MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – The murder trial of a former Minneapolis police officer charged with the death of George Floyd has introduced viewers from around the world to a wide range of defense and prosecution tactics aimed at wielding the jury .
Some strategies and conditions that became part of Derek Chauvin’s trial are barely outside the penalty area. The Associated Press took a closer look at them to better explain what viewers see and hear.
CONTRIBUTING FACTORS
The video shows Chauvin pinning Floyd to the ground, with his knee on his neck, while Floyd exclaims ‘I can’t breathe’ before his body goes limp on May 25th. But defense attorneys must question whether the former officer was directly responsible for the Blackman’s death. They tried to argue that other factors, such as drug use, killed him.
A medical examiner concluded last year that Floyd’s heart had stopped, complicated by the way police restrained him and squeezed his neck. The death certificate also lists narrowed arteries, high blood pressure, fentanyl poisoning and recent use of methamphetamine as ‘other contributing conditions’.
Dr. Andrew Baker, Hennepin County Medical Examiner, testified that those conditions “did not cause death”.
Chauvin is charged with second- and third-degree murder and manslaughter.
His lawyer, Eric Nelson, argued that the officer was following his training and suggested that Floyd should die due to the use of illegal drugs and existing health conditions.
“I HAVE TOO MANY DRUGS
Nelson tried to increase Floyd’s drug use and wanted to show on Wednesday that Floyd was shouting, “I ate too much drugs” as officers pinned him down.
Nelson has the testimony of Jody Stiger, a Los Angeles police sergeant who used as a violent expert whether he heard of Floyd saying, “I ate too much drugs.”
“I can not figure it out,” Stiger replied. Nelson later played it over for senior special agent James Reyerson with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, who agrees that Floyd apparently said so.
However, prosecutor Matthew Frank played a longer clip from the same video that placed Floyd’s statement in a broader context.
Reyerson replies, “I believe Mr. Floyd said, ‘I do not do drugs.'”
EXCITED DELIRIUM
Experts and other Minneapolis officials testified that the force used to subdue and detain Floyd on the sidewalk was excessive. Over the past week, judges have been told about the concept of ‘excited delirium’, a term one of the officers at the scene is heard on police’s body camera when he scolds a panicked Floyd and claims he was claustrophobic when officers wanted to put him in the group.
One Minneapolis official who trains others in medical care described the term on the stand as a combination of ‘psychomotor agitation, psychosis, hypothermia, a wide variety of other things you can see in a person, or rather bizarre behavior. . ‘
A forensic medicine expert working as a police surgeon for the Louisville Metro Police Department in Kentucky and as a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Louisville testified Thursday that Floyd met none of the ten criteria set by the American College whether Emergency Physicians were developed.
COURT TECHNOLOGY
Comprehensive video evidence of surveillance cameras, cell phones and cameras of Floyd’s body is perhaps the most important part of the case for the defense and prosecution.
Modern courtrooms, such as those where Chauvin is tried, use such technology as large video screens, projectors and updated software.
Dr. Martin Tobin, a specialist in lung and critical care at Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital and Loyola University Medical School in Illinois, used computer animation to show how Floyd was kept on the sidewalk. This gave jurors a 360-degree view of where the officers were and what they were doing.
He uses a compilation of photos from a bystander video to show Chauvin pressing his knee to Floyd’s neck. Floyd’s breathing difficulties increased at that point when officers held him on his stomach, handcuffed behind his back. The images showed Floyd trying to use his shoulder muscles to breathe, the doctor said.
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Find AP’s full coverage of George Floyd’s death at: https://apnews.com/hub/death-of-george-floyd