Day 9 of Derek Chauvin trial testimony concludes
The ninth day of testimony in Derek Chauvin’s murder trial has come to a close.
Today’s proceedings marked a new phase of the prosecution’s case. Witness testimony focused on Floyd’s cause of death, whereas the focus of prior testimony was largely Chauvin’s use of force.
The prosecution’s witnesses said that Floyd died from a lack of oxygen and that drugs did not contribute to his death. Nelson, in his cross, kept trying to attribute Floyd’s death to drugs and underlying health issues.
Here are some key points from today’s proceedings:
- Dr Martin Tobin, a pulmonologist who testified as an expert witness for prosecutors, was clear in his assessment: “Mr Floyd died from a low-level of oxygen and this caused damage to his brain ... and it also caused a [pulseless electrical activity] arrhythmia that caused his heart to stop.” He also said: “The cause of the low-level of oxygen was shallow breathing, small breaths...shallow breaths that weren’t able to carry the air through his lungs down to the essential areas [in] his lungs.”
- Tobin’s testimony ultimately revealed that prosecutors are not just relying on Chauvin’s knee placement—pressed against Floyd’s neck—in explaining why the arrest turned deadly. “There are a number of forces that led to the size of his breath [becoming] so small,” he remarked. “He’s turned prone on the street, that he has the handcuffs in place combined with the street, and then that he has a knee on his neck, and that he has a knee on his back.”
- Still, prosecutors stressed the role of Chauvin’s knee in this combination of factors. “Did Mr Chauvin’s knee on the neck of Mr Floyd’s neck cause the narrowing?” they asked Tobin of Floyd’s hypopharynx. “Yes, it did,” Tobin replied.
- Tobin’s testimony was scientifically detailed, but delivered in plain language which appeared to engage jurors. Tobin said at one juncture: “He was being squashed between the two sides.” Another time, Tobin remarked: “It was almost to the effect that a surgeon had gone in and removed a lung.”
- Forensic toxicologist Dr Daniel Isenschmid testified that the amount of methamphetamine in Floyd’s system “would be consistent with [a] prescription dose.” He also described this as a “very low” level. And some of the fentanyl in Floyd’s blood was “metabolized.” With a fentanyl death, Isenschmid said, there wouldn’t be chemical evidence showing this level of metabolism. Prosecutors sought this type of testimony to debunk defense claims that drugs caused Floyd’s death.
- Dr Bill Smock, police surgeon for Louisville metro police department in Louisville, Kentucky, testified for the prosecution. Smock heads the Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention’s medical committee, and trains police about strangulation and asphyxia. His opinion on Floyd’s death matched Tobin’s: “Mr Floyd died from positional asphyxia, which is a fancy way of saying he died because he had no oxygen left in his body.”
- Smock also said: “You can be fatally strangled, die of asphyxia, and have no bruising.” This is an important point. Nelson noted that Floyd didn’t have bruises on his neck. So, Smock’s testimony served to show that a lack of bruises didn’t refute the prosecution’s case. Smock completed his testimony.
Testimony resumes Friday morning at 9:15 am CT.
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Nelson is cross-examining Spock.
He’s asking about the pills found in the police car and, through his questions, is once again pushing the idea that fentanyl depressed Floyd’s breathing.
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'You can be fatally strangled, die of asphyxia, and have no bruising'
Earlier today, Chauvin’s defense made sure to point out that there were no bruises on Floyd’s neck, in an effort to undermine asphyxia as a cause of death.
Smock’s testimony moments ago, however, helps the prosecution address this.
When asked what Smock teaches students about inferences that can be drawn from bruising, or its absence, he says: “You can be fatally strangled, die of asphyxia, and have no bruising.”
“The presence or absence of a bruise on a human body is dependent on multiple...variables.”
Smock says a person could fatally strangle another person without leaving a bruise, by using biceps and forearms on both sides of the victim’s neck, for example.
“The reason is, you’re applying a broad surface area to a broad surface area.”
When asked by prosecutors when Floyd should have received CPR, he says: “Way before it was” administered, “as soon as Mr Floyd was unconscious.”
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Smock is testifying that Floyd was not in a state of “excited delirium,” saying he did not have key symptoms.
