are not trained properly.

They're not trained to deal with the things that they're dealing with. And so they're killing people that they shouldn't be killing. And they're violent. And they're, you know, some of them are fucking sociopaths. And some of them are probably trying to do a decent job. But the system is really, really fucked. Yeah, I don't know.

They're not killing that many people actually, but they are, but they are, they are, they're, I think there's, they're abusive to people. I'm always said that's the... I mean, anybody who, anybody who is killed, like they shouldn't be killing people. There are other ways to de-escalate situations. Okay, but you're saying right now, but we're complaining about them when they, as we should, when they kill George Floyd.

And then we're in the same conversation complaining about them when they kill someone who was about to stab another person. And I'm just saying that... I'm complaining saying that that is probably not a careful conversation we're having. That's all. If I was a cop, I'd be like, really?

The only person who saved this person's life is Derek Chauvin? That's what you think of us? I'm out. I could just see that reaction for a cop. I mean, the history of the cops are not good. I mean, I history of the cops are not good. I mean, I think the cops could have avoided all of this shit if they actually had better predispositions the last 10 years

and actually admitted that they had a problem. Instead, they had to let the country fucking have a fucking riot until they went, oh, maybe we'll do some paperwork. So, I mean, they could have avoided all this shit. But, again, every institution in this country has some bullshit about them. It's just the cops murder people. When you give people who like the idea of being cops, if you want good cops, you should not let anybody be a cop

who wants to be a cop, if you know what I mean. Like, who wants to be a cop? Someone who has a bad, probably a bad reason to do it. And you definitely don't want to give people guns and badges because, you know, what hall monitors become when you give give them power so you're dealing with some very dark currents of human nature that's why i'm saying the law of diminishing returns like there's no magic training or whatever it is you're you're going to have a certain number of cops who will always do horrible things that's i don't know i don't know what number we say

this is as good as it's going to get. Because you're saying that's the nature of the kind of person who wants to become a police officer. And human nature, and human nature. And it's also the fact that we need a certain number of cops and there simply aren't enough people,

there aren't enough superhumans to do a job that requires basically being a superhuman. The job description for a cop is basically unfillable. You need to do a job that requires basically being a superhuman. The job description for a cop is basically unfillable. You need to be a lawyer, a psychiatrist, a soldier. It can't be done.

We gotta wrap it up. No one has the intellectual ability to be a cop, but not perhaps the physical ability to do it. People have the physical ability to do it, People have the physical ability to do it, but not the intellectual ability to do it. Nobody's qualified for that job.

What do I have? I want to wrap it up, and I want to get everybody the last word on it. I want to say, as I'm talking about this, I'm trying to really, in my own mind even, say, what do I really think about this, George Floyd? So I would say this, that really what bothers me most of all

is that that segment of our intellectual spectrum that normally would speak out about issues, regardless of who was on trial, seems to have disappeared. And because of that, there's something that bothers me i don't know if i was in the courtroom i i didn't watch the whole thing maybe i maybe i would have voted uh to to second degree murder i don't know i just the the dearth of conversation about the very issues that i brought up i don't i mean i don't even know if I'm right about these issues. I'm like, all I know, all I know is that the reason I'm not hearing any of these things talked about is because of a really bad intellectual peer pressure that's going on right now,

where people who would normally really want to be talking about such things have gone stoned, st things have gone stone cold silent. That makes me nervous. What's that? Well, the mere fact that I mentioned the possibility that the hold wasn't a lethal hold, and it turned out to have been one, at least according to the experts,

but even bringing that up, I would be hesitant in a social setting. Like, hey, you know, I don't know much about holds. Was that really lethal? Even to say that, I would have been uncomfortable saying it. So, I mean, I agree with you there. Conversations people don't even want to have. It should be.

I have to. You know what? I'm gonna agree with your instincts, Dan. That was a good question not to bring up. That was solid. You don't want to bring it up around people. I agree. Yeah. It's a... I'm because... Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, but you understand. No, you definitely shouldn't. That's a very uncomfortable question. There was a time when people who said the Central Park joggers were innocent, where Donald Trump wrote horrible editorials about it and shamed people out of that position. Listen, we should all be people of principle. The country will be much better off sticking to principle. Principle is all we have. Lara, why don't you give us some wisdom? You're the expert.

