MINNEAPOLIS – It was three days after George Floyd died in police custody last May, and business in the Twin Cities was on fire. The policemen were shooting with rubber bullets and tear gas to contain the protesters, their anger fueled by a cell phone video of Mr. Floyd, a black man, panting under the knee of a white officer.
As the soldiers prepared to take to the streets, Officer Derek Chauvin believed that the case against him was so devastating that he agreed to plead guilty to murder in the third degree. As part of the deal, officials say, he was willing to go to prison for more than 10 years. Local officials, struggling to quell the growing anger in the community, scheduled a press conference to announce the deal.
But at the last minute, according to new details submitted by three police officers, the deal was broken after William P. Barr, the attorney general at the time, rejected the deal. The deal was pending approval by the federal government because Chauvin, who asked to serve time in a federal prison, wanted assurances that he would not face federal civil rights charges.
An official said Barr fears that a court settlement, so early in the process and before a full investigation is completed, is considered too tolerant by the growing number of protesters across America. At the same time, Mr. Barr wanted to allow state officials, who were about to take over the case of the county prosecutor who had strained relations with the black community in Minneapolis, to make their own decisions about how to proceed.
Now, in preparation for the Chauvin trial, which is scheduled to begin with the selection of the jury on March 8, there is great uncertainty about the outcome of the case and whether the process could provoke further violence.
Some office workers in downtown Minneapolis have already been warned not to go to work during the weeks trial because of heavy security. The National Guard will be deployed, transforming the city center into a military zone, with Humvees and armed soldiers monitoring the checkpoints. In his recent budget proposal, Governor Tim Walz included a special $ 4.2 million item for security during the trial, as well as a $ 35 million fund to reimburse local law enforcement agencies who can be called to contain the agitation.
“This is the most famous police brutality lawsuit in the history of the United States,” said Paul Butler, a former prosecutor who is a professor at Georgetown University and an authority on police brutality.
In a country whose criminal justice system rarely holds officers accountable for deaths at work – not in Ferguson, Missouri, not in the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, not in the case of Eric Garner in New York – Mr. Chauvin’s trial is seen as a test to see if anything has changed. Mr. Chauvin, in a widely viewed cell phone video captured by a viewer, kept his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes until he took his last breath pushing, in the words of a lawsuit, “the concrete relentlessly on Chicago Avenue. “
The trial may still be postponed. The prosecution asked an appeals court to postpone the process, citing the risk that the trial, with so many demonstrators likely to occupy the streets, could become a super-disseminating event during the coronavirus pandemic.
“This appeal involves an issue of exceptional and unique importance in one of the most prominent cases in the history of our country,” says the first sentence of the appeal request filed by Keith Ellison, Minnesota attorney general, who is leading the charge.
The state is also appealing a decision by Judge Peter A. Cahill to separate the trial from Mr. Chauvin, who is charged with second-degree murder and second-degree murder – the initial third-degree murder charge has been dropped – from the trial of three other former officers involved in Mr. Floyd’s death, two of whom were newbies with only a few days on the job.
The three former officers who were with Mr. Chauvin during Mr. Floyd’s final minutes – Thomas Lane, who held Mr. Floyd’s legs; J. Alexander Kueng, who was positioned on Mr. Floyd’s back; and Tou Thao, who turned away angry viewers – are scheduled to face trial on charges of aid and complicity in August.
Legal experts and lawyers involved in the case say that Judge Cahill’s decision to hold separate trials could benefit Chauvin – whose lawyer had pushed for a separate trial – because he will no longer have to face the possibility that the other three will blame him.
In fact, this is already happening behind the scenes: the defense lawyers of these former officers have changed their elaboration strategies based on establishing Chauvin’s guilt to offer his help in his defense. If Chauvin were acquitted – a possibility that many officials fear could lead to further unrest and questions about the failed deal – the other three men would probably not be tried.
