Are any of you following it? I'm not following it closely but do read a daily summary.
I'm going in thinking Chauvin is 100% guilty of 2nd degree murder. I'll see if anything the defense presents changes my mind.
Following the comments on KSL.com it seems the argument in favor of Chauvin is basically that, 1 - Floyd was high on fentanyl and meth and was trying to pass counterfeit money, 2 - watch the entire unedited video, Floyd said he couldn't breath even when he was standing up, 3 - coroner said their wasn't strangulation, 4 - you should do whatever police tell you to do otherwise they are allowed to kill you.
I don't find any of that particularly informative in regard to Chauvin being a murderer. They very eager desire to insistently talk about Floyd's drug use is downright offensive. If you are a person who hears that Floyd was on drugs and your reaction is "well I guess that's that, can't convict a cop of murder now." then you are part of the problem imho.
Also, police frequently ask people to do things that they cannot legally force the person to do. They say it in a way that sounds like an order, but it isn't. It's a request. This is a behavior that should be eliminated from law enforcement. They should make requests in a way that makes it clear that they are making a request and they should give orders in a completely different way that makes it clear that they are giving a lawful order. Police that give orders that are not lawful or that they do not have the authority or justification for giving should be punished.
If Floyd was having a hard time breathing standing up they should have gotten him medical attention ASAP. I've read comments from people saying that "criminals" do that all the time to try to avoid being arrested. First, that's not how that works. Second, if an arrest takes longer while you make sure a person isn't about to die that seems okay to me. Not sure why in so many of these violent police interactions the police are in a hurry to escalate the encounter.