Okay, so... And then bid adieu because we've been on, what, an hour? We also had to stop this downstairs. Okay, well, why don't we end with Seton's? Well, Larry, if you have anything to say, please do so. Give us a nice summation. Take your time too. This makes me uncomfortable to say because I never root for the prosecution. I am a former federal public defender and in my heart, I'll always be a public defender. And in the job I have now, even though I'm a law professor, I still represent people up against the power of

the state. So it makes me uncomfortable. But I guess my feeling about the Floyd case is that if that isn't overwhelming evidence of guilt under those statutes, I don't know what is. And if you can't convict in that case, no officer could be convicted ever. Will you grant me that the issues that I raised are intellectually honest issues? I grant that you fervently believe in the issues that you've raised.

None of the issues that you've raised have moved me off of my position or made me think there was a reasonable doubt. Okay. Reasonable doubt is, of course, a fuzzy term anyway. I'm not even convinced that juries really have a handle on what it is, if you can even define it. Let me ask you one question, Law. What if this were to have occurred in the trial?

What if they asked him, because I think the defense guy was cowardly. What if he said to the doctor, are you sure he didn't die of a fentanyl overdose? And what if the doctor had said no? Would that be reasonable doubt? Okay, so your question is, are you sure he died? Are you sure he died? Are you sure he did not die of a fentanyl overdose?

And the doctor said, no, I'm not. Can you rule out a fentanyl overdose as the exclusive cause of death? And the doctor said, I can't rule it out as the exclusive cause of death. Exclusive? That might be reasonable. But I don't think a doctor would say that, right? Any doctor, I don't care who it is, I mean, unless it's Donald Trump's doctor, when you put him up there, it's gonna talk about multiple causatory factors.

And then- Let me rephrase the question. That was one, right? I'll rephrase the question. You're kind of asking me a hypothetical that like would call for completely different facts, I think. I'll rephrase the question.

What if the doctor's question was, "'Doctor, are you sure he wouldn't have died anyway, "'just as of an overdose?' I think if I was a doctor, are you sure he wouldn't have died anyway, just as an overdose? I think if I was a doctor, okay, let's pretend that I'm answering this question. If I was a competent, respectable doctor, and you asked me that question, I would say that the chances that he would have died that day in that way, exclusively or almost entirely because of drugs, is vanishingly small. That's what I would say.

Why is it that? Because it's like the biggest coincidence in the world to be like, okay, George Floyd had a bad heart and he had fentanyl in his system. And oh my gosh, he happened to die at the moment that this officer was extinguishing his ability to breathe for nine minutes. And we can take that out completely and say that he just would have died anyway. To me, I can't make sense of that as an argument.

Let's play the top, continue to play the lawyer. Okay, doctor, are you saying that dying with a three times lethal dose of fentanyl in your system would be a coincidence? What I'm saying is it is a coincidence beyond belief that somebody with that amount of fentanyl, with the tolerance that we've talked about, with the conditions that we talked about, just so happened to die after an officer pressed his knee on his neck for nine minutes and limited his oxygen flow and you're asking me to say that that was not a contributing factor well okay so when you say when you say the tolerance that's actually one of the issues i say if they could prove to me

that he hadn't talked but they didn't go into that like how do they like it seemed to me by anyway wise he had nba body he was a big dude dude. So that's why the guy in the car bothered me because I thought the guy in the car might have been able to shed some light on his tolerance. He's not an actor either, right? Like he can say maybe how much he saw him take, but he still couldn't talk about like the metabolizing effects that his body would have. I mean, you know when you use substances regularly, your body builds up a tolerance, right? He could have told us perhaps, yeah, I give him that same amount every week. He takes it every week. Then I say, oh, well, yeah, that's evidence of a tolerance.

That's what I'm saying. Like they left that out. But if you say, well, but it also could have been the most he ever took. You know, we don't know what his tolerance is. We're working backwards to say, well, he had 11 nanograms. We don't want to say it killed him, so he must have had a tolerance. Can doctors analyze

tolerance post-mortem? No, there isn't, but they could analyze tolerance by proving that he was taking these high amounts regularly. Larry, if I, as a legal matter, I went to law school too, but I forgot this. If I tried to kill Perrielle,