Floyd’s death forced a reckoning with racial injustice and police brutality that many thought should already be done. Since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, so many Americans had not taken to the streets to demand justice and equality. The fact that it happened in the middle of a pandemic only increased the feeling of magnitude.
Floyd died on Memorial Day after a store clerk called the police because he allegedly used a counterfeit $ 20 bill to buy cigarettes. Soon, the impact of his death on the wider world will narrow – to a specially built courtroom, 1856, designed for social detachment at the Hennepin County Government Center in downtown Minneapolis.
At the trial, the central issue is likely to be the exact cause of Floyd’s death. The county coroner considered the death to be a homicide caused by a combination of police use of force, the presence of fentanyl and methamphetamine in the Floyd system and its underlying health conditions. But Chauvin’s defense strategy, which emerged in several lawsuits from his lawyer, Eric Nelson, is centered on presenting medical evidence that Floyd died of a drug overdose.
“Much of the defense strategy will look like a trial of George Floyd’s character,” said Butler, the Georgetown professor.
In a series of motions filed this week, Mr. Nelson asked the court to allow Mr. Floyd’s testimony on drug use and to ban anyone in the trial from referring to Mr. Floyd as a victim.
Nelson declined to comment on the failed deal last year.
Lawyers and legal experts often cite two of America’s most famous trials involving race and police when asked to place the criminal cases arising from Floyd’s death in a historical context. One is the Rodney King case in Los Angeles in 1992, for its obvious parallels with white officers brutalizing a black man. The other is the OJ Simpson trial, which offers an example of how an emotional judgment can become a televised show.
Judge Cahill, citing immense interest in the Chauvin case and restrictions on the pandemic that will limit public participation, ruled that cameras will be allowed in court, a first in Minnesota.
Mr. Ellison opposed the cameras in court, writing in a motion that “an innocent bystander who saw the assassination of George Floyd does not deserve – without his consent – to be launched on the public stage”.
There are also lingering fears that the trial may attract white supremacists or other right-wing extremists to the city. During the pre-trial hearings, the defendants’ lawyers have already been harassed; a man was arrested after getting a gun inside the court.
Earl Gray, Mr. Lane’s lawyer, was in his office one recent morning, explaining that Mr. Floyd’s drug use is likely to be at the center of the case when his phone rang. It was another one in a series of hostile calls he had been receiving for months.
“It is a case where the policy is very tough,” he said matter-of-factly, after hanging up.
Jurors will remain anonymous during the trial and possibly kidnapped. A questionnaire was sent to potential jurors, asking them a series of questions, including their views on the Black Lives Matter movement and the effort to “strip the police”, a rallying cry from last summer’s social unrest, and whether they participated in any protests.
Setting up an impartial jury can be the most irritating challenge in the whole process, and three weeks have been scheduled just to choose the jury. After all, many here ask, who has not heard of the case and formed an opinion on it? And how will the turmoil of last summer and the expectation that an acquittal of the case would cause more demonstrations in your own city, weigh on the jury’s minds?
In addition to snow on the ground and a bare Christmas tree, the only indication that almost a year has passed since Floyd was killed in front of Cup Foods in South Minneapolis is a sign at the Speedway gas station across the street that changes every morning.
“GEORGE FLOYD TRIAL IN 28 DAYS”, he said recently.
Eliza Wesley, known in the community around Cup Foods as “the gate” at George Floyd Square – anchored by a roundabout turned into a memorial, with a raised fist sculpture projecting into the sky – has been looking after the area for many months greeted the visitors.
The countdown signal, she said, “is so that we know exactly how many days are left until the trial, so that we can be prepared. We want it to be peaceful. We don’t want white supremacists coming here. “
Ms. Wesley said she had no doubts about the outcome of the trial, even though she feared that her city could once again be convulsed by disturbances.
“I am confident that justice will be served,” she said. “There is no way to avoid this video. God allowed this to happen, so that life could be changed and people could see what is happening. George Floyd died for a purpose. “