"So You're Saying . . ." Radley Balko's Distortion-Filled Attacks on Coleman Hughes

If you have to twist your opponent's words to win an argument, you're actually losing the argument.

Above: a 3-on-1 pile-on, misrepresented as a “debate”

Finally: my long-promised post on Radley Balko’s dishonest attack on Coleman Hughes. This timely post comes only 2-3 months after you stopped caring about the issue.

Let me start the post by explaining what today’s newsletter is, and what it is not.

What Is This Post About?

WHAT IT IS: a post about how Balko distorted what Coleman said.

As I noted in my recent review of Coleman’s new book on colorblindness, just after reading the book, someone pointed me to Balko purporting to take apart a piece that Coleman had written about the Derek Chauvin case. I read Balko’s pieces, and also read some of Balko’s and Coleman’s interchanges on Twitter. I watched Balko’s critique unfold over time, and saw Coleman respond to it. The controversy gained a lot of attention and (I thought) somewhat muted the response to the publication of Coleman’s book, which was unfortunate. Meanwhile, it quickly became apparent to me that Balko’s attack was chock-full of his typical misreadings and mischaracterizations.

I want to set the record straight and show how Balko repeatedly twisted Coleman’s words.

WHAT IT IS NOT: A full re-examination of the guilt or innocence of Derek Chauvin.

This is not a post in which I am going to dive deep into the weeds on the validity of the various arguments about Chauvin's guilt or innocence. Nor is it a full review of the revisionist documentary The Fall of Minneapolis that Coleman mentioned in his piece.

I should explain that, in case you were not aware, I am a Deputy District Attorney by day (speaking as always in my private capacity on this Substack as I do in all my Internet commentary. If you know anything about our District Attorney, you know that I am unlikely to ever speak on his behalf.) While you may know that, you may or may not know that my current assignment very much revolves around re-examining old convictions. And if I have learned anything in that assignment, it is this: it takes a lot of work to re-examine a case. At a minimum, you have to read the trial transcript. You have to look at the basic police reports and other relevant reports from experts and other parties. That’s just the bare minimum. You may well need to personally interview witnesses and experts, conduct legal research, and the list goes on.

I don’t have time to do all of that with the Derek Chauvin case.

To this day, I have not really seen anything to seriously undermine my previously expressed opinion that Chauvin committed murder. I recognize—and you should know—that my opinion is necessarily what I will call a citizen’s opinion, based on having followed the trial when it happened, but only from news reports, and not terribly closely. After reading the Coleman and Balko pieces, I have learned that there are aspects to the case I had not been aware of when the case was presented, and some of those aspects give me pause. The whole case is more nuanced than I had realized. But personally, I still come back to the very basic point that once Chauvin had Floyd subdued, he could have gotten off of Floyd, and should have. I do not assign my own citizen’s opinion on this question the same weight that I would assign to my opinion if it were my own case—in which case I would be obligated to do all the work described, like reading the trial transcript in its entirety, and so forth. Then I would have an expert opinion, which would be more meaningful. Again: my current opinion about Chauvin’s guilt is a citizen’s opinion. To truly dive into this case and form an expert opinion would be essentially a second career for me, for a long period of time, and I barely have time to write this post—as you can tell by the length of time it took me to publish it.

But, without turning it quite into a second career, I can compare what Coleman actually said to what Balko claimed Coleman said, and see a big difference between the two. And so that’s what I’m writing about today.

Links to the Various Pieces

Before we go further, allow me to link, early in the piece, the basic documents we are talking about in this piece, so you have them all in one place.

• Coleman: What Really Happened to George Floyd?

• Balko: The Retconning of George Floyd (Wayback machine link to original piece)

• Balko: Part One: The Retconning of George Floyd (current stealth-edited version)

• Balko: The retconning of George Floyd, part two: the autopsy (Wayback machine link to original piece)

• Balko: The retconning of George Floyd, part two: the autopsy (current stealth-edited version)

• Balko: The retconning of George Floyd: An Update

• Balko: The retconning of George Floyd, part three: the great flattening

• The War on the Woke Trumps the Truth for Many Heterodox Thinkers

• Who's right about George Floyd? Reason debate on YouTube

• Who’s right about George Floyd? Reason debate rough transcript

“So You’re Saying”

If I were to pick one central complaint I have about Balko’s critiques of Coleman, it would be that Balko essentially says, over and over, “so you’re saying [insert thing Coleman did not actually say].”

I’m not a huge fan of Jordan Peterson, but a viral interview he once did well illustrates the central problem with Balko’s attacks on Coleman. You remember this video, right? Peterson’s talking to a female British journalist who keeps saying “so you’re saying” . . . followed by something Peterson never said. So Peterson replies, “no, I’m actually saying this different thing” and he explains the different thing he was actually saying. Then five seconds later she again says “so you’re saying” and then puts even more words in Peterson’s mouth that he never said, and then Peterson once again says “no, actually I was saying this other thing” and explains that thing at length. And she looks at him, and pauses, and blinks—and then says “so you’re saying” and . . . well, you get the idea. Lather, rinse, repeat. And this goes on for like thirty minutes.

There is a way around this frustrating loop of incomprehension, by the way, and I will discuss it below when I get to the “debate” that Coleman had with Balko and two other Reason magazine partisans posing as moderators.