I shoot her, but at the same time, she has the audacity to have a heart attack and die just before the bullet hits her. Would that be attempted murder? Yeah. That's attempted murder. If there's, if it's very clear

that she was dead at the time that you shot her. If you shoot a dead body intending to kill, it's attempted murder. So she would have to be dead. So Sheldon, you could theoretically, you could say it was attempted murder if you found he had intent, but Floyd died offended, but Sheldon intended to kill him, which was not established, by the way. This is the only way your hypothetical would work, Dan, I think, which is that he did what he did

and Floyd was already a corpse. And then at that point, when he was a lifeless body, he put his knee on his neck. Then it's attempted. By the way, I don't even understand the substantial factor test. Like, okay, let's go, Dan made his point. So if I pull a gun on you and you get scared

and run into the street and get hit by a car, that's, that's, that's, I caused the death, right? Yes. Now, if I pull a gun on you and you have a heart attack, was that substantial? Now that's. Well, if there's evidence that you, like, I wasn't in the middle of having one and you pulled out a gun, you pulled out the gun, you scared me so much that I had a heart attack and dropped dead. Yes. You pulled out the gun, you scared me so much that I had a heart attack and dropped dead.

Yes, you bear responsibility for my death. I pull a gun on you and the person next to you gets scared and has a heart attack. Jesus Christ, what is this? I mean, what a substantial factor you need. What kind of a shit game are you trying to play here? I know, but listen, I think you're like, but you take, if you take out physical assault,

I think you actually, it's not a very good parallel. Physical assault has to actually be in it. So it's mostly saying if I punch you in the face and you have out physical assault, I think you actually, it's not a very good parallel. Physical assault has to actually be in it. So it's mostly the same. If I punch you in the face and you have a heart attack, then, oh, am I liable for that? But, I mean, yeah, I think you are. Okay. Yes, you are, and that's felony murder,

and I believe that was one of the charges that Chauvin was convicted of. That's correct. The top charge was felony murder. If I hit a dude on the street and his head hits the ground and he dies i'm going to jail right under felony murder you are yeah if i had been the defense attorney i would have gone for broke on that causation issue and i would have you know they say i guess maybe this is a cliche not to ask questions unless you know the answer which is why

i think they don't ask tougher questions but I would have gone for broke realizing this was my only hope. And I would have just said, well, how do you know? Are you telling me that you can tell me that someone with a lethal dose of fentanyl couldn't have died? Okay, doctor, well, when does somebody die of an overdose in relationship to when they take the drugs? The next day? Don't they take it when they have a maximum level of the drug in their system isn't isn't that when they die isn't that what george floyd was at right then the maximum level of the drug in his system how can you tell me that that's what i would say but you know i don't go back to this detail because you can't let go this is been no

conversation they have a maximum amount or you had a high amount he had three times i read it you had three times the times the lethal dosage. So much so that the medical examiner said that if you had found him in his room that way, they would have assumed it was an overdose. I don't think there's a lethal dose per se, as I understand it. The lethality of men. They've known of people dying at three times less. It's sort of like blood alcohol.

A blood alcohol that would kill me isn't necessarily a blood alcohol that would kill you. Does that make sense? Thank you. I don't know how far it was going. No, no, no. No, no, because he didn't say, this is not a dose that would have killed a man that big. He could have said that.

That would have been good enough for me. If he had said that, then that would have been my answer. Well, actually, the doctor testified, a man 225 pounds or whatever wouldn't die from 11-day. He didn't say that. He says not likely. I mean, he didn't he didn't say the things. There are answers to everything I'm saying. They're not outlandish.

This would not be enough to kill. This would not be enough to kill a man that size. OK, I'm satisfied. Tell me. I didn't say that. Can we end with just a brief. A brief summary, Seton, of your experience?

You just literally got off stage. This is a huge day in American history. Did you bring it up? Did I bring it up on stage? I brought it up a little bit, but, you know, they get very scared here on weekends. On the weekdays, they're very scared people. So, no, I brushed on it. I actually have no jokes on this shit. I gotta

stop talking about it. This shit causes me too much anxiety. I had too many cops pull me over and my hands started shaking, so I can't even do jokes on this shit no more. I'm gonna get out. I have to confess, you know, I get pulled over by cops, I couldn't be more relaxed. I have to be honest. I got pulled over upstate

after a show doing a show for prom kids upstate New York. I ran a stop honest. I got pulled over upstate after a show, doing a show for prom kids, upstate New York. I ran a stop sign. I said, you know, officer, I was helping the kids out. You know, the kids that we don't want, we don't want these kids out drinking. So we did a show for them, a comedy show. Cause we don't want the kids to, you know, these are beautiful, beautiful children.

