How should the jury decide the charges against Derek Chauvin?

Prosecutors rely heavily on the opinion of the impressive pulmonologist Dr. Martin Tobin that even a healthy person would have succumbed under the police restraint imposed on Floyd. But that conclusion is not borne out by the testimony of forensic pathologists, for both sides, who cited as contributive causes Floyd’s significant health issues: enlarged heart, hypertension, significant arterial blockages near the heart, adrenalin rush from the altercation with and resistance to police, and a history of drug abuse, including the presence in his system of both methamphetamine (an illegal stimulant that all medical witnesses agreed is unsafe to ingest in any quantity) and fentanyl (an opiate that Floyd had ingested in an amount that could be lethal for the average person, though he had built up a tolerance to it through long-term opiate abuse). There can be no credible doubt that the police restraint was a material cause of Floyd’s death. But there is immense reason to doubt that he would have died from the restraint alone, if it had not acted in concert with, and exacerbated, Floyd’s profound health problems. If Chauvin could plausibly have believed that the restraint techniques he and the other cops were using would not have caused serious harm to a normal person — to say nothing of a person strong enough to fight off four cops despite being cuffed behind his back — then it will be difficult for a jury to find, unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt, that Chauvin intended to cause Floyd serious physical harm. Chauvin’s errors of judgment were inexcusable (that’s why he should be convicted of manslaughter), but it appears that his intention was to hold Floyd in check until the EMTs the police had summoned arrived to provide Floyd with medical care. If it were not for the fraught atmosphere, and the heavy political and social pressure to convict, I do not believe that a jury would render a guilty verdict on second-degree murder. Indeed, I don’t think prosecutors would have charged it.