The Guardian’s Oliver Laughland explains “excited delirium” in a forthcoming report—and how Chauvin’s team plans on using it for his defense. Laughland reports:
Throughout the first phases of the Derek Chauvin murder trial, the defense attorney Eric Nelson has made passing reference to the term “excited delirium” as he attempts to build a case for his client.
Nelson referenced the phrase during opening arguments, has asked a number of witnesses about the term and may well explore it when the defense gets to present its case.
But “excited delirium” is a controversial and disputed expression often used in fatal cases of police violence. While certain medical bodies and experts recognize the term, many others do not, and there is no universally accepted definition of what it constitutes. Others have argued the phrase carries racial biases and is often used to justify lethal use of force by police, disproportionately against Black men.
Broadly, the term has been used to describe individuals who become agitated or distressed after using drugs or during a mental health episode. In some instances, those described as experiencing “excited delirium” are perceived to exhibit higher pain thresholds and unusual levels of strength.
The term is not recognized by the World Health Organization, the American Psychiatric Association or the American Medical Association.
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Prosecutors have asked Smock to give his opinion on Floyd’s death.
“Mr Floyd died from positional asphyxia, which is a fancy way of saying he died because he had no oxygen left in his body,” Smock says.
“Low oxygen is one way, no oxygen when the body is deprived of oxygen, in this case from pressure on his chest and back,” he explains. “He gradually succumbed to lower and lower levels of oxygen until it was gone, and he died.”
Isenschmid has completed his testimony.
Prosecutors have called their next witness: Dr Bill Smock, an emergency medical physician with specialized training in forensic medicine.
Smock is the police surgeon for Louisville Metro police department in Louisville, Kentucky. He leads the Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention’s medical committee.
He also trains police about strangulation and asphyxia, among other medical topics.
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‘My brother is not on trial’: George Floyd’s sister speaks out
George Floyd’s sister, Bridgett Floyd, has weighed in on Chauvin’s trial in an interview with The Shade Room.
“My brother is not on trial. Derek is on trial,” Bridgett Floyd says in this interview, which will be released in full Friday morning.
“This is not just an ordinary, regular death that has happened. Nine minutes and 29 seconds. We thought it was eight minutes and 46 seconds,” she says of the amount of time Chauvin pressed his knee against her brother’s neck.
“Every time I think I’m ready to hear my brother cry for help, I have to get up and leave out because I’m just not ready, because that was a man that loved me and loved his family, and to see him on the ground like that.
“We will get justice, and I have a good good feeling about this, because there was witnesses on that stand that felt the pain that we were feeling. And I know that we are going to get a guilty verdict because God has the last say so,” she remarks.
Meanwhile, court has resumed, and Nelson is continuing his cross-examination of Isenschmid.
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The court is taking a short break now.
Prior to that, we’ve seen Nelson’s cross of Isenschmid take shape. Nelson has brought up the pills that were found in the squad car, as well as Isenschmid’s work analyzing fatal overdoses.
It’s similar to how he has cross-examined other medical and scientific experts. Nelson is repeatedly trying to inject uncertainty into the role of drugs in Floyd’s death.
More after the break.
The Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, said Thursday that the city is bracing for potential unrest following a verdict in Derek Chauvin’s trial. Frey announced that authorities will work with neighborhood groups to perform citywide street patrols.
“We know that tensions build, especially as we head into deliberations and the verdict,” The Washington Post reported Frey saying. “There’s been an enormous amount of work that our communities across our city, across the region that have been working on together.”
Amid unrest that came in the wake of Floyd’s death, neighborhood patrols cropped up across the city. Some of these patrols were armed. Frey’s plan marks the first time Minneapolis is directly involved in these patrols, The Post said.
“We believe that these groups are going to be successful because they are anchored in community,” Sasha Cotton, director of the Minneapolis’ Office of Violence Prevention, reportedly said.
Frey’s comments came several days after Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar said residents remain “on edge” over the outcome.
“Are you and your city prepared for the possibility of a hung jury or a not-guilty verdict?” she was asked Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.
