Chauvin convicted of murdering Floyd, could face up to 40 years’ jail
Defence Attorney Eric Nelson said nothing about race. But both sides probably knew better than to risk polarising a Minneapolis jury on a topic the nation still can’t seem to come to grips with: racial bias, especially by police
MINNEAPOLIS: Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted on Tuesday of murdering George Floyd, a milestone in the fraught racial history of the United States and a rebuke of law enforcement’s treatment of Black Americans.
A 12-member jury found Chauvin, 45, guilty of all three charges of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter after considering three weeks of testimony from 45 witnesses, including bystanders, police officials and medical experts. Deliberations began on Monday and lasted just over 10 hours.
In a confrontation captured on video, Chauvin, a white veteran of the police force, pushed his knee into the neck of Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man in handcuffs, for more than nine minutes on May 25, 2020. Chauvin and three fellow officers were attempting to arrest Floyd, accused of using a fake $20 bill to buy cigarettes at a grocery store.
The jurors remained still and quiet as the verdict was read. Chauvin, wearing a gray suit with a blue tie as well as a light-blue face mask, nodded and stood quickly when the judge ruled that his bail was revoked. He was taken out of the courtroom in handcuffs and placed in the custody of the Hennepin County sheriff.
The conviction triggered a wave of relief and reflection not only across the United States but in countries around the world.
“It was a murder in the full light of day and it ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism,” President Joe Biden said in televised remarks. “This can be a giant step forward in the march toward justice in America.”
Outside the courthouse, a crowd of several hundred people erupted in cheers when the verdict was announced - a scene that unfolded in cities across the country. Car horns honked, demonstrators blocked traffic and chanted: “George Floyd” and “All three counts.”
At George Floyd Square in Minneapolis, the intersection where Floyd was killed and which was later named in his honor, people screamed, applauded and some threw dollar bills in the air in celebration.
While celebrating the verdict, protesters called for justice in the case of Daunte Wright, a Black man who was fatally shot by a police officer after a routine traffic stop on April 11, just a few miles from where Chauvin stood trial. Kimberly Potter, who has turned in her badge, has been charged with manslaughter in that case.
George Floyd’s brother Philonise, speaking at a news conference with several family members, said: “We are able to breathe again” after the verdict, but he added the fight for justice was not over.
“We have to protest because it seems like this is a never-ending cycle,” he said.
As the country focused on the guilty verdict in Minneapolis, police in Columbus, Ohio, fatally shot a Black teenage girl they confronted as she lunged at two people with a knife, as seen in police video footage of the encounter, authorities said. The incident, sparking street protests in Ohio’s largest city.
Chauvin could face up to 40 years in prison. While the US criminal justice system and juries have long given leeway and some legal protection to police officers who use violence to subdue civilians, the Minneapolis jurors found that Chauvin had crossed the line and used excessive force.
Chauvin’s defense team did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the verdict but is considered likely to appeal the conviction.
In a trial that opened on March 29, the defense argued that Chauvin behaved as any “reasonable police officer” would have under those circumstances, and sought to raise doubts about the cause of Floyd’s death.
In his comments, Biden emphasized his support for legislation “to root out unconstitutional policing,” including the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which has been passed by the US
House of Representatives and seeks to increase accountability for law enforcement misconduct.
The Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis said in a statement published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune that “there are no winners in this case, and we respect the jury’s decision,” adding: “We need to stop the divisive comments, and we all need to do better to create a Minneapolis we all love.”
The intersection of race and law enforcement has long been contentious in the United States, underscored by a series of deadly incidents involving white police officers and Black people in recent years.
Floyd’s death prompted protests against racism and police brutality in many US cities and other countries last summer, even as the world grappled with the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris watched the verdict being read out along with staff in the White House’s private dining room, the White House said. Biden, Harris and first lady Jill Biden all spoke with Philonise Floyd.
“Nothing is going to make it all better but at least ... now there’s some justice,” Biden told the Floyd family, according to a video posted to Twitter.
Steve Schleicher never mentioned race. The atorney prosecuting former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd by cuting off his breath never called it a race-based assault. Not once in his summation did Schleicher, a special assistant Minnesota atorney general, point out that Floyd was a Black man, and Chauvin a white police officer. He made no reference to the multiple other recent deaths of Black men and boys at the hands — or guns — of white officers. He sidestepped the sheer mathematical probability that even a minor arrest related to a broken taillight, a joint found in a car or a counterfeit $20 bill would more likely result in death when the subjects are Black.
Defence atorney Eric Nelson said nothing about race either. But it was there in their summations, the ultimate elephant in the courtroom. It was in police officers’ apparent perceptions of a dangerous crowd and neighbourhood — and man. Both sides probably knew beter than to risk polarising a Minneapolis jury on a topic the nation still can’t seem to come to grips with: racial bias, especially by police.
