Defense lawyers for former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin are asking the jury at his trial on George Floyd’s death to see evidence of Floyd’s arrest in 2019.
Eric Nelson, Chauvin’s top lawyer, said the similarities between the two prisons “are incredible”, according to Reuters, adding that “it is exactly the same behavior in two incidents that are almost exactly one year apart”.
Floyd was arrested in May 2019, an incident during which he would have been distressed when a police officer pointed a gun at him. During his arrest, Floyd swallowed several opioid pills while the police approached him.
According to the Associated Press, Chauvin’s defense is planning to argue that Floyd’s drug use contributed to his death.
Prosecutor Matthew Frank, however, argued that the defense wants to use the 2019 prison to try to portray Floyd as a bad person.
Frank criticized “the defense’s desperation to tarnish Mr. Floyd’s character, to show that what he fought, an opioid addiction like so many Americans do, is really evidence of bad character,” according to the AP.
Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill previously rejected an attempt to tell the jury about the previous arrest, but heard new arguments on Tuesday. He said it would take at least a day to consider the request.
Floyd was pronounced dead on May 25 after Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Graphic images of the incident went viral and sparked protests across the country against police brutality that lasted all summer.
THE autopsy from the Hennepin County coroner’s office on the day of Floyd’s death, he had traces of fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system. However, the drugs were not listed as their cause of death.
Chauvin is on trial for second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree murder.
Nelson on Monday also asked the court to pause and reposition the trial after the city of Minneapolis reached a $ 27 million settlement with the Floyd family on Friday.