CNN Legal Analyst Elie Honig Trashes Chauvin Defense Attorney’s ‘Everything But the Knee’ Theory: Defies ‘Straight-Up Common Sense’
CNN legal analyst Elie Honig was highly critical of the strategy of Derek Chauvin’s defense attorney on Wednesday, offering their own medical expert to argue that it was “everything but the knee” that killed George Floyd, a theory that Honig said was defying the jurors’ own common sense instincts.
CNN Newsroom anchor Brooke Baldwin began the segment by discussing the defense’s case with CNN reporter Josh Campbell. Campbell noted that the defense witness, a former medical examiner, had pointed to Floyd’s heart disease as the cause of death, as well as “something else that raised eyebrows,” suggesting that carbon monoxide from the police car was a contributing factor.
“Out of the gate how would you rate the defense with this witness?” Baldwin asked Honig.
“Shaky,” he replied, saying that the judge would instruct the jury that an “expert witness” is not entitled to any more or less credibility than they deem necessary, and in this specific case, the defense would have to overcome the jurors’ “common sense instincts.”
“The defense that I saw this morning was ‘everything but the knee,'” Honig continued, referring to Chauvin’s position kneeling on Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. “It could have been his heart, it could have been drugs, it could have been carbon monoxide…everything but the knee. I think that’s really difficult when it comes to straight-up common sense.”
Watch the video above, via CNN.
