re: #21 O say, does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave..

No, actually, as usual, he’s misrepresenting the facts. The jury did NOT convict based on public pressure; if there was any evidence of this, a motion for mistrial would be swiftly dispatched to the court. The conviction was secured because there was a massive amount of evidence that piled up against Chauvin, including his own superiors testifying that he did not act in accordance with MPD practices for the use of force. The public pressure campaign only ensured that the case went to trial in the first place.

And I really should have pointed out that that’s the truth he accidentally stumbled upon. If it had not been for a brave woman coming forward with video of the incident, convincing others to either show their own recorded videos or give their own eyewitness accounts, then there would have been no public outcry and Chauvin’s superiors would have quietly swept all this under the rug as “Black man dies of heart attack in police custody.”

What made this conviction possible was the public becoming outraged because of the evidence that was right in front of their faces and demanding that those responsible be held accountable. And it is that truth that Ben and other wingnuts see as an aberration from a system where white cops can act as fascist thugs without accountability.