"Spark of Life" Sparking Controversy in Murder Trial
"Mr. Floyd in this case is entitled to have the jury realize he was a human being, he was loved, he had a family.""As soon as you start getting into propensity for violence or propensity for peacefulness, then we're getting into character evidence."Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill"[The hope is that testimony by Floyd's brother would show the victim as a] person who would light up a room with a smile.""So often in these trials where the victim is a marginalized minority, nobody works to humanize that person.""He was loved and that there was something taken from us taken from society, taken from the world."Benjamin Crump, civil rights lawyer, representing the Floyd family
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| Defence attorney Eric Nelson (left) and former Minneapolis Police Officer, Derek Chauvin (right) Court TV pool via pool |
Minnesota law has embraced a controversial type of evidence permitted to be presented in criminal trials for the purpose of reminding jurors and judges and all concerned through the prosecution of a trial that a victim of crime was not merely some faceless person, but was rather "imbued with the spark of life", to quote a ruling by the Minnesota Supreme Court.
In the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, prosecutors are entitled to present to the jury photographs of George Floyd as he appeared in his youth and to question one of Floyd's brothers, expected to reminisce about Floyd's close relationship with their mother. Both photographs and reflections are not meant to shed light on the central question; whether Chauvin, white, committed a crime in his fatal arrest of the black man in handcuffs.
Despite video footage clearly showing that the-then police officer, in the process of arresting the 46-year-old handcuffed man lying prone on a street, while pinning him by his neck to the ground for a full nine minutes despite pleas by Floyd that he was unable to breathe, Mr. Chauvin has pleaded not guilty to murder and manslaughter charges.
This type of presentation is permitted in criminal trials in Minnesota even though defence lawyers and some among legal exports have long extended the argument that allowing this kind of testimony with no bearing on whether a defendant is guilty demonstrates exactly why federal courts and U.S. states other than Minnesota disallow it. Such accounts are usually given voice only following a conviction, during a sentencing hearing.
"The 'spark of life' doctrine is controversial because it violates the foundational principle of relevance in evidence law", pointed out Ted Sampsell-Jones, law professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St.Paul, Minnesota. The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled such 'evidence' is permissible so long as it did not invoke undue sympathy or inflames the jury's passions. "You don;'t want to go too far where the jury is just deciding things on raw emotion", stated University of Minnesota law professor David Schultz.
Should Floyd's brother Philonise Floyd, describe George Floyd as a "gentle giant", it has the potential to lead to his being grilled by Chauvin's lawyer, pointed out presiding Judge Peter Cahill. This, while the judge denied requests by Chauvin's lawyers to admit evidence relating to Floyd's previous criminal convictions, including a violent robbery that took place in 2007, cautioning this background to be irrelevant to the case.
Floyd's girlfriend already testified before the jurors. In tears Courteney Ross spoke of their romantic walks and his love for his daughters. She also revealed that she and Floyd were addicted to opioids. Floyd's death was ruled by the county medical examiner as a homicide at police hands though the medical examiner also found fentanyl and methamphetamine is Floyd's bloodstream. Lawyers for Mr. Chauvin argue drug overdose may have been the cause of death.
"Spark of life" evidence was characterized by Chuck Ramsay, a Minneapolis defence attorney as an unfair doctrine. "It is damning to the defence. The line between undue sympathy for the deceased and prosecutorial misconduct is a thin one", he said, having seen such evidence used against his own clients.
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| Philonise Floyd and Rodney Floyd raise their fists on the way to the Hennepin County Government Center on the eighth day in the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, who is facing murder charges in the death of George Floyd, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S., April 7, 2021. REUTERS/Nicholas Pfosi/File Photo |
Labels: "Spark of Life", Derek Chauvin, George Floyd, Jury Manipulation?, Minneapolis, Trial
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, April 11, 2021
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