Expert says Chauvin never took knee off Floyd’s neck
MINNEAPOLIS — Officer Derek Chauvin had his knee on George Floyd’s neck area — and was bearing down with most of his weight — the entire 9½ minutes the Black man lay facedown with his hands cuffed behind his back, a use-offorce expert testified Wednesday at Chauvin’s murder trial.
Jody Stiger, a Los Angeles Police Department sergeant serving as a prosecution witness, said that based on his review of video evidence, Chauvin applied pressure to Floyd’s neck or neck area from the time officers began pinning Floyd to the ground until paramedics began to move him to a stretcher.
“That particular force did not change during the entire restraint period?” prosecutor Steve Schleicher asked as he showed the jury a composite of five still images.
“Correct,” replied Stiger, who on Tuesday testified that the force used against Floyd was excessive.
Chauvin attorney Eric Nelson countered by pointing out what he said were moments in the video footage when Chauvin’s knee did not appear to be on Floyd’s neck but on his shoulder blade area or the base of his neck. Stiger did not give much ground, saying the officer’s knee in some of the contested
images still seemed to be near Floyd’s neck, though he agreed his weight might have shifted at times.
In other testimony, the lead Minnesota state investigator on the case, James Reyerson, initially agreed with Nelson that Floyd seemed to say in a police body-camera video of his arrest, “I ate too many drugs.”
But when a prosecutor played a longer clip of the video, Reyerson said he believed what Floyd really said was “I ain’t do no drugs.”
Chauvin, 45, is charged with murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s death May 25.
Breahna Giles, a state forensic scientist, testified Wednesday
that pills found in the SUV Floyd was driving contained methamphetamine and fentanyl. Another witness, forensic chemist Susan Meith, testified that remnants of a pill found in the back of the police squad car also contained methamphetamine and fentanyl. Earlier testimony revealed that this pill contained DNA from Floyd’s saliva.
Earlier, Nelson asked Stiger about uses of force that are commonly referred to by police as “lawful but awful.” Stiger conceded that “you can have a situation where by law it looks horrible to the common eye, but based on the state law, it’s lawful.”