I went to Law School at the University of Minnesota, so this is the state where I learned how these things work. First degree murder means you intended to hurt someone and they died. You don't have to want to kill them, if you intentionally punch someone and they die, 1st degree. https://twitter.com/akinmnsci/status/1266435749408387075

Second degree is when you are in a justifiably "excited state" and aren't thinking right. The two big examples are a) finding your spouse fucking someone else and killing one of them "crime of passion" style, or when you're justifiably defending yourself against NON-lethal force

and end up killing the other party. So another party starts a bar fight, you defend yourself, and you end up killing them, that's 2nd degree. Usually police force is generously seen as some form of self-defense.

3rd deg murder is "Depraved Heart" or manslaughter plus. Manslaughter is when you kill someone through negligence, like bad driving. 3rd deg is shooting a machine gun into the darkness, or getting so drunk and driving so fast you're probably gonna kill someone.

The problem here is that Chauvin new he was applying force to Floyd. 3rd degree is for situations when you're doing something really stupid into the void and someone gets in the way. If you are knowingly, willfully applying force to someone, it's 1st or 2nd degree murder.

knew, sorry.

The County Attorney keeps comparing this to the Noor case from a few years ago, but in that case the (black) officer shot into the darkness at something he couldn't see. That is the definition of third degree, and it's what he was convicted of.

America has a very long history of using second degree murder and justifiable self defense to make murdering black people more legal than killing white people.