Still, plenty was said in their respective narratives of what was going on that day last May.
Schleicher, for his part, went to great lengths not to impugn police as a whole as guilty of institutional racism. He highlighted the Minneapolis Police Department’s moto “to protect and serve with courage.” He said, “This is not an anti-police prosecution. This is a pro-police prosecution,” and, “There’s nothing worse for a good police than a bad police.”
By his summary, two officers including Chauvin first insisted on forcing Floyd into the back of a car, though the space was small and he kept pleading he had claustrophobia and anxiety. On video you can hear his pleas and groans. Yet Schleicher said Floyd thanked the officers — before they got him prone on the street, where the excessive force began.
For 9 minutes, 29 seconds, “George Floyd struggled desperately to breathe,” said Schleicher, explaining that the lungs in his chest were unable to expand because there wasn’t enough room with Chauvin’s knee pressing down on his neck. Floyd was “trapped by an unyielding pavement and an unyielding man who held him down.”
“He desperately pushed with his knuckles and his face to lit himself, to open up his chest, to give his lungs room to breathe.”
Not only was it unnecessary to have Floyd on the ground when he never threatened anyone, but there were multiple moments, the prosecutor said, when Floyd could have been saved with CPR, by positioning him on his side, or by doing chest compressions.
Therefore, he said, “These actions were not policing. These actions were an assault.”
Noting that the police intervention was over a $20 counterfeit bill, Schleicher said, “All that was required was a litle compassion, and none was shown that day.” Instead, Chauvin continued to grind into Floyd, hold him down and twist his fingers “beyond the point that he had a pulse.”
“You saw the defendant facing down the crowd, the body language, the kind of ego-based pride … (he) was not going to be told what to do by the bystanders. The bystanders were powerless to do anything. The defendant was trying to win. He wasn’t going to take a challenge to his authority, and George Floyd paid for it with his life.”
If Schleicher’s summation was made with impassioned indignation, Nelson’s was more akin to a school teacher patiently trying to employ common sense to “look at the facts as a reasonable officer” would have viewed them. He noted Floyd’s drug use, carbon monoxide from car exhaust, the prospects of an accident — anything but racial bias “The standard isn’t what should or could an officer have done, but what facts were known at the moment,” he said.
But then the buzzwords started coming out — the officers being in a “densely populated urban environment,” the initial call to police from a convenience store manager who described Floyd as 6 feet tall or taller, paying with a counterfeit $20 and seeming “under the influence.”
Does that sound to you like a crisis? When
Chauvin and another officer arrived as backup for two who were struggling to get Floyd into a car, “They don’t know what’s going on,” Nelson asserted.
Couldn’t they have asked? Floyd wasn’t armed or threatening, and if he was under the influence, they should have tried de-escalation tactics. He was just terrified of geting claustrophobic inside a small back seat and pleading with officers not to force him in. Why not just sit him down on the sidewalk and talk to him?
“It’s not uncommon for suspects to feign or pretend to have a medical emergency in order to get out of being arrested,” said Nelson.
So instead, in response to what Nelson called Floyd’s “active resistance,” the officers felt it necessary to “achieve effective physical control.” Then, by Nelson’s depiction, when a crowd started gathering — some of them pleading with Chauvin to stop applying force as Floyd begged for air — officers saw “potential signs of aggression.”
“A reasonable officer would consider, ‘Should we elevate the use of force?’ They did.”
“A reasonable police officer recognizes the crowd is in crisis.” Well, wouldn’t you be, watching an officer kill someone?
“Never underestimate a crowd’s potential.” Or this one’s because it was mostly Black?
In fact, the crowd was in crisis. There’s been reporting on the intense trauma, especially to young witnesses, of what they saw happen: a man’s life snuffed out in front of their eyes by another man wearing a badge.
When firefighter Genevieve Hansen arrived and saw blood coming out of Floyd’s nose and wanted to check his pulse and give him medical aid, she wasn’t allowed to. Nelson said Chauvin told her EMTS were on the way. But even then, he didn’t remove his knee from Floyd’s neck.
The painful irony is that, while making his case, Nelson was playing videos in which Floyd could be seen while lying prone, unable to move, crying, “Mama, Mama. I love you. … I can’t breathe.”
Apparently Chauvin’s defence atorney didn’t even consider that a reasonable person might watch that, be traumatized and find his client guilty of murder or manslaughter. Would he have played that tape or made that assumption if Floyd had been white?
If Floyd had been white, would any of this have even happened?
I don’t believe it would have. But Tuesday’s verdict at least reminds us there are reasonable people who saw through the hoax of Chauvin’s defence. And that the next time a police officer contemplates using excessive force, knowing what happened to Chauvin – if nothing else – will end it there.