MINNEAPOLIS – A police officer approached a car with George Floyd in the front seat, and Mr. Floyd began to panic. While officers ordered him to spit out a pill he wanted to swallow, he repeatedly begged them not to shoot him.
Within seconds, one of the officers was drawn with his rifle and Mr. Floyd got out of the car and handcuffed.
The camera-turned-camera video of the scene was shown to jurors for the first time on Tuesday in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer charged with murdering Mr. Floyd. The episode was strikingly similar to the day of Mr.’s death. Floyd. But that was taken a year before.
When the defense filed its case after 11 days of testimony against Mr. Chauvin begins, the video was the first exhibit that indicated an important strategy: the jury’s focus was shifted to the use of illegal drugs by Floyd.
Chauvin’s attorney Eric J. Nelson presented the video of the May 2019 arrest and questioned the paramedic who treated Floyd that day. He asked a woman who was with him the day he died about how Mr. Floyd fell asleep in the car and was difficult to wake up. He examined the signs of excited delirium, a condition often attributed to the use of stimulants.
Other planes of the defense also emerged, including suggestions that bystanders trying to intervene were threatening and that the behavior of Mr. Chauvin was reasonable under the circumstances.
A police officer in Minneapolis Park who on May 25, 2020, the day of Mr. Floyd’s death, responding at the scene, testified that bystanders were aggressive enough to make him fear for the safety of the other officers. A police expert said that the period when Mr. Chauvin to Mr. Floyd’s neck knelt was not only justified, but that it could not even qualify as power. Each interrogation line is not so much designed to convince the jury, but to sow the seeds of reasonable doubt.
The judge, Peter A. Cahill, tried to stop a general defensive tactic and blame the victim. He gave the testimony about Mr. Floyd strictly limited and said that his actions in the past and state of mind were not relevant to the case.
But the defense tried to expose jurors to the history of Mr. Floyd on involvement with the police, and arguments over how many of the arrest jurors will begin in May 2019, began long before the trial.
Nelson said arrest shows a pattern of behavior in which Floyd responded to police by panicking, indicating that he had falsified his response.
“It’s about the nature of this case and why public perception is what it is,” he said. Nelson said in court a few weeks ago. “The things he says. “I can not breathe.” “I’m claustrophobic.” Calling for his Mom. ‘
The judge did not buy the argument and initially did not rule out any mention of the incident. He changed his mind after a second search in January for the group car used on the day of Mr. Floyd’s death. Half-chilled pills were taken on methamphetamine, with Mr. Floyd’s DNA and saliva. He said it shows similarities between the two arrests, but he allowed the jury to watch only about 90 seconds of the 2019 video.
“This evidence is allowed only for the limited purpose of showing what effect the opioid intake had or not had on George Floyd’s physical well-being,” Judge Cahill told the jury Tuesday before the video was shown. “This evidence should not be used as evidence of the character of George Floyd.”
The video showed Floyd responding slowly to police orders, and the officer carrying the body camera to place Floyd’s hand on the dashboard. “It increased rapidly,” said Officer Scott Creighton, now retired and the first witness of the day.
The prosecutor tried to empathize with Mr. Floyd’s struggle with opioid addiction, and testified that he tried to stop using. The paramedic who was called to the district in 2019 to see Mr. To treat Floyd, she said Tuesday that he told her he not only took an opioid painkiller when the officer approached the car, but that he took them every 20 minutes.
Dan Herbert, a Chicago defense attorney who specializes in representing police officers, said the defense had achieved its goals by presenting the arrest in 2019. “What Nelson needs to do is show a side of George Floyd. ‘different from the poor individual who suffocated in front of everyone’s eyes on video,’ ‘he said. “He was happy and did not die in 2019 in that incident – he was not so happy in 2020, that’s the strategy there.”
But the evidence may flare up again because it showed an aggressive, swear-laden approach by the police officers, and because Mr. Floyd, unlike in 2020, received medical help and survived the encounter.
“I do not think Nelson has a point at all,” said Albert Goins, a retired Minneapolis lawyer representing the family of Jamar Clark, a black man killed by Minneapolis police in 2015. has. “Not only did Nelson not give the use of the ‘An Incident in 2019 a blow, it raised the issue of the arbitrary practice and history of the Minneapolis Police Department to stop its black citizens.’
The defense spent most of its time on Tuesday testifying against Barry Brodd, the first witness to testify. Chauvin’s actions explicitly defended.
Mr. Brodd, a former police officer and expert on self-defense, said placing Floyd handcuffed in the street on the street did not qualify as violence because no pain was inflicted.
‘I felt that Derek Chauvin was justified and acted with objective reasonableness, in accordance with the policies of the Minneapolis Police and the current standards of law enforcement, in his interaction with Mr. Floyd, ‘he said.
Mr. Brodd made statements previously used to defend officers accused of killing a black man. He mentions mr. Floyd’s size and muscle building, and says that some suspects who contain a lot of drugs, “do not feel pain” and show “superhuman strength”, a sign of a condition called excited delirium that is often used to kill people in police custody. to explain.
At cross-examination, Steve Schleicher, one of the prosecutors, Mr. Brodd acknowledged that under the policy of the Minneapolis Police Department, a restriction is considered a use of force and that a reasonable officer will adhere to the department’s policies.
Mr. Brodd admitted that he listened to the videos in which Floyd expressed pain and said, “Everything hurts.” But, Mr. Brodd said he did not ‘notice’ it.
While Mr. Brodd days of testimony disputed over accepted police practices offered by the prosecution, not all witnesses were friendly towards the defense on Tuesday. Shawanda Hill, another witness, made it clear through her facial expressions that it was not her choice to testify.
Me. Hill called Mr. Floyd stumbled upon Cup Foods, the convenience store where he spent the $ 20 bill reported as forged by police, and offered her a ride. After they were in the parked car, she said, Mr. Floyd fell asleep and it was hard to wake up. When police officers approached the car, she woke him up.
“He immediately grabbed the wheel and said, ‘Please do not kill me,'” she said.
Another witness was Peter Chang, a Minneapolis Park police officer who responded to the scene and was asked to stop Mr. Floyd to watch. When he did so, he said, he became concerned about the safety of the officers who spoke with Mr. Floyd traffic. “The crowd got louder and louder,” he said.
Officer Chang’s body camera video showed long minutes during which Ms. Hill and another of Floyd’s associates, Morries Lester Hall, were waiting on the sidewalk and could not see what was happening to Mr. Floyd does not happen. When the ambulance with mr. Floyd starts to pull away, asking them if they can get his phone out of the car.
“He’s already gone,” he said. Chang told them. “He does not need his phone.”