A judge said Friday he will not delay or move the trial of Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who is charged. murder and manslaughter in George Floyd’s death. Chauvin’s lawyers expressed concern that a $ 27 million settlement because Floyd’s family could pollute the jury’s pool.
The judge will allow limited evidence from when Floyd was arrested in 2019. Meanwhile, a 13th jury member sat down Friday – a woman who said she had only seen the videos of Floyd’s arrest and needed to learn more about what happened beforehand. The jury will include 12 jurors and two deputies, and the jury’s selection will continue Monday morning.
The process was halfway completed last week when the Minneapolis City Council announced that it had unanimously approved the massive payout to settle a civil lawsuit over Floyd’s death. Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, then tried to stop or move the trial, calling the settlement’s timing deeply disturbing, saying it jeopardized Chauvin’s chances at a fair trial.
But Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill, who called the timing “unfortunate”, said he thought a delay would do nothing to stop the problem of preliminary publicity. As for the trial, he said there is no place in Minnesota that has been affected by the publicity.
The judge gave the defense a victory by ruling that the jury could hear evidence of Floyd’s arrest in 2019, but only evidence possibly related to the cause of his death in 2020. He acknowledged that there are different similarities between the two encounters, including that Floyd swallowed drugs. after the police confronted him.
The judge had earlier said the earlier arrest could not be allowed, but new evidence led him to reconsider: drugs were found in January in a second search by police sports utility vehicle that the four officers tried to put Floyd inside last year. . The defense argues that Floyd’s drug use contributed to his death.
Cahill said he would allow medical evidence of Floyd’s physical reactions, such as his dangerously high blood pressure when examined by a paramedic in 2019, and a short clip of an officer’s body camera video. He said Floyd’s ’emotional behavior’, such as calling his mother, would not be allowed.
But Cahill said he does not currently plan to allow the testimony of a forensic psychiatrist for the prosecution. Floyd said he had claustrophobia and that he resisted climbing into the group before the fatal meeting last year, and the state wanted dr. Sarah Vinson must testify that his actions are consistent with a normal person experiencing severe stress, as opposed to fake or resisting arrest.
The judge said he would reconsider her as a witness of rebuttal if the defense somehow opened the door, but that could usher in all the evidence of Floyd’s arrest in 2019.
“Obviously there is a cause of death, and it is strongly disputed,” Cahill said, noting that both arrests involved Floyd’s heart problems and drug use.
The provincial medical investigator classified Floyd’s death as a murder, with an initial summary saying he “had a cardiopulmonary arrest while being restrained by police. ‘Floyd was pronounced dead at a hospital which was 4km from the house where he was confined.
The full report states that he died of ‘cardiopulmonary arrest, which complicates law enforcement, restrains self-control and neck compression.’ A summary report lists fentanyl poisoning and recent use of methamphetamine under ‘other significant conditions’, but not under ’cause of death’.
The earlier arrest “adds a little more weight” to the defense’s plan to argue that Floyd risked his life by swallowing drugs again and that, along with his health problems, caused his death, Ted Sampsell-Jones, a professor at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law.
“Juries are not supposed to be influenced by such a thing, but they are human,” Sampsell-Jones said.
Local defense attorney Mike Brandt said it could also hurt prosecutors’ attempts to portray Floyd as a ‘soft giant’ whose reaction to the 2020 incident was due to the tension of the encounter, and that Chauvin escalate.
Yet that does not necessarily hurt the prosecution because they can refer to the different outcomes, another local attorney, Ryan Pacyga, said. “The prosecution may come back and say, ‘Wait, he did not die before.’ “What’s the difference? They’re going to point to the knee to the neck,” Pacyga said.
Floyd, who was black, was pronounced dead on May 25 after Chauvin, who is White, pressed his knee on his neck for about nine minutes while handcuffed and begged him not to be able to breathe. Floyd’s death, captured on a video of bystanders that was widely seen, sparked weeks of sometimes violent protests across the country, leading to a national settlement of racial justice.
The 13 jurors sitting until Thursday are divided by race: seven are white, four are black and two are multiracial, according to the court.
Legal experts and local defense attorneys said the last two elected jurors are almost always deputies, and some have said they have never seen it any other way. However, the court said that would not necessarily be the case for Chauvin’s jury. Spokesman Kyle Christopherson said alternatives could be chosen in many different ways, but declined to give details.
“You can see in this case why (Cahill) might want to do something else, like pull numbers out of a hat,” Sampsell-Jones said, adding that the judge needed all judges to pay attention for the duration of the trial. “If it’s the last two, and it’s published in the press, then the last two might find out that these are alternatives. That’s what Cahill should avoid.”
The woman who was elected on Friday morning – a white woman in her 50s – is between jobs, and said she wanted to volunteer for the homeless and work on affordable housing.
She said she had never personally seen police officers respond to black people or minorities with more violence than white people, and that a person need not fear anything from the police if they cooperate and obey orders. She no longer said it meant someone deserved to be harmed.
“If you do not listen to the instructions, of course something else must happen to resolve the situation,” she said of the officers’ actions. “I do not know how far the steps must go.”
Opening statements are March 29 if the jury is completed by that time. The process is underway to complete almost a week early.
Three other former officers faces trial in August in Floyd’s death on charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder and manslaughter.