Before we go any further, I think it’s important to delineate Radley Balko’s history as a dishonest actor who resists correction and is willing to mislead people in the service of his radical libertarian agenda.

The Importance of Radley Balko’s History of Dishonesty and Failure to Correct Errors

For those who are not terribly familiar with Radley Balko, I’m going to set the table by giving you a brief series of examples of his history of twisting facts to serve a radical libertarian anti-police agenda—and in particular, his extreme allergy to correcting errors. This may sound at first blush like an ad hominem attack, but there are two reasons this background is relevant.

First, much of the three-part series he wrote attacking Coleman Hughes requires you to trust Balko. The stuff where he provides a clear source with a link? Evaluate that on its own merits, by all means. But at many points his posts demand your trust. They demand, for example, that you trust Balko to objectively select experts with a balanced outlook, and then report every relevant fact they tell him, whether good, bad, or ugly for either side. If you are choosing to trust Radley Balko on any such or similar point, I suggest that you are far too trusting, in light of what I am about to explain.

Why Do I Doubt Radley Balko’s Integrity? Let Me Count the Ways

Here are just a few of the issues I have documented over the years regarding Balko’s credibility. I gravitate towards simpler controversies in this summary, but there are others. For those who have all the energy in the world and want to see every word I have written about Balko on my blog, this is possible through the dual miracle of search engines and the ability to click on links.

Even as to my curated list here, I encourage anyone who doubts my summaries here to take advantage of that miraculous link-clicking technology, and click the links in the summaries below. Go back and look at the original posts, which in most cases are themselves chock-full of links and evidence. Please!

• In 2006, Balko said he would lie to get onto a jury to nullify any charge he believed unjust (including any drug possession charge, natch). I pointed out that his admission that he would lie under oath (jurors take oaths to tell the truth in answering questions) to promote his radical libertarian agenda . . . had implications for his journalism. Would he also lie in his journalism to promote the same agenda? If not, why not? Why lie in one context and not another? He later amended his claim to say he would answer questions as a prospective juror by engaging in what I would call Clintonesque misdirection—not out-and-out lying, but answering questions in a way “that certainly masks what I’d intend to do.” One might fairly wonder: if Balko explicitly claims an intention as a juror to mislead his audience (those listening to his responses as a juror) by masking his true intent (as a juror) to promote his radical anti-cop agenda . . . precisely what moral scruples would restrain him from misleading his audience as a journalist to promote the same agenda?

• In 2007, Balko published an attack on the felony murder rule, telling the sad story of a defendant who was convicted of murder after the defendant had merely (in Balko’s telling) lent his car to some folks, having no idea how they would use it. I noted that Balko had failed to mention that the defendant had told police that he knew they would use it for a burglary in which—as the defendant admitted in his testimony given at his own trial—the defendant had been told that the people borrowing the car might have to “knock out” the woman who ended up dead. Hmmmm!!! Later, after I had taken him to task, Balko gave his reasons for having omitted this rather critical information from his initial piece. Sure, he should have included it, Balko explained . . . but the defendant (claimed that he) was drunk and thought his friends were joking! Balko always has reasons for his own critical omissions, you understand.

• A 2009 incident reminds me greatly of Balko’s treatment of Hughes here. Balko accused me of omitting a crucial point in a post—a point that, in fact, I had explicitly included in my post. Balko accused me and Jack Dunphy of advancing an argument neither of us had ever actually made (“anyone who asserts his constitutional rights when confronted by a police officer risks getting shot”). Balko’s pigheaded and repeated insistence on attributing to Dunphy and me assertions that we had never made is a consistent Balko trait, and you’ll see it happen time and time again in his criticism of Coleman Hughes. By the way, Balko explained his chronic failure to issue a correction by saying he didn’t have time to correct himself. This explanation . . . did not ring true.

• In 2010, Balko said the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had “acknowledg[ed]’ that a criminal defendant had “established actual innocence” but had his appeal rejected nonetheless. But in reality, the court had acknowledged no such thing. Balko also said courts would reject actual innocence claims even if the government concealed exculpatory evidence, which (surprise!) is the exact opposite of what the Ninth Circuit had actually said.

• In 2008, Balko criticized a police chief for rehiring several officers previously fired for misconduct. Wow, sounds bad! Too bad Balko forgot to inform his readers that it wasn’t the police chief’s fault; others had failed to observe legally critical deadlines.

• In 2010, Balko alleged that police had broken into a man’s home and arrested him for exchanging words with police. Balko forgot to mention the actual (and legally valid) justification police had for entering the man’s home had been . . . to arrest him for driving while intoxicated, and to prevent him from destroying evidence of that crime.

As for Balko’s sloppiness and reluctance to correct errors, I provide this example:

• In 2006, Balko claimed a pro-jury-nullification opinion had been issued by the Supreme Court. I pointed out that it had been issued by a mere Court of Appeal. I blogged the error and emailed him about it. Only when I pointed it out again, after the aforementioned controversy over his stated intent to lie under oath as a juror, did he finally say he would correct it.

Again, there is more. But, like the contretemps with Coleman, many of my other complaints over the years have involved issues that are complicated. The complicated nature of my objections doesn’t make Balko any less slippery, but it does mean that these other criticisms of mine aren’t as clean and easy to explain. Once again, anyone really interested in the whole history is welcome to put the name Balko into my search engine and review all the results they can find.

