2 officers seek delay in Floyd trial
MINNEAPOLIS — Two of the former Minneapolis police officers charged in George Floyd’s killing have asked a judge to delay the trial, accusing prosecutors of slow-rolling the handoff of key evidence and of turning over material that they say appears disorganized and riddled with technical problems.
In separate court filings, attorneys for Derek Chauvin and Tou Thao argued that the delays, and their concerns with the trial materials, have harmed their ability to prepare an adequate defense for their clients. The trial is scheduled to begin March 8.
Robert Paule, an attorney for Mr. Thao, asked Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill to delay the trial by four months — to July 5. Eric Nelson, an attorney for Mr. Chauvin, did not cite a specific date in his request for a delay but pressed for “relief the court deems just.”
Mr. Chauvin’s attorney also asked Judge Cahill for an extension to a Tuesday deadline for the defense to disclose planned expert witnesses, partly blaming prosecution delays but acknowledging other issues in what has become a notorious case that spawned widespread protests and calls for police policy changes.
“It also should be noted that the global profile of this case has also contributed to the delay in retaining experts willing or able to participate,” Mr. Nelson wrote.
Floyd died May 25 while handcuffed and restrained facedown on a South Minneapolis street as police investigated a 911 call about a counterfeit $20 bill that had been passed at a local convenience store. During a struggle, Mr. Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, even as the 46-year-old Black man repeatedly complained he couldn’t breathe. Floyd ultimately lost consciousness and a pulse and was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
Mr. Chauvin, a 19-year-veteran of the Minneapolis force, was charged with seconddegree murder and manslaughter, while the other officers at the scene — Mr. Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas K. Lane — were charged with aiding and abetting murder. The Minneapolis Police Department fired all four of the men.
In June, Judge Cahill set an Aug. 14 deadline for disclosure of evidence in the case. But defense attorneys have repeatedly complained about the prosecution’s slow pace of disclosure and the nature of it, saying the evidence has been disorganized.
Defense attorneys estimated they have so far received tens of thousands of pages of police documents and more than 300 gigabytes of video, including surveillance footage that captured the moments before Floyd’s death.
In a court filing Monday, Judge Nelson said “every single round of discovery” had been riddled with problems, including corrupted files, videos that would not open and electronic documents that were arranged “in absolutely no discernible order.”
He estimated that prosecutors had disclosed “approximately 17,000 items of substantive value” after the judge’s August deadline and that key items appeared to be deliberately buried or “hay stacked” within material that seems irrelevant to the case, including documents related to the city’s mounted police patrol and planning reports for the 2008 Republican National Convention.