(06-28-2021 03:13 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(06-28-2021 02:31 PM)Rice93 Wrote:  

(06-28-2021 02:25 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  It's a bit like this....
A perfectly healthy person being restrained as chauvin did probably has a 99.5% chance of surviving. It doesn't happen often.... and people are similarly restrained FAIRLY often.
Someone with Floyd's exact situation has perhaps a 90% chance of surviving.
Someone with FLoyd's situation but no restraint, maybe 95%.
Someone with one less item on the list, but including the restraint... maybe 92 (or 98)

If that's not the case, you don't list the 'significant contributors' on the death cert.

Significant contributor, almost by definition means that without those aspects, there is a different result.

Those percentages are complete guesses, obviously.

For all we know they are 60%/57%/57%/56%.

There is an old common law principle that the tortfeasor "takes his victim as he finds him": i.e., it is not a defense to say that the victim was abnormally vulnerable.

This principle is sometimes known more colorfully as the "eggshell skull" rule: if I punch someone in the head, and the punch unexpectedly kills him because he happens to have an unusually thin skull, my ignorance of his special condition is not a defense to wrongful death.

In this case, the issue is a 'wrongful action', and a 'substantial cause of injury'.

In the criminal context, the issue of the 'eggshell skull' devolves into the underlying intent.