By the way, you don’t have to take my word for it that Radley Balko distorts other people’s words. Matt Welch was Balko’s editor at Reason, and I know Matt to be a longtime fan of Balko’s. In no way does Matt have any kind of pre-existing bias against Balko, the way someone might claim anti-Balko bias on the part of a prosecutor like myself or a cop like Jack Dunphy. But in March, Matt wrote a piece ripping Balko to shreds for Balko’s mischaracterization of episode #435 of the We the Fifth podcast, a podcast that Matt hosts with Kmele Foster and Michael Moynihan. Balko wrote that We the Fifth discussed The Fall of Minneapolis “mostly in a sort of way of endorsing a lot of its claims.” Matt invited readers to listen to the podcast in question and come to their own conclusion as to whether Balko’s statement was accurate. I listened, and I totally agreed with Matt, who said: “That is not even close to a fair characterization.”

As Matt explains, Moynihan said he had “a lot of problems with it” (the documentary) and accused the filmmakers of cherry-picking and clumsiness. Matt called it “one-sided” and “not a great documentary.” There’s much more in Matt’s piece describing the appropriate skepticism that the We the Fifth guys applied to The Fall of Minneapolis. Matt ultimately concludes that, other than recommending that people watch the documentary (a standard he has applied to many other flawed documentaries), “[i]t is hard for a fair-minded person to misconstrue our conversation in #435 for an endorsement of the legal claims, or of the documentary itself.” But Balko managed to misconstrue it in exactly that way.

Matt won’t say it, and may not think it, but I’ll say it: Radley Balko is not a “fair-minded person.”

This matters, because a lot of Balko’s opinions are based on his consultation with so-called “forensic experts.” Given the history I just described, when Radley Balko cites forensic experts in his pieces, you should be wondering whether those experts are unbiased sources of forensic wisdom, or defense-oriented hacks. I have had personal experience with one of Balko’s experts in a case I handled, and I will just say I was not impressed and leave it at that. To say more, and get into the specifics of a case I handled, would be a line I don’t want to cross. Suffice it to say, just because Radley Balko claims that experts say x, y, or z, does not necessarily represent what an unbiased expert would say on the topic.

Balko’s Criticism of Coleman Hughes Depends on a Consistent and Infuriating Mischaracterization of Coleman’s Claims

It is now time to show how Balko’s attacks on Coleman depend on a consistent habit of mischaracterization. This analysis is going to go step by step, and is going to include a lot of direct quotes and screenshots—because I want you to see with your own eyes exactly how Balko has twisted Coleman’s words.

As I discuss Part One of Balko’s series of his pieces on Coleman Hughes, I’ll provide a link to the original piece via the Wayback Machine—because, as I will explain below, Balko immediately got busy doing some stealth editing after the piece first published, and Coleman called out Balko on some of his inaccuracies. Unless I state otherwise, all bold emphasis in any quote I provide in this piece is mine.

Let’s go to Balko’s original piece. He says Coleman spends “most of his piece” “promoting” two claims advanced by the documentary, which I will highlight for you in bold:

The documentary makes a lot of outlandish claims, but I want to focus mostly on the two that I’ve seen most often. These are also the two claims that Hughes spends most of his piece promoting.

The first claim is that when Chauvin put his knee on Floyd’s back and neck for nine minutes, it could not have been criminal assault because the Minneapolis Police Department has trained its officers -- including Chauvin -- to use that very technique.

The second claim is that Floyd’s official autopsy found that he died of a heart attack brought on by cardiovascular disease and drug use. Therefore, Chauvin could not have been responsible for Floyd’s death.

Both of these claims are false. The first claim is not only incorrect, the documentary engages in deceptive editing and convenient omissions to push it. In other words, the documentary is lying. The second claim is also incorrect, but the explanation is a bit more complicated.

Again: focus on that bold language. According to Balko, Coleman spends “most of his piece promoting” two claims:

• Chauvin putting his knee on Floyd’s neck “could not have been criminal assault.”

• Chauvin “could not have been responsible for Floyd’s death.”

Now let’s look at what Coleman actually said in his piece. Hint: it’s not what Balko claims. Turns out Coleman was not promoting these claims at all. (Note that a false accusation that someone was supposedly “promoting” certain claims is exactly what Matt Welch complained about.)

It may be helpful to you if I foreshadow a theme that Coleman emphasized in his later debate with Balko at Reason: that in his piece at The Free Press, he was continually speaking in the language of reasonable doubt. Understanding that theme will help you to appreciate the difference between what Balko claims Coleman said, and what Coleman actually said.

So: did Coleman say (as Balko claims) that Chauvin’s actions “could not have been criminal assault”? Did he say that Chauvin “could not have been responsible for Floyd’s death”? Why, no! Coleman did not say any such thing. Here is what Coleman actually said:

Among other things, they [the prosecution] had to prove that (1) Chauvin’s actions constituted assault (or attempted assault), and (2) that Chauvin’s actions caused the death of George Floyd. 

The documentary throws both claims into doubt. What I discovered by making my own calls and confirming the documents shown in the documentary is that these key claims are not certain at all. 

Coleman is not saying these things could not have happened. He is saying these things are not certain. That they can be doubted.