“The community is on edge about that,” Omar responded. “We have seen justice not delivered in our community for many years. I think that there is a lot of confidence in [state] attorney general Keith Ellison and the prosecutors in this case, but we are all eagerly awaiting to see how this trial shakes out.
“It’s been really horrendous to watch the defense put George Floyd on trial instead of the former police officer who’s charged with his murder.”
It’s very important to point out that we’re nowhere near a verdict. The prosecution is still calling witnesses. After that, the defense gets a chance to call witnesses. When testimony ends, both sides will make closing statements. The jury starts deliberating after all of that.
Dr Daniel Isenschmid’s testimony about the presence of drugs in Floyd’s system is speaking directly to the prosecution’s position that he did not die from an overdose.
The amount of methamphetamine in Floyd’s blood “would be consistent with [a] prescription dose,” he says, further describing it as a “very low” level. (There is a prescription form of methamphetamine prescribed for Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, ADHD. )
Of the fentanyl found in Floyd’s blood, Isenschmid explains, some was “metabolized.” With a fentanyl-caused death, you wouldn’t see chemical evidence showing this level of metabolism, he says.
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Prosecutors are now questioning forensic toxicologist Dr Daniel Isenschmid, whose laboratory tested blood and urine collected from Floyd’s autopsy.
“This may be an opportunity for state to blunt the defense on level of drugs in Floyd system following his death. #ChauvinTrial,” explains FOX9’s Paul Blume.
Things have moved very quickly with Tobin’s testimony this afternoon.
He has left the stand moments ago following Nelson’s cross, and the prosecution’s re-direct, followed by still more cross and re-direct.
Nelson brought up fentanyl’s potential role in Floyd’s death, alluding to the two pills found in the squad car which had tested positive for fentanyl and methamphetamine.
He suggested that if Floyd ingested those pills, fentanyl could have caused respiratory depression within the same frame as restraint-caused respiratory depression.
On one of the re-directs, the prosecution asked Tobin about drugs and pre-existing conditions and their possible role in Floyd’s death.
Did pre-existing conditions cause Floyd’s death? Tobin answered in the negative.
“The cause of death is a low-level of oxygen that caused brain damage and caused the heart to stop,” he said.
“Any evidence that he died from methamphetamine?”
“No, none.”
The prosecution then asked whether someone who died from a fentanyl overdose would wind up in a coma.
“Yes, they would,” he said.
“Was Mr Floyd ever in a coma?”
“No.”
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We’re only a few minutes into cross-examination, and Nelson is clearly trying to establish that a police officer without advanced medical training might not have known Floyd was in respiratory distress.
“I found it very interesting that in your testimony and in your report, that you’re talking about this notion that if you can speak, you can breathe. You described this as a very dangerous proposition,” Nelson says.
“Yes,” Tobin replies.
“You described this as causing a false sense of security to people,” Nelson continues, to which Tobin responds in the affirmative.
“Physicians oftentimes have trouble with this...people similar to yourself who attended medical school...so intelligent men and women...sometimes have problems with this notion, right?”
Again, Tobin responds in the affirmative.
After Nelson tries to establish that even medical experts have trouble with this idea, he moves onto a discussion of police, and training materials that discuss speaking and breathing.
“It is frequently said and trained to police officers that [if] a person can talk and it means they can breathe, you would have a problem, with that?”
“They’re able to breath at that moment in time, but 10 seconds later, they might be dead,” Tobin says.
The takeaway here: Nelson is trying to establish that people with a lot more medical knowledge than police often miss this dangerous situation. He’s also trying to establish that if police training materials might contain incorrect medical information.
Court has returned from lunch.
Chauvin’s lawyer, Eric Nelson, has launched into his cross-examination of Tobin. Nelson’s questioning may well impact the rest of his case going forward, given the defense’s position that Floyd’s drug use and poor health caused his death—not Chauvin’s restraint.
However, as we saw on direct, Tobin repeatedly said that the circumstances surrounding Floyd’s restraint restricted his breathing. Based on his analysis, Tobin also said that neither fentanyl nor a heart condition stopped Floyd’s breathing.
America's on trial - family of George Floyd
George Floyd had many loved ones and a good number of them are in Minneapolis for the trial of former city police officer Derek Chauvin, charged with the murder of Floyd, 46, last May.
