For friends, family, verdict is bittersweet
The dread felt by many watching the Derek Chauvin murder trial in Minnesota evaporated Tuesday afternoon when the jury’s verdict was announced.
Chauvin, the police officer whose brutal treatment of George Floyd triggered a new civil rights movement across the U.S. and shook up notions of policing worldwide, was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
Just after 4 p.m., a dozen people crowded by the TV in Twee’s Foods Store in Third Ward; Floyd’s face is painted on the side of the building. They’d been playing Triple 7s or shopping, but they listened intently to the muffled television.
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The judge announced the first count — guilty of second-degree murder.
“Uh-oh,” someone muttered.
The crowd clapped, surprise mixing with relief and jubilation — and still, anger. “We got your ass, man!” one person yelled, as the second verdict came through.
As the last count was read, they burst into applause, again.
“I knew this was going to happen,” said Demond Johnson, 39. Minutes before, he’d felt less certain. “If they acquit that man, there will be no justice,” he’d said.
Mary Ginns watched the guilty-on-all-counts verdict from her hair salon across from Yates High School, which she and Floyd attended.
“I’m relieved,” she said, releasing a large sigh. “Relieved of that fact that justice has been served the correct way. It’s just awesome. I mean, that’s going to help bring peace to the world.”
Outside, the street — which had been fairly quiet — filled with traffic, as a steady stream of people stopped by the corner Floyd had used to frequent.
Travis Cains, or “Mugz,” sat across from Twee’s. He’d been a close friend of Floyd’s, and after his murder, Cains spoke in Washington, D.C., in Austin and elsewhere calling for justice for his friend.
“It’s a lot of fighting to get that verdict,” he said, sitting by himself in the shade across from the store.
“It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get that verdict.”
As he sat there, calls flooded his phone, registering congratulations, and relief.
About 4:29 p.m. a woman ran up to him, tears in her eyes.
“FINALLY,” she yelled. “Finally! We don’t have to cry no more.”
“It’s a lot of fighting to get that verdict. It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get that verdict.”
Travis Cains, or “Mugz,” a friend of George Floyd’s
Minneapolis
In Minneapolis family members had hustled — by foot or taxi or Uber — through streets with military tanks and boarded-up windows to gather in an undisclosed location to watch the verdict together on TV, said Floyd’s friend Tiffany Cofield.
Floyd’s loved ones had waited one day since the jury began deliberating. But they had truly been bracing for this moment since the 46-year-old died pinned to the pavement under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020.
Cofield, 36, who traveled from Houston with one of Floyd’s brother, Philonise, his wife and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee for the Monday closing arguments in the murder trial, said she was frustrated and angry watching the defense team for Chauvin try to “paint him out to be this horrible person” and attribute his death to drug use or carbon monoxide poisoning from car exhaust.
In an upstairs overflow room at the courthouse during the closings were Floyd’s brother Rodney, nephew Brandon, his daughter’s mother Roxie Washington and Floyd’s young daughter Gianna, as well as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Al Sharpton, and U.S. Reps. Lee, of Houston, and Joyce Beatty of Columbus, Ohio.
The grim detail that has weighed heavily on Floyd’s uncle Selwyn Jones is 8:25:16. That’s the time identified by medical experts as the exact moment Floyd took his last breath. Video of his final moments was replayed in slow motion during the trial.
“Now that broke my heart,” said Jones, who lives in South Dakota. “Because we could see exactly where his heart stopped. It just showed when his eye fluttered. They said ‘He’s living now. Now he’s dead’”
“Today history was made,” said Benjamin Crump, an attorney representing Floyd’s family. “We don’t take this lightly. It was sacrificial blood that made this moment possible for history in America. So let us all rejoice for this moment but know that we still have work to do.”
Floyd’s family members delivered emotional speeches at a news conference in Minneapolis.
“Rev. (Al Sharpton) always told me we’ve got to keep fighting,” Philonise Floyd said. “I’m going to put up a fight every day, because I’m not just fighting for George anymore. I’m fighting for everyone around this world.”
Rodney Floyd said he has felt the far-reaching impact of the tragedy when he and his family walk through the grocery store.
Despite his mask, he said people recognize him and shared their own experiences with police violence.
“This is a victory for all of us,” Rodney said. “There is no color barrier on this. This is for everyone who has been held down, pinned down.”
Won’t ‘bring him back’
Tanjanica George, Floyd’s 22-year-old daughter, and her mother are happy and grateful to God for the verdict, said their cousin Tamika Hudson. But it’s bittersweet. “Nothing will bring him back,” Hudson said. “I hate that Floyd had to lose his life for a guilty verdict.”
Jerold Moore, who knew Floyd since middle school and played football with him at Yates, said he’s been bracing for the verdict, because what some see is not readily apparent to others. “We’ve been here before when we thought it was a slam dunk, where it was so obvious to us,” Moore said.
He recalled, when he and Floyd were in high school, watching the Los Angeles police officers — captured in a viral videotape beating Rodney King — get acquitted. Everyone he knew considered that case “a nobrainer,” he said.
Brenda Mackey-Lang, who went to Floyd’s grave Tuesday, said “what happened to him, it was horrific.”
But “to the Black community, what happened to George, it was just another Tuesday.”
Ginns, the hair salon client, said the neighborhood has not had time to fully heal.
“Because you go through grief after losing someone, but then when you have a trial in place, it feels like more grief,” she said. “And I think the faster they can get through it, the anxiety levels will go down the emotions will go down.”
Chris Johnson, who knew Floyd as a fan of his high school football team and his standout basketball skills and as a colleague in the music business, said it has been “very bittersweet” watching Chauvin on trial, “because on one end, man, Floyd is in the process of getting the justice he deserves, but it’s hard, on the other end, hearing them try to infer that he was a drug dealer or bring up his past to try to justify his murder.”
In the cemetery
Just moments before the verdict, sisters Andretta Mackey-Lasanta and Brenda Mackey-Lang arrived at the mausoleum where Floyd was interred in Pearland.
Hearing the guilty-on-allcounts verdicts, they instantly found each other in a tight embrace.
“We did it,” Mackey-Lang said in jubilation. “Justice for George.”
Mackey-Lang marched in the 1960s in Houston and said she has witnessed decades of racial injustice.
She and her sister agreed that they feel a shift coming in how the public views and responds to police brutality toward Black Americans.
“He paid the ultimate sacrifice,” Mackey-Lasanta said. “I feel that something is about to happen.”
Pastor Steve Johnson and three others arrived later at Floyd’s grave, where they thanked God and prayed for the the Floyd family. A few people dropped flowers at the site, including one woman with her young daughter who calls Floyd, “Mr. Floyd.”
Burl Jones, who knew Floyd as a student at Yates when he was a coach, said he hopes people remember that he was a human being with family members and friends.
“God prevailed and justice was served,” he said.
Carlton D. Buckner, with Houston Memorial Gardens Inc., closed the gates of the mausoleum after 5 p.m. The cemetery has been receiving threatening calls lately, he said. The grave is not yet marked, in part because of a fear of vandalism.