A judge said on Friday that he will not delay or move the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who is accused of murder and wrongful death in the death of George Floyd. Chauvin’s lawyers raised concerns that a $ 27 million settlement because Floyd’s family could contaminate the jury.
The judge will allow limited evidence of when Floyd was arrested in 2019. Meanwhile, a 13th juror was sitting on Friday – a woman who said she saw only video clips from Floyd’s arrest and needs to know more about what happened beforehand. . The jury will include 12 jurors and two alternates, and the jury selection will continue on Monday morning.
The lawsuit was halfway through last week, when the Minneapolis City Council announced that it had unanimously approved the mass payment to resolve a civil rights case over Floyd’s death. Chauvin’s lawyer, Eric Nelson, subsequently tried to suspend or move the trial, considering the timing of the settlement to be deeply disturbing and saying that it hampered Chauvin’s chance of a fair trial.
But Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill, who called the moment “unhappy”, said he believed a delay would do nothing to curb the problem of pre-trial advertising. As for moving the trial, he said there is nowhere in Minnesota that has not been touched by that publicity.
The judge gave the defense a victory by deciding that the jury can hear the evidence of Floyd’s arrest in 2019, but only the evidence possibly pertaining to the cause of his death in 2020. He acknowledged that there are several similarities between the two encounters, including that Floyd swallowed drugs after the police confronted him.
The judge said earlier that the previous arrest could not be admitted, but new evidence made him reconsider: drugs were found in January in a second search of the police SUV that the four officers tried to place on Floyd 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 the dangerously high blood pressure when he was examined by a paramedic in 2019 and a short video clip from the camera of a policeman’s body. He said that Floyd’s “emotional behavior”, like calling his mother, will not be admitted.
But Cahill said he did not plan, for the time being, to allow a forensic psychiatrist to testify for the prosecution. Floyd said he had claustrophobia and resisted getting into the vehicle before the fatal encounter last year, and the state wanted Dr. Sarah Vinson to testify that her actions were consistent with a normal person experