‘FINALLY, WE
WILD SCENES AS KILLER COP HEADS TO JAIL
THEY were told “you can believe your eyes” — and after dozens of viewings of the video of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin choking George Floyd to death, the jury delivered a swift and decisive verdict: “Guilty on all three charges.”
Chauvin, 45, could spend the rest of his life in prison after a jury took just 10 hours to convict him of murdering Floyd during a shocking arrest in May last year.
The sacked cop argued that the chokehold he used was police procedure for a large suspect resisting arrest, as a drug-affected Floyd was doing after paying for cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 note.
But the anonymous jury of five men and seven women — six of them white, four black and two multiracial — didn’t even pause in their considerations to request additional access to exhibits or ask followup questions following three week’s of distressing evidence.
“Believe your eyes,” said prosecutor Steve Schleicher of the video of Floyd’s death in his closing argument.
“Unreasonable force, pinning him to the ground — that’s what killed him. This was a homicide.”
Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree intentional murder and the supporting charges of third-degree murder and manslaughter.
He was cuffed and led from the Hennepin County District Court, and will return in two months, when Judge Peter Cahill may find there were “aggravating factors” and deliver a long prison sentence.
The jurors took just an hour less than the jury spent deciding the guilt of Mohamed Noor, the Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering Sydney life coach Justine Ruszczyk Damond in July 2017. Noor was found guilty of third-degree murder in 2019 and is serving a 12½year prison term.
The Floyd family, who have received a record $US27 million ($35 million) civil settlement, praised the jury.
“I got messages from all over the world; Ghana, London … saying ‘we can’t breathe until you can breathe’,” his brother Philonise Floyd said. “Well, today we can breathe again — justice for George means freedom for all.”
Minnesota AttorneyGeneral Keith Ellison, who led Chauvin’s prosecution, said the verdict “showed that nobody is beneath the law and nobody is above it”.
Residents of Minneapolis, where 1500 buildings were torched by rioters last year and which returned to its “war footing” during the trial, expressed immediate relief.
Law professor Joe Daly
said the mood in the city had been “sad, angry, nervous, frightened” as people gathered there in recent days ahead of the verdict.
“There’s a great sense of relief. There was genuine fear that this city could explode.”
The high-profile case was compared to that of the police officers who savagely beat Rodney King to death in California in the 1990s. Those officers were acquitted and Los Angeles burned for weeks.
Even with Chauvin’s guilty verdict there remain real concerns in cities across America of clashes between law enforcement officers and antipolice demonstrators.
Media reports said that before the verdict was read out in court, Chauvin wrote the phone number of his lawyer, Eric Nelson, on his hand.
Mr Nelson told TMZ he did it because he knew if he was found guilty of murder his bail would be revoked and he would be taken into custody.
TMZ said Chauvin likely wrote the number on his hand because he was concerned if he wrote it on a piece of paper it might be confiscated.
Mr Nelson did not reveal what the nature of the phone call might be, but Chauvin is almost certain to appeal his conviction and he would want to discuss the next legal steps with his lawyer.
Chauvin is facing a maximum jail sentence of up to 75 years on all three charges, but it is likely to be much less.
In his appeal, Chauvin is likely to argue that he did not receive a fair trial based on the publicity surrounding the case, news.com.au reported.
America’s first black president Barack Obama said in a statement that the “jury did the right thing”.
“But true justice requires much more. Michelle and I send our prayers to the Floyd family, and we stand with all those who are committed to guaranteeing every American the full measure of justice that George and so many others have been denied,” Mr Obama said.
“True justice requires that we come to terms with the fact that black Americans are treated differently every day.”