I took symbolic logic in college, but you don’t have to have a background in logic to understand that this claim:

“Claim x cannot be true”

is not the same as this claim:

“There is reason to doubt claim x.”

As we will see when we get to a discussion of the “debate” between Coleman and Balko at Reason, Balko can’t seem to get this simple concept through his head, no matter how many times Coleman calmly and patiently tries to explain it to him.

More Mischaracterizing Claims by Balko—Covered Up by Stealth Edits Galore

As we are starting to see, a great number of Balko’s criticisms depend on Balko simply rewriting things that Coleman phrased very carefully, to strip all the nuance out of the assertions, or to insert inaccuracies where none previously existed. I know how you feel, Coleman!

Coleman called out Balko about this on Twitter, and much whining, backtracking, double talk, and ultimately stealth editing from Balko ensued. I intend to document all of that here.

On February 14, at 12:45 p.m., Coleman pointed out two errors Balko had made:

Coleman added a third error later, at 5:11 p.m.:

How did Balko respond? By now you should be able to guess. I’ll discuss the two material errors Balko made here (using the terms “drug overdose” and “heart attack”) one at a time. I’ll start with the latter error of Balko’s, because Balko’s reaction there is the more amusing of the two—as Balko engaged in a wild spate of stealth editing to cover up his mistake.

Balko’s Error in Claiming Coleman Said George Floyd Died of a “Heart Attack”

As with Part 1, we have to revert to the original version of Balko’s Part 2, available via the Wayback Machine. In it, he says:

Hughes argues that there is ample evidence suggesting Floyd died of either a drug overdose or heart attack. This, too, is based on a misunderstanding of opioid addiction and overdose.

As we saw above, Coleman pointed out that the words “heart attack” “appear nowhere in my piece, with good reason.” He notes that the term “cardiopulmonary arrest” is the terminology that appeared in the autopsy report and in his piece. I think it’s worth noting that Coleman is correct when he says that he did not use the term “heart attack”:

Mr. Radley “I always correct myself” Balko responded by calling Coleman’s request for a correction a “misleading deflection” and a “nitpicking semantic gripe”:

You’re welcome to read Coleman’s tweet again and arrive at your own judgment about how “indignant” Coleman’s request for a correction was. (Hint: Balko always thinks every request for a correction of one of his errors is "indignant” or otherwise rude and impertinent, while his responses are always so proper!)

On Twitter, Coleman calmly but firmly pushed back at Balko’s petulant dismissal of this substantive error.

Amen, brother.

Anyway, despite his initial Twitter outburst, Balko ended up agreeing that he needed to issue a correction on this issue. In an interim “update” post between Part 2 and Part 3 of his series, Balko explained that Coleman was right about this:

In a couple of places where I paraphrased Hughes’s argument, I wrote that instead of homicide, Hughes claimed the evidence suggests Floyd died of “a drug overdose or a heart attack.” Hughes objects to the term “heart attack.” He argues that he never used that term.

In his 4:18am email to me, which included a diagram and a link to several medical publications, Hughes wrote:

“[I] spent a considerable amount of time trying to understand the difference between heart attacks, cardiac arrests, and cardiopulmonary arrests prior to writing the piece––precisely so that I would not make a sloppy error like this. To be told now that it doesn’t matter and that it’s just semantics is absurd. Please correct it.”

Here he’s correct. A heart attack is quite a bit different than “cardiopulmonary arrest,” which is what medical examiner Andrew Baker wrote in Floyd’s autopsy report. I inaccurately summarized his argument. So in these instances, I have changed “heart attack” to “heart failure.”

Just to be clear, I wasn’t trying to straw-man or misrepresent Hughes. I both linked to his column and blockquoted the portions I later paraphrased. Readers had direct access to his actual words, and didn’t need to rely on my paraphrasing.

(In a moment, we’ll revisit Balko’s snide little reference to the time Coleman supposedly sent this complaint: “[i]n his 4:18am email to me.” It is typical of Balko’s peevishness and dishonesty. But for now, let’s stick to the topic.)

The bolded part is actually a decent correction, at least as it is worded. Balko acknowledges that Coleman was “correct’ and that Balko “inaccurately summarized” Coleman’s argument.

The problem is, the correction is not in the right place. It’s not enough to put it in a separate post. Not everyone who read Part 2 was going to read this interim update. I recently wrote a Substack piece for paid subscribers on the ethics of correcting errors where you make them. I won’t repeat those arguments at length here, but suffice it to say that if you make a mistake on the Internet at link “x” then link “x” is where you need to correct it. You’re welcome to also correct it at link “y” and link “z” as well—go nuts in favor of accuracy, I say!—but the critical thing is that you fix the error at link “x.”

And oh, by the way—part of correcting an error is acknowledging that you made an error. Going back and doing a stealth correction doesn’t cut it. Speaking as someone who, like all of us, has made mistakes . . . I know this sucks. You spend a lot of time making an argument, and then you have to go back to your original piece and admit you got a central piece of your analysis wrong. It can make you feel stupid. I get it.

But you have to do it.

Balko did not do it.

Instead, Balko has gone back to his Part 2 piece and simply replaced the words “heart attack” with the words “heart failure.” You are welcome to compare the original version available from the Wayback Machine and the current version. Search for the term “heart attack” in the original and you’ll see it appears seven times:

Now search for the same term in the version you can find now. It appears only once.

