re: Protests blowing up in Downtown Birmingham

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That's what I figured - but they're going to have to say that the assault and the assault that killed him were two different ones. That's were the other officers' testimonies will be important.

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In most jurisdictions you would be right. The merger doctrine would *merge* the assault into the murder charge so as to preclude using assault as the predicate felony for a felony murder charge. That's not the case in Minnesota. In Minnesota, "[a]ny felony, not otherwise proscribed, which, as committed, involved special danger to human life, could serve as a predicate felony." State v. Branson, 487 N.W.2d 880, 884 (Mn. 1992). Minnesota only exempts from its felony murder statute a handful of felonies: "criminal sexual conduct in the first or second degree with force or violence or a drive-by shooting." MN Stat. 609.19.

The assault was Chauvin sitting on his neck for 8+ minutes, which was caught on film.