Keeta and Philonise Floyd leave court with their attorney Ben Crump earlier this week. Photograph: Nicholas Pfosi/Reuters
Floyd was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, but spent most of his life in Houston, Texas, where he was a footballer of some renown.
He moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, about six or seven years ago to start a new chapter after a stint in prison. Floyd’s funeral was in Houston.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports this week that:
More than two dozen of George Floyd’s family members have converged in Minneapolis to watch the murder trial of the former police officer charged in his death and they’re bracing themselves for the difficult testimony and images expected to come later this week when his cause of death and autopsy are examined.
“We pray a lot and we talk about different things that we might see in court,” said his brother, Philonise Floyd. “So we know that autopsies are getting ready to show, so we’re prepping each other.”
Philonise Floyd, his wife Keeta Floyd and the family’s attorney, Benjamin Crump, sat down for an interview Tuesday evening amid the second week of testimony in Derek Chauvin’s trial.
They discussed the emotional toll of rewatching Floyd die pinned under Chauvin’s knee in a bystander’s video that has been played several times in court. They expressed confidence in the prosecution’s case, and they rejected any interest in the state negotiating a plea deal with Chauvin.
“The family wants him to be held accountable in the court of law to the full extent,” Crump said, adding that he is not aware of any plea negotiations between the prosecution and Chauvin. “This case of Derek Chauvin regarding the killing of George Floyd is exactly like Philonise said — America’s on trial. Is it just rhetoric, or, do we really live by what we project to the world — liberty and justice and equality … for all?”
Philonise and Keeta Floyd and other family members have taken turns sitting in the one seat reserved in the courtroom for Floyd’s relatives. Social-distancing protocols have limited the number of people who can attend. Relatives also watch the trial on a live feed broadcast to another room in the courthouse.
They said the family is committed to showing up every day regardless of the trauma they must bear.
“Every time you go into the courtroom you see your brother passing away over and over again,” Philonise Floyd said. “It’s like déjà vu. You see the same thing. It’s a lot of pain, a lot of agony. I’m sitting there and I just — you know, I can’t save him. You constantly see him scream … I teared up lots of times.” Full report here.
Coronavirus restrictions have limited seats in court for everyone. Floyd’s family has been allocated one seat, total. Relatives take turns to fill that seat.
Chauvin was also allocated one seat for family or friends. After days and days when no-one filled that seat, the court has removed it.
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In a dispatch published this morning, Amudalat Ajasa, a Minneapolis-based journalist who’s covering Chauvin’s trial for The Guardian, brings us the stories of protesters who convene daily outside the courthouse.
There’s a small-but-dedicated core group of seven protesters who gather in hopes of witnessing justice for Floyd. They carry signs, project chants with a bullhorn, and circle the courthouse in an effort to foster peaceful protest.
“I get up at 5am and I’m usually out here a little after 7am every day,” John Stewart Jr, 57, told Ajasa.
Another member of this group, Chaz Neal, said: “Seeing that video last year changed my life. I wanted to be a part of the solution instead of the problem.”
Elul Adoga said she was inspired to join in protest after seeing elders protest every day.
“I’m 22. I can get out of bed at 8am and come and support people,” Adoga said, later commenting: “My dad is the typical ‘Black man’. He’s tall, Black and a little buff, and I think: it could be him any day.”
We’ve got another update on the atmosphere inside court.
Based on a pool reporter’s account, the jury remained very engaged throughout Tobin’s testimony—which was often incredibly technical. Many jurors took notes as Tobin went over a chronology of Floyd’s declining oxygen levels.
Derek Chauvin trial day 9 lunchtime summary
The court is on its lunch break.
There was a lot of seemingly watershed testimony for prosecutors during the first half of today’s proceedings. They elicited detailed commentary from a respiration expert to undermine any notion that Floyd’s death resulted from something other than obstructed breathing.
Here are some key moments.
- Dr Martin Tobin, a pulmonologist whom prosecutors called as an expert witness, did not hold back in his assessment: “Mr Floyd died from a low-level of oxygen and this caused damage to his brain...and it also caused a [pulseless electrical activity] arrhythmia that caused his heart to stop.” He further explained: “The cause of the low-level of oxygen was shallow breathing, small breaths...shallow breaths that weren’t able to carry the air through his lungs down to the essential areas [in] his lungs.”
