Snap-decision defense may not work for officer

Convicting a police officer of killing someone is notoriously difficult, in part because juries hesitate to second-guess the defendant when the officer claims to have made a split-second decision in a life-ordeath situation. But that’s probably not an argument Derek Chauvin can make.

The fired Minneapolis police officer who goes on trial Monday was captured on video pinning George Floyd to the pavement, his knee on the Black man’s neck, for about nine minutes last May. Onlookers repeatedly shouted at Chauvin to get off, asked him to check for a pulse and warned that Floyd no longer seemed to be breathing.

“If I’m a prosecutor, I’m holding my stopwatch up for 8 minutes and 47 seconds and showing the jury how long that is,” said Geoffrey Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina who co-wrote “Evaluating Police Uses of Force.”

Still, Alpert and other experts said that despite the strength of the video that prompted a nationwide outpouring of fury over Floyd’s death, prosecutors could be hard-pressed to convict Chauvin of murder because of both the facts of the case and attitudes toward police.

Chauvin’s lawyer is expected to argue that Floyd’s swallowing of drugs during his arrest — along with the 46-year-old man’s underlying health conditions, including high blood pressure and heart disease — caused or at least contributed to his death. Prosecutors argue it was Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck that killed him.