What Balko did was, he went back to his post and he did a gang of stealth edits. Almost every time he originally used the term “heart attack,” he simply replaced it with the term “heart failure” (or “heart and lung failure” or “natural causes”). I won’t show you screenshots of each of the six replacements, but I will show you the two that directly address the claims Coleman made:

Paragraph 2, original version:

Stealth edit of paragraph 2 available now:

Paragraph 8, original version:

Stealth edit of paragraph 8 available now:

Remember, Balko originally dismissed his error here as a “misleading deflection” and a “nitpicking semantic gripe.” He then admitted he was wrong, in a separate post, and went back and stealth edited everything in his original post, to make it seem like it was always accurate and reasonable.

This is not honest behavior. As I told Balko at the time:

I was going to move on immediately to Coleman’s other assignments of error, but I have to divert for a second to address this spiteful and unfair comment that Balko made about Coleman’s “4:18am email.”

The “4:18am email” Smear

Balko’s interim update (previously linked) between Parts 2 and 3 is devoted to the back and forth he and Coleman had on Twitter about Balko’s errors, Coleman’s calm requests for retractions, and Balko’s typical evasions.

Although if you read Balko’s version, it’s about Balko’s trivial and unimportant inaccuracies, Coleman’s obsessive and repetitive and creepy late-night missives to Balko bordering on stalking . . . and Balko’s Noble and Commendable Efforts to correct trivial and unimportant errors, if for no other reason than to stop Coleman’s virtual stalking occurring at all hours of the deepest and blackest night.

Balko describes an initial email from Coleman that “seemed like an earnest and cordial email.” It contained “some flattering language saying that people he knows speak highly of my work” and a nod to the notion that Coleman was open to good faith criticism. Balko notes that Coleman admitted that he had not consulted any defense-oriented hacks—oh, I’m sorry, I meant to use Balko’s phrasing— any “forensic pathologists” before writing his column. Balko also mocks Coleman for not coming up with a link to the Minneapolis Police Department policy manual. Then Balko starts describing Coleman’s communications as stalkerish:

A couple hours later, Hughes emailed again, this time to demand his first substantive correction. I wrote in several places that in his column, Hughes argued either that Floyd died of a drug overdose or that an overdose was a partial cause of his death. Hughes disputes this, insisting that he never wrote that Floyd died of an overdose.

Before I had a chance to respond, Hughes took to Twitter to publicly announce my alleged error and demand a correction. This resulted in a flood of abuse from his followers. Which is fine. It comes with the territory. I only mention it because it’s interesting how many of these people insisted to me that Floyd did, in fact, die of a drug overdose.

I sent a reply to Hughes, and then went to dinner with my wife. It all spiraled from there. Hughes quickly emailed back to reiterate his demand for a correction on the word “overdose.” He then emailed again to demand a correction on another matter, which he also posted to Twitter. Hughes then emailed me again. And again. Then he tweeted about it all again. When I woke up yesterday morning, he had DMed me at 4:14 am. And then emailed me again four minutes later.

Making public demands for corrections over semantic issues is a pretty common defense tactic among people called out for major errors or omissions. It’s a way of discrediting the critic without actually addressing the criticisms. Instead of addressing how he badly misstated the law, the mechanics of asphyxiation, the role of medical examiner Andrew Baker, or the numerous other problems with his column, Hughes decided to very publicly fixate on word choices that have nothing to do with the flaws and omissions in his column.

In his 4:18am email to me, which included a diagram and a link to several medical publications, Hughes wrote:

“[I] spent a considerable amount of time trying to understand the difference between heart attacks, cardiac arrests, and cardiopulmonary arrests prior to writing the piece––precisely so that I would not make a sloppy error like this. To be told now that it doesn’t matter and that it’s just semantics is absurd. Please correct it.”

This is followed by the passage I quoted above, in which Balko, with several crotchety caveats . . . admits Coleman is right.

Still. I mean . . . Coleman may be right, but . . . oh my goodness. It sounds like our friend Coleman has gone a little overboard in defending his reputation! Perhaps Coleman had realized how thoroughly our Good and Honest Friend Radley Balko had Demolished Coleman’s Reputation. Now, sadly, Coleman was going into stalker mode out of utter desperation. Hence the need for our poor and beleaguered Balko to point out the 4:18 a.m. timestamp on the email. Balko didn’t want to do it, you understand. He felt he . . . owed it to Coleman.

I happened to look at the comments to Balko’s interim post, and saw this, from Coleman:

Just FYI: The messages were actually sent at 5:14am and 5:18am my time, and the email didn't have a "diagram"––just an auto-generated thumbnail from one of the links I sent. I'm not sure what the purpose of disclosing the time of those emails would be (I noticed Radley only revealed the ones at "4am") other than to paint me as an obsessed late-night troll. You'll be happy to know that I got a good night's sleep and was up early for my 6am appearance on CNN, so I chose to send Radley two messages (which he never replied to) just after 5am. I won't make that mistake again.