We don't want them to risk their life. The cops said, you, you go. Just be careful next time.'" Sweet. That is so sweet. When I was 4 years old, the cops did a drug bust in the wrong house, happened in my brother's grandma's house, and I was there. So I got to get my first shotgun. It wasn't a shotgun.

I think it was an assault rifle in my face. I was 4. I don't remember the make and model. So, anyways, love cops. Yeah, America just loves their beautiful children don't they all of them i'll always bring up the children uh when when you're getting pulled over by the cops if if it fits the scenario you know what you did in my case okay laura as i said we don't want them drinking on prom like god forbid forbid. So we did a show for them. We did a PG-rated comedy show.

It was a little bit, a couple of, but mostly clean. And I was entertaining. They get their wonderful kids, by the way. Does your kid go to that school? Anyway, sorry about the stop sign. He said, you don't worry about the stop sign. Thanks for letting me come here, Norm. I appreciate it.

You just described driving while white laura by the way i suggested to our friend yasha um that he that that he asked you to write an article on something i don't know if he did one of the the this is another issue for another podcast which is also outrageous to me that judges can use facts not proven in sentencing they can no no it's worse than that no they can use acquitted conduct at sentencing acquitted conduct it was just something in the news in my 58 year old brain is not process i'll send it to you and yasha sent it to me and and i knew about this and i and i was able to explain what you know i i think i know what's going on here. I looked it up, and it was what was going on. And he couldn't comprehend it.

He was like, he couldn't process it. This is allowable. I can't process it either. It's crazy. There's a United States Supreme Court case that says, if you've been convicted of certain things and acquitted of other things, your acquitted conduct can come in at sentencing and be used to enhance your sentence

because the burden of proof is less at a sentencing and the judge didn't this happen with the oj civil trial no so oj oj took a big walk and then he got sued civilly and was found liable under clear and convincing evidence in civil court no are you talking about the other one? I'm talking about the trophies. The trophy shit was the murder crime. Yes, you're right. Very good, Seton. Yes, sir. You're absolutely right. Very good.

I forgot. It's for some reason. It's because I'm listening to this podcast about the murder and feel like that's what's fixed in my mind and I forget that he was convicted of the robbery. My bad. Seton, where can everybody. My bad. See it on Epix. On Epix channel. Epix is getting better

with good shows. Check me out. Can we stream it? Can we stream Gally Down the Street? Yes, it's on Amazon. Go on Amazon Prime and then go to Epix channel and it's called the shows Unprotected Sets. So I'm episode 12. I have a whole thing. So yeah, come watch.

And this is Tara's coming book that's coming out. It's called A Good Mother. Wow, beautiful. Can we have you on again to talk about the book? Oh my God, happily. And you should read it. Pretend that you're on a plane going somewhere. It's the kind of book that you buy in an airport

before you get on a plane. LOL that it's coming out now. But that's the whole idea. You should be able to read it on a plane going somewhere. It's the kind of book that you buy in an airport before you get on a plane. LOL that it's coming out now, but that's the whole idea. You should be able to read it on the plane. It's available in French. Will it be available in French? It will be available in stores May 11th, maybe even in some non-shuttered airport, but you can pre-order it pretty much anywhere and I'll happily send you,

I'll have the publisher send you an advanced reader copy. It got really good reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus and Booklist. That's awesome. I haven't read Dan's book yet either, but I'm going to read both of them. Dan has a book. Oh, Dan, we should trade books. Send him a book, Dan.

I just, I have a new version of it I'll send you. Send it to me, I. I just, I have a new version of it. I'll send you... Send it to me. I'll send it to Laura. Yeah, I'll send you, I'll send Perry all my address so we can trade books. He has an E. Okay, so I think we're done. I do need a drink because this has been a trying week for all of us here in the United

States and I couldn could use a cap. Can I tell the listeners just about me in case I wonder. Wait, is this another one of Norm's famous walkbacks? No, no. Because I'm always worried that I get. It's just my nature to be contrarian and to test everything, especially when it's, when it's handed down to me as something, well, this is what you're supposed to believe. It's just my nature.

I'm happy for America that this man is in jail. And I'm even more happy that this seems to be coming to an end, this kind of total freedom of cops. Do you believe, I saw a meme today. I saw a meme today. I saw a meme today, I saw a meme today that showed Colin Kaepernick on his knee

and next to it was a picture of Chauvin in handcuffs and it said, if it weren't for this, we wouldn't have this. Do you agree? Is Colin Kaepernick the reason or a substantial reason why Chauvin is in jail or convicted?