- Tobin’s testimony wound up revealing that prosecutors are not trying to rely solely on Chauvin’s knee placement—against Floyd’s neck—as to why the arrest turned fatal. “There are a number of forces that led to the size of his breath [becoming] so small,” he said. “He’s turned prone on the street, that he has the handcuffs in place combined with the street, and then that he has a knee on his neck, and that he has a knee on his back.”
- That said, prosecutors did emphasize the role of Chauvin’s knee in this confluence of factors. “Did Mr Chauvin’s knee on the neck of Mr Floyd’s neck cause the narrowing?” prosecutors asked Tobin of Floyd’s hypopharynx. “Yes, it did,” Tobin responded.
- One particularly striking element of Tobin’s testimony was how he combines scientific detail with plain language. At one point, Tobin said: “He was being squashed between the two sides.” At another point, Tobin commented: “It was almost to the effect that a surgeon had gone in and removed a lung.”
We’ll have more breaking news and analysis soon.
Tobin’s testimony has dealt another blow to the defense’s position that Floyd died from drug use and underlying health problems. Based upon Tobin’s analysis, Floyd’s breathing was normal before it was constrained—undermining any argument that fentanyl derailed his respiratory function.
After reviewing several factors, Tobin says: “fentanyl is not causing the depression of his respiration.”
Tobin then discusses the potential role of heart disease.
“The first thing is that if you have somebody who has underlying heart disease, and the heart disease is so severe that it’s said that it’s causing shortness of breath...virtually all of those patients are going to have very high respiratory rates,” he says.
Floyd’s respiratory rate, however, is “normal” prior to the arrest, based upon his analysis.
The prosecution has completed its direct questioning of Tobin. The court is now taking a lunch break. We will bring you our roundup of the morning’s developments shortly.
'A healthy person subjected to what Mr Floyd was subjected to would have died'
Prosecutors are trying to dispel any notion that Floyd was physically OK when he was telling officers he couldn’t breath. Tobin explains that a person can continue to speak right until the point when oxygen levels drop to a point of no return.
“It’s a very dangerous thing to think that because you’re able to speak, you’re doing ok,” he says.
Earlier, Tobin explains: “A healthy person subjected to what Mr Floyd was subjected to would have died.”
Expert testifies: "If you can speak, you can breathe" gives a false sense of security calling it "true on the surface, but highly misleading & very dangerous mantra to have out there." Will defense use this to suggest he was simply misinformed? #DerekChauvinTrial #GeorgeFloyd
— Laura Coates (@thelauracoates) April 8, 2021
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It’s interesting to see prosecutors’ strategy on establishing Floyd’s cause-of-death through their questioning of Tobin.
By conveying Floyd’s inability to breathe as a confluence of factors—his position against the street, as well as the placement of handcuffs and presence of knees at multiple points on his body—they don’t have to rely on the exact location of Chauvin’s knee.
“With each breath he has to try and fight against the street, and he has to try and lift up the officer’s knee,” Tobin says, later adding, “He has to make all these efforts to try and breath against that.”
“There’s a huge increase in the work that Mr Floyd was performing to try and cope what was happening below the neck, leaving aside what was happening above the neck,” he also testifies.
Here’s a video with key points of Tobin’s testimony so far:
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We now have a pool report with details from inside the courtroom.
According to this report, most jurors took notes on Tobin’s testimony about how shallow breathing caused low-oxygen levels. Tobin has testified that “Mr Floyd died from a low-level of oxygen and this caused damage to his brain...and it also caused a [pulseless electrical activity] arrhythmia that caused his heart to stop.”
Tobin, the report says, has continued to hold everyone’s attention even though he is providing detailed medical testimony. When Tobin was showing jurors key parts of the neck in his discussion of breathing, and suggested they follow along, most of the panel did this to themselves.
The judge later told jurors that they did not have to follow along by touching their own necks. Fox9 reporter Paul Blume, citing a pool report, notes that “most” jurors keep doing so.