Balko lives in Nashville, in the Central time zone. Coleman lives in Manhattan, in the Eastern time zone. If Coleman gets up at 5 a.m. for a 6 a.m. TV appearance, and sends Balko a message at 5:18 a.m., Balko will receive it at 4:18 a.m. Nashville time. Balko likely knows this. (And if he doesn’t, but felt it was super-important to cite the time stamps, he ought to have figured it out first.) Nevertheless, Balko cites the misleading “4:14 a.m. and 4:18 a.m. “ time stamps, using his own time zone, to make Coleman look like a creepy obsessive late-night weirdo.

I don’t subscribe to Balko’s Substack, so I could not leave my own comment, as his comments are reserved for paid subscribers. But if I could have left a comment, it would have read something like this:

Balko typically responds in a hostile manner to anyone and everyone who tries to point out his errors. He denigrates them. He tells half-truths to try to insinuate that they are untrustworthy, or obsessed, or “off” in some weird way. This is what he does. He is not an honest actor. We see what he is doing. It’s not fooling anyone who does not already desperately want to be fooled.

By the way, in response to Balko’s comment that “[m]aking public demands for corrections over semantic issues is a pretty common defense tactic among people called out for major errors or omissions” . . . Coleman responded with his characteristic, seemingly infinite patience, acknowledging that, yes, that is a tactic that dishonest people sometimes use, but it was not his own intent in requesting a correction:

I have not seen that post yet, and I’m not sure if Coleman is still going to do one in light of the lengthy “debate” he engaged in with Balko, “moderated” by the folks at Reason. I hope he does, but two months later, I doubt it will happen. I also know that by participating in that Reason discussion, he has spent considerable time and effort on this topic already.

Let’s sum up. Here, in brief, is what we have just discussed, on the “heart attack” claim:

1. Coleman says that the autopsy says Floyd died of “cardiopulmonary arrest” accompanied by other factors.

2. This is true. That is what the autopsy says.

3. Balko says: “Hughes argues that there is ample evidence suggesting Floyd died of either a drug overdose or heart attack.” Balko’s claim is false.

4. Coleman correctly notes that Balko’s characterization of Coleman’s arguments is false. Coleman never uses the term “heart attack” in his piece.

5. Coleman asks for a correction.

6. Balko says Coleman’s request for a correction regarding the term “heart attack” is a “misleading deflection” and a “nitpicking semantic gripe”

7. Coleman disagrees and says the distinction matters.

8. Balko later says, in effect: “OK turns out he is right but he made the demand for a correction at 4:18 a.m. so what a loon”

9. Coleman says: no, actually I made the request an hour later than you say, in my time zone—and it was right before I had a 6 a.m. CNN appearance. But whatever

10. Balko stealth edits out the term “heart attack” to make it “heart failure”

What a buffoon Balko is.

OK, now let’s go to the alleged claim about how Coleman supposedly said Floyd may have died of an “overdose.”

Balko’s Error in Claiming Coleman Said George Floyd May Have Died of an “Overdose”

As with the first assignment of error, I will remind you of Coleman’s original statement, Balko’s mischaracterization, Coleman’s request for a correction, and Balko’s response.

(Note: We won’t worry about Balko’s error about Coleman’s age . . . other than to note that, again, the correction regarding Coleman’s age is a stealth correction. Also, Balko is probably happy that he made the age error and that Coleman noted it, even in passing. It helps Balko stick to the narrative that Coleman is demanding corrections to trivial errors for the purpose of avoiding the Real Issues—even though Coleman treated it as the trivial issue that it in fact is.)

Regarding fentanyl, Coleman wrote:

But there was only one complete, documented autopsy of George Floyd—performed by Hennepin County medical examiner Dr. Andrew Baker about 12 hours after Floyd died. That autopsy found no evidence of asphyxia. In fact, it found “no life-threatening injuries” whatsoever.

What it did find was that Floyd died of “cardiopulmonary arrest”—his heart and lungs stopped working—during “law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.” The autopsy’s toxicology report also stated that Floyd had a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl in his blood (11 ng/mL), along with small amounts of methamphetamine and morphine.

The part phrased in bold is admittedly ambiguous, although I think it’s clear enough in context. Coleman could have meant (but I believe he did not mean) to say that the toxicology report stated that Floyd had 11 ng/mL and that the toxicology report also stated that this amount was potentially lethal. Or, Coleman could have meant (and in context I believe he did mean) to say that the toxicology report stated that Floyd had 11 ng/mL and it is also true that this amount is potentially lethal. It’s like the difference between saying: “the breathalyzer showed that the defendant’s BAC was twice the legal limit: 16%” and saying “the breathalyzer showed that the defendant’s BAC was 16%, which is twice the legal limit.” They sound identical at first glance, but only the second is technically correct. To my knowledge (and I could be wrong; I am no expert), breathalyzers don’t give you information specifically correlating the BAC on a machine to the legal limit. And in my experience, toxicology reports never state what a fatal dose of a particular drug would be.

But is 11 ng/mL a potentially fatal dose? Documentation exists that shows that Andrew Baker, the medical examiner who conducted Floyd’s autopsy, certainly thought so. That doesn’t mean that Dr. Baker’s final opinion was that Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose. It wasn’t, and Coleman never says it was. But it does mean that Dr. Baker said, quite clearly, that 11 ng/mL is a potentially fatal dose—although he does not believe this dose killed Floyd, given all the surrounding circumstances.

