NPS photo/Dave Bieri
Jamil Smith reduces defense argument in the trial of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd to this: “Floyd’s own body murdered itself.”
“Through the first two weeks of the trial,” Smith explains, “it’s evident Chauvin’s defense is almost entirely reliant upon racist stereotypes and junk science that dates back to the late 18th century.” John Henryism, it’s called (Rolling Stone):
Both Floyd’s death and the John Henry fable fall in line with a long history of American jurisprudence and medicine alike investing in false conceptions about racial differences. Linda Villarosa’s report in the New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project details this at length, tracing fallacies (such as, black people are more impervious to pain) to treatises like the one British doctor Benjamin Moseley published in 1787. He offered that “what would be the cause of insupportable pain to a white man, a Negro would almost disregard.”
Etc., etc.
Fast forward to today, and it’s clear [Chauvin defense attorney Eric] Nelson has been taking notes. “What was Mr. Floyd’s actual cause of death?” Nelson asked in his opening statement, disregarding the medical examiner’s conclusion. “The evidence will show that Mr. Floyd died of a cardiac arrhythmia that occurred as a result of hypertension, his coronary disease, the ingestion of methamphetamine and fentanyl, and the adrenaline flowing through his body, all of which acted to further compromise an already compromised heart.”
To recap: Chauvin’s defense is blaming meth, opioids, heart disease, high blood pressure — all which are rampant in poor and working-class black communities and are part of the generational wages of racism, paid with shortened black lives. Pointing to Floyd’s adrenaline — which surely had something to do with the four cops on top of him, and the knowledge that he was asphyxiating — was particularly repugnant.
As he slowly suffocated, Floyd did not get up and into the squad car as the officers holding him handcuffed and prone on the pavement demanded. For reasons we’ll never know, he failed to comply. That and his other personal failings killed him, argues the defense.
Chicago pulmonologist Dr. Martin Tobin testified last week what really killed Floyd: Chauvin’s knee on his neck for nine minutes and 29 second, just as cameras recorded and onlookers warned Chauvin that he was killing the man. Tobin’s assessment was more detailed, professional and clinical. But it amounted to the same. Lindsey Thomas, a consulting forensic pathologist, told the court, “This was not a sudden death.”
Smith concludes:
However the jury decides, this remains an unmitigated tragedy. There can be accountability, but there is no justice, because George Floyd is dead. He has become the latest of our John Henrys, resisting a machine designed for his subjugation only to have it kill him in the end.
OSHA might prohibit such machines. States and municipalities won’t.