The fact that jurors appear so engaged with Tobin’s testimony bodes well for prosecutors. Oftentimes, medical and scientific testimony can be dry, and jurors can lose focus.
Here, they appear to be clearly paying attention to what Tobin’s saying about Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck.
We have just seen prosecutors focus on Chauvin’s knee against Floyd’s neck, to establish the role it played in his death.
“The knee on the neck is extremely important,” because it’s going to restrict air getting into Floyd’s hypopharynx, by narrowing the passageway, Tobin says.
“When you have to breathe through a narrow passageway, it’s like breathing through a drinking straw, but it’s much worse than that.”
Dr. Tobin w/ figures & calculations documenting significance of #DerekChauvin body pressure on #GeorgeFloyd neck & back. He has now been on the stand for more than an hour. The cut-away camera of defense table finds Eric Nelson taking lots of notes. Where does he begin his cross? pic.twitter.com/5E4vdJxvu6
— Paul Blume (@PaulBlume_FOX9) April 8, 2021
The prosecution asks of the situation: “This would be for anybody?” Tobin responds in the affirmative.
Prosecutors’ question about whether this can impact anyone—and Tobin’s answer that the impact of such narrowing is universal—is a swipe against the defense. Chauvin’s legal team has focused on the particulars of Floyd’s physical state, to argue that things like drug use impacted his bodily function.
“Did Mr Chauvin’s knee on the neck of Mr Floyd’s neck cause the narrowing?” prosecutors also ask.
“Yes, it did,” Tobin responds.
Tobin also points out during his testimony that Chauvin’s position of his knee against Floyd’s neck changed over time during the arrest, from one that wasn’t as obstructive to one that blocked airflow.
The court is now taking its mid-morning break. Tobin will continue testifying after proceedings resume.
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Tobin’s account on the mechanics of how Floyd stopped breathing has been especially powerful so far, combining medical details with plain language.
“He was being squashed between the two sides,” Tobin says of Floyd’s position against the street with officers on top of him.
“There was no way he could do any front-to-back [lung] movement.”
Sometimes the knee was down on the arm and against the chest, all the more preventing Floyd from being able to use his left lung for breathing, he says.
“It was almost to the effect that a surgeon had gone in and removed a lung.”
“He was going to be totally dependent on what he would be able to do with the right side.”
Tobin explains that constraint on one of Floyd’s arms, in combination with his prone position against the street, further exacerbates the situation.
“It’s also preventing him from expanding the right side,” he says.
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Floyd died from 'low level of oxygen' caused by 'shallow breathing' – expert
Shortly after Tobin has taken the stand, he gives his opinion on Floyd’s cause-of-death: “Mr Floyd died from a low-level of oxygen and this caused damage to his brain...and it also caused a [pulseless electrical activity] arrhythmia that caused his heart to stop.”
“The cause of the low-level of oxygen was shallow breathing, small breaths...shallow breaths that weren’t able to carry the air through his lungs down to the essential areas [in] his lungs,” Tobin says in response to further questions, noting shortly thereafter: “There are a number of forces that led to the size of his breath became so small.”
When asked what those forces are, Tobin’s answer points directly at the officers’ physical restraint of Floyd.
“He’s turned prone on the street, that he has the handcuffs in place combined with the street, and then that he has a knee on his neck, and that he has a knee on his back,” Tobin says.
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The Chauvin trial testimony has resumed.
Prosecutors have called their first witness of the day: Dr Martin Tobin, an expert in critical care and pulmonology.
The testimony from Martin marks prosecutors’ shift into explaining Floyd’s cause of death.
Again, this is key. Prosecutors contend Floyd died because Chauvin put a knee against Floyd’s neck, so it makes sense they would call an expert in respiration.
The Star Tribune has some analysis this morning from local defense attorneys who are observing Chauvin’s trial.
Andrew Gordon, a deputy director for The Legal Rights Center, a non-profit defense firm in Minneapolis, discussed Nelson’s repeated emphasize on the crowd surrounding Floyd’s arrest.
“You’re getting questions about distraction, and about the crowd, because if Chauvin took the stand and testified himself, that’s what you will be hearing him say,” Gordon remarks in the article. “From a purely defense attorney perspective, it’s an interesting kind of tactical consideration, where you can see Eric Nelson and his defense team trying to figure out, ‘Is this argument working?’”
