Former Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin squeezed the life out of George Floyd when he arrested him last May, a prosecutor told jurors in his opening statement at Chauvin’s trial on murder charges on Monday.
Jerry Blackwell, a prosecutor with the Minnesota attorney general’s office, told jurors that officers who wear the Minneapolis police badge pledge to never use “unnecessary force or violence.”
“You will learn that on May 25, Mr. Derek Chauvin betrayed this badge when he used excessive and unreasonable force upon the body of George Floyd,” Blackwell said.
He displayed a still image from a bystander’s cellphone video of Chauvin, who his white, with his knee on the neck of Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man in handcuffs, saying it showed Chauvin “grinding and crushing him until the very breath — no, ladies and gentlemen — the very life was squeezed out of him.”
Floyd’s death ignited a global protest movement and over the preceding two weeks of jury selection, many jurors told Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill and the lawyers on each side that they recognized the scrutiny their deliberations would come under, not least by those who view the trial as a reckoning for how Black people are policed in the United States.
“It’s been a long time coming,” a gospel choir sang on Sunday evening at a prayer service attended by Floyd’s relatives. “But I know a change is gonna come.”
The service was held in a church a few blocks east of the deadly arrest.
Philonise Floyd, a brother of George Floyd, said before the service began that he had faith that prosecutors from the Minnesota attorney general’s office would see Chauvin convicted.
“The video is the proof,” he said.
Chauvin, 45, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter, with his lawyers arguing that he followed his training and that the main cause of Floyd’s death, which the county examiner ruled a homicide, was a drug overdose. He faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted on the most serious charge.
The jury, including three alternates, is made up of six white women, three white men, three Black men, one Black woman and two multiracial women, according to court records.
She and other relatives have been told by the court they must take turns in using a single chair reserved for Floyd’s family in the courtroom, which has been kitted out with plexiglass screens, hand-sanitizer stations and other anti-coronavirus measures.
Chauvin has also been allocated a single chair for his supporters, which has not been used by anyone since the trial began with jury selection on March 8 except for the occasional sheriff’s deputy overseeing security wanting to take the weight off his feet.
Legal experts have noted that U.S. police officers have almost never been found criminally liable for killing a citizen. Chauvin’s lawyers have said they will try to convince the jury that the fentanyl, an opioid painkiller, found in Floyd’s blood by the medical examiner played a bigger role in killing Floyd than the officer’s restraint.
On Monday morning outside the courthouse, Sharpton, Floyd’s relatives and local activists silently got down on one knee for 8 minutes and 46 seconds in a tribute to Floyd.
Tiffany Jeffers, a former Maryland prosecutor and a Georgetown law professor, said she saw the defense’s case as an uphill battle in part because of the widely seen video. All members of the jury have said they already saw at least snippets of it.
“This video is just so powerful,” Jeffers said.
Reuters