No, I don't think that's the reason, but I think that he's part, he's evidence of the entire trend in that direction. I don't think he's causal to it, but he helped shepherd it along. But I think that video was the reason. I don't think Chavis would have been convicted if they didn't have like a threat of protest, personally. I think the threat of like another Black Lives Matter,

like massive scale was like a big pressure in it. I'm not saying it was the only thing, but it seems to be the only way we can prosecute cops is with like a repercussion on the city. That seems to be the main pattern of every conviction. That's risky because maybe there may come a day when a cop actually doesn't deserve to be prosecuted and they're afraid to let him off because of the mob.

That's dangerous. Well, yeah, I mean, that's kind of what the opposite situation of, since they're not asking black people for the shoot-em, this is going to be a balanced kind of thing. Yeah, but you make that argument a lot, and I understand the argument but i always want to push back and say that it's not fair to punish innocents for the terrible things that have gone on that they were not involved in you cannot sacrifice a person of any color to something that's unfair

to him because terribly unfair things happened to other people in the past. Okay, my question is how would society function otherwise? Because that's how we do it everything at everybody. Okay, but you know, that means that in some way if somebody did something terrible to me

you would say, well, he was white. Well, I mean, if somebody did something terrible to me, you would say, well, he was white. Well, I mean, if I was going to be on that level of playing in conversation, that's what you're expressing. My statement isn't a statement of, well, they deserve it because- That's what you're expressing, just not for somebody you know. That was not my expression at all. My expression was that there needs to be a reconciliation reform. There needs to be reform to this policy and reform to this whole system, and that reform is going to be these things that happen.

Innocent people are going to be fucked up in the reform of things. Right. And that's because if you keep the system going, a shitload more innocent people are being killed. So really it's a question of how many innocent people are going to get killed, four or 100, because that's kind of what's happening. That's the choices. It ain't like we can all just save everybody.

It's like the bombing Hiroshima during the war. And we say, well, we sacrificed innocents for perhaps to save... I mean, it's a cold, awful calculus that we only generally accept in wartime. Seton is saying maybe we should accept it in

peacetime. We cannot accept it. We cannot accept that in our justice system. That's the way to the end of America. You cannot accept that. That's what they have in the old South, isn't it? Come on. What? I'm not comparing it to,

we're talking hypothetically. I'm just saying like, we should be wary of the fact that juries might start handing down verdicts because they feel pressured from outside. My argument, Noam, is that to believe that something else is happening is a naive statement since every other trial is run by that.

That's my argument. I don't know that that's the case. The Lord knows the jury system is converted. If only we could find a better system than those juries which obviously is it's a good system as they as they said this is not about it it's like what they say about democracy it's the worst system except for all the other ones if only we could have an enlightened like like i'd say a king solomon let me say can i say a statement that actually may be really offensive and i don't want to lose black people here because there's a big contingency from right

when slavery ended 1865 to about 1912 there was about uh i don't know to lose black people here because there's a big contingency from right with slavery in 1865 to about 1912. There was about, I don't know, 400,000, some absurd amount of lynchings, right? And who's up? Okay, go ahead. That was a thing for that was like for 100 years lynching. My point being is that if you look at the numbers of how many black people got lynched, if you guys compare it to how many white people got lynched the numbers are very comparable which again goes to that point of like yes we hate i as a black man i'm scared of southern white guys going around lynching up black people but they were lynching everybody and i'm saying our country is violent and crazy and none of these solutions we have to fix one department what like we fix the police that ain't gonna solve the problem we fix black people that ain't gonna solve the problem. We fix black people, that ain't gonna solve the problem.

So that's all I'm saying. I think there's gonna be a massive gun exodus. I said it before at the beginning. I think there's gonna be a gap. There's gonna be guns that are gonna go off. And that's gonna be caused much more harm, too. We have to wrap things up. Lara, I hope we didn't keep you longer than you wanted to.

And you're just staying. I hope you weren't staying just to be polite. But we are going to. I would be lying if I told you, Dan, that I was not looking forward to my first drink of the evening, but it was delightful to be with all of you. Delayed that drink, which will make it all the sweeter. You're welcome.

Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Podcast at ComedyCellar.com for your questions, comments, suggestions. We'll see you next time.