Defense attorneys also weighed in on Chauvin’s facial expressions and mannerisms during the trial. Nekima Levy Armstrong, an attorney an activist, notes that Chauvin doesn’t seem to be impacted by witness testimony, nor the extensive visual evidence chronicling the arrest.
“We still don’t know who Derek Chauvin actually is. I’m not sure if we’ll know by the end of this trial,” she says, pointing out Chauvin’s seeming impassivity during his own murder trial. “Typically we see the demonization of Black children and Black families and Black neighborhoods. Derek Chauvin certainly holds up a mirror to white America, to cause you to ask the question of, ‘What kind of people are being produced in some of these environments?’”
It goes without saying that Chauvin’s appearance to jurors could play an immense role in trial outcome. If they see him as likable or trustworthy, this could make them skeptical of alleged malicious intent in his actions. Alternately, if they see him as icy and detached, it easily plays into prosecutors’ position that he ignored his training and killed Floyd.
One former public defender told the newspaper that she questioned whether Nelson had fully prepped Chauvin for appearing in front of jurors.
Chauvin murder trial enters ninth day of testimony
Good morning, readers, and welcome to our ongoing live coverage of the Derek Chauvin trial. Proceedings against Chauvin continue this morning at 9am CT in Minneapolis, with the trial entering its ninth day of testimony.
Chauvin, a former police officer with the Minneapolis police department, faces charges of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter, in the death of George Floyd during an arrest last May.
Chauvin, who is white, pressed his knee against the neck of Floyd, who is Black, for more than nine minutes during the fatal encounter. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Thus far, the trial has broken down to several key themes. Prosecutors have conducted extensive questioning of witnesses, including Chauvin’s former colleagues and police chief, about proper use-of-force.
They are trying to establish that Chauvin’s behavior flouted departmental guidelines and was a flagrantly excessive use-of-force, resulting in Floyd’s death.
Chauvin’s defense, through its cross-examination of witnesses, has tried to pick apart concrete concepts about use-of-force, effectively arguing that excessive force in one situation might be appropriate and reasonable in a number.
Remember: his lawyer, Eric Nelson, has basically claimed through questioning that the crowd forming around Floyd’s arrest could have constituted a threat to Chauvin and his colleagues on the scene, which would move the metric for appropriateness.)
Chauvin’s defense is also trying to argue that Floyd’s use-of-drugs led to his death – not the knee against his neck as he shouted for help and eventually stopped breathing.
Here are several key points from Wednesday’s proceedings:
- Sgt Jody Stiger, whom prosecutors called as an expert witness on use-of-force, said that Chauvin’s use-of-force “was not objectively reasonable.”
- Stiger, whom the defense tried to prompt into saying that a crowd might post a risk, stood his ground, saying: “As the time went on in the video, clearly you could see Mr Floyd’s medical … his health was deteriorating. His breath was getting lower. His tone of voice was getting lower. His movements were starting to cease. So at that point, as an officer on scene, you have a responsibility to realize that, ‘OK, something is not right’. Something has changed drastically from what was occurring earlier, so therefore you have a responsibility to take some type of action.”
- Both the Mercedes SUV Floyd was in prior to his arrest, as well as the police squad car on scene, were subject to a second forensic examination. While pills were recorded in photographs in these vehicles during the first forensic examination on 27 May, they weren’t logged or subjected to chemical analysis until December 2020 and early 2021, respectively. Nelson has pushed to suggest that investigators erred significantly in missing this, to sow doubt about the investigation more generally.
- Testimony revealed that the two pills contained methamphetamine and fentanyl.
- Susan Neith, a Pennsylvania-based forensic chemist in who also analyzed the pills, stated that levels of methamphetamine discovered some of those samples is low, between 1.9% and 2.9%. Neith said she frequently comes across street methamphetamine pills having from 90% to 100% methamphetamine in them. So, testimony which points out the relatively low levels of methamphetamine can undermine Nelson’s drug-overdose argument.
That’s it for right now. Please check back soon for breaking reporting and analysis.
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