Here is the relevant documentation. First, look at page 2 of the just-linked .pdf. It contains handwritten notes of an interview of Baker conducted on June 1, 2020 by a group including prosecutors from the Minnesota Attorney General’s office. The notes indicate that Dr. Baker said this about the fentanyl findings in the toxicology report:

Fentanyl at 11 ng/mL—this is higher than chronic pain patient. If he were found dead at home alone and no other apparent causes, this could be acceptable to call an OD. Deaths have been certified with levels of 3.

Baker: I am not saying this killed him.

Then we have page 9: a memorandum from Amy Sweasy of the Hennepin County Attorney’s office, also concerning a June 1, 2020 interview with Dr. Baker. Here is a screenshot of the portion of the interview dealing with fentanyl:

Coleman certainly had a basis to say that this dose is potentially fatal. I think there is plenty of reason to doubt the conclusion that Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose, and Balko lists many of those reasons. And I’m not sure how relevant it is that the dose was potentially fatal, given those other reasons.

That said, it is important to be careful and accurate when refuting or criticizing other people’s written statements. Because if you habitually rewrite their statements to make them easier to attack, as I have shown Balko does routinely, you end up looking dishonest.

And that is what Balko does to Coleman here.

In his original Part 2, Balko wrote:

In this post, I want to dismantle the other major claim we see in the documentary, in Hughes’s column, and from Chauvin’s defenders: that the forensic evidence shows that Floyd died of a drug overdose or heart attack, not because of Chauvin’s actions.

. . . .

Hughes argues that there is ample evidence suggesting Floyd died of either a drug overdose or heart attack. This, too, is based on a misunderstanding of opioid addiction and overdose.

We’ve already addressed the “heart attack” aspect of these claims. As to the “overdose” claim, Coleman noted that he never used the word, saying:

Nowhere do I claim that George Floyd died of an overdose, which you've attributed to me in both parts 1 and 2 of your post.

Coleman is correct that he did not say this. You can compare Balko’s claim of what Coleman said to Coleman’s original piece and to the documentation I just provided. Coleman never uses the term overdose—as I will prove with a screenshot below, when we discuss in detail the “debate” Coleman did with Balko at Reason—really a pile-on, as I will explain, rather than a debate. For now, I’ll once again provide a link to Coleman’s piece and challenge you to find the word “overdose” in it. Hint: you won’t.

Instead, Coleman uses the terminology used in the autopsy report. Balko’s characterization is just plain wrong.

It is also correct that Balko attributed to Coleman the contention that Coleman said Floyd might have died of an overdose. To be very technical, Balko did not say Coleman had contended Floyd died only of an overdose. Balko claimed that, according to Coleman, Floyd died not only of an “overdose” but of an “overdose or heart attack.” But these are both inaccurate accusations using terms that Coleman never used.

Here’s how Balko responded to Coleman’s claim about the “overdose” inaccuracy:

Let’s take these points one by one, starting with Balko’s observation that Coleman wrote that Floyd had “potentially lethal” fentanyl levels—a claim, remember, that we have already established is accurate. Balko’s implicit point is: what’s the difference between saying that, and saying that a fentanyl overdose caused Floyd’s death?

There is a difference, actually. The difference between saying someone died of a drug overdose, on one hand, and saying that they died with a potentially lethal dose of a drug in their system, on the other, is very significant—especially in this case, because the first claim is likely not accurate in this case, but the second claim very much is accurate. The difference is that the former is a claim regarding the reason someone died; it’s a claim that the drugs caused the death. The latter claim (Coleman’s actual claim) is a factual claim regarding the level of drugs in the decedent’s system. It is carefully qualified (“potentially”) and it makes no necessary and positive claim that the levels of any drug caused Floyd’s death.

The fact that a hyperpartisan journalist who is not known for being very careful misread the first claim as the second is the fault of the hyperpartisan journalist, not the author of the claim.

Coleman is simply correct here. Which is likely why Balko doubles down on this one, instead of doing what he did with his heart attack error: going back and doing a bunch of stealth edits. It’s easy to see why the stealth edits route wasn’t going to work here: such stealth edits would render Balko’s piece nonsensical. How would you stealth-edit this passage, for example? (For clarity, we’ll literally bracket, and thus ignore for the moment, Balko’s irrelevant and inaccurate reference to the “heart attack” claim.)

In this post, I want to dismantle the other major claim we see in the documentary, in Hughes’s column, and from Chauvin’s defenders: that the forensic evidence shows that Floyd died of a drug overdose [or heart attack], not because of Chauvin’s actions.

What would that be stealth edited to? I guess something like this:

In this post, I want to dismantle the other major claim we see in the documentary, in Hughes’s column, and from Chauvin’s defenders: that the autopsy shows that Floyd died with a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl in his system . . .

That claim would be hard to “dismantle” because it is quite clearly and literally true.

Balko could not fix this error with stealth edits. What to do?

I know what I need to do! he apparently thought. Double down on the idea that I never made the accusation in the first place! And that is how we got to the point where Balko, in evident desperation, hurriedly typed out the following tweet, which I have not made up, or edited, or Photoshopped in any way (click the link if you doubt me):

LOL. Let’s look at those “screen craps,” shall we?

First screenshot from Balko’s tweet:

And second screenshot from Balko’s tweet:

Ah. The same passages we already debunked above as being riddled with unfair mischaracterizations of Coleman’s actual claims.

At bottom, Balko’s defense here seems to be: “I never wrote that Coleman definitively declared it an overdose death, because I also falsely accused him of saying Floyd died of a heart attack!”

I’m . . . not sure that’s quite the defense Balko thinks it is.

But in his tweet embedded above issued on February 14, 2024 at 3:05 p.m., Balko also claims that there is one place where Coleman “wrote that fentanyl was 1 of 3 likely contributors to Floyd's death.” So unlike the factual assertions about the levels of fentanyl being potentially fatal, isn’t this an example where Coleman is positively asserting that fentanyl likely caused (or contributed to the cause of) Floyd’s death?

Not quite. This point is more nuanced, but I have confidence in your ability, dear reader, to follow the nuance. Here’s what Coleman actually said (with my bold emphasis to help make the nuance clearer):

So while it is not unreasonable to think that Chauvin’s knee was the cause of Floyd’s labored breathing, it’s also not unreasonable to think that his labored breathing was caused by other factors—for instance, the stress of the arrest in general, the fentanyl in his system, his preexisting health conditions, or some combination of the three.

I’m not sure I agree with Coleman here . . . but regardless, he’s not saying what Balko claimed he said. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, because what I am about to say is a major theme of the Reason debate between Coleman (on one side) and Radley Balko and the two ostensibly neutral (but not really neutral) “moderators” (all three on the other side). But this passage is all about raising potential reasonable doubt.

Specifically, Coleman is not making literal assertions about what happened. He’s making assertions about what reasonable opposing inferences people might draw based on the evidence. Coleman discusses these competing inferences in the context of exploring whether there is a “reasonable doubt” as to Chauvin’s guilt. This is exactly the sort of argument that a defense attorney would make at trial. (And, by the way—and here is where I will take Balko’s side to some extent—Chauvin’s defense did raise this issue in Chauvin’s trial, without success . . . which is one of the reasons that, without knowing much more, I currently see no compelling reason to revisit the jury’s verdict.)

Balko’s misrepresentation here is the same kind of error that we encountered at the outset of this long piece: Balko characterizes Coleman as making a definitive statement that something happened (or did not happen) . . . whereas Coleman is actually saying there is reason to doubt whether something happened (or did not happen).

Coleman is not saying a fentanyl overdose is “1 of 3 likely contributors to Floyd's death.” Coleman is instead saying that he believes that it is a reasonable conclusion that Floyd’s labored breathing was caused in part by that factor, and/or the stress of the arrest, Floyd’s preexisting health conditions, or any combination of those factors—just like Coleman also believes it is also a reasonable conclusion that Chauvin’s knee being on Floyd’s neck caused Floyd’s labored breathing.

The importance of this argument is that, if multiple explanations of circumstantial evidence are reasonable, and one of those reasonable explanations favors the defendant, the jury must accept the reasonable explanation that favors the defendant.

We’ll cover this concept in more detail below, when we discuss the so-called “debate.”

Let’s sum up. Here, in brief, is what we have just discussed, on the “overdose” claim:

1. Coleman says that the toxicology report says Floyd died with a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl.

2. Coleman’s claim is true. The toxicology report says Floyd died with a level of fentanyl of 11 ng/mL. And the medical examiner who did the autopsy believes that is indeed a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl.

3. Balko says: “Hughes argues that there is ample evidence suggesting Floyd died of either a drug overdose or heart attack.” Balko’s claim is false.

4. Coleman correctly notes that Balko’s characterization of Coleman’s arguments is false. For one thing, Coleman never uses the term “overdose” in his piece.

5. Coleman asks for a correction.

6. Balko says Coleman’s request for a correction regarding the term “overdose” is inappropriate, because Coleman said other things that Balko apparently thinks are equivalent to a claim that Floyd died of a drug overdose.

7. But the things Coleman actually said are not equivalent to a claim that Floyd died of a drug overdose.

8. Saying someone died with a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl in their system is not equivalent to saying a drug overdose killed them, in whole or in part.

9. Saying that it is reasonable to believe that the presence of a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl could be one of several causative factors to a death, AND that it is ALSO reasonable to believe that a knee on the neck was the cause, is not equivalent to saying “that fentanyl was 1 of 3 likely contributors to Floyd's death.”

10. I don’t care how many “screen craps” you put up, Radley Balko. You’re still mischaracterizing Coleman, over and over again.

This piece is not intended to be a full description of all 30,000 of Radley Balko’s words in his multiple-piece attack on Coleman. If I have missed anything Balko said in those four pieces, never fear. If you’re a paid subscriber, you’re about to read my analysis of Balko’s debate with Coleman at Reason, and of a piece Balko published at The UnPopulist. The Reason debate went on for some two hours and over 18,000 more words, and the UnPopulist piece was another 3,500 words. In both forums, Balko took the opportunity to summarize his main grievances with the documentary The Fall of Minneapolis and by extension with Coleman’s piece. I have gone to considerable lengths to make sure that I address everything in both of Balko’s summarized lists of supposed errors. So this should end up being a comprehensive discussion of all of Balko’s key claims of error on Coleman’s part. In the process, we’ll talk about the restraint technique used by Chauvin, “positional asphyxia,” and other topics—and how Balko twisted Coleman’s words on these topics too.

First let’s set the stage by talking about how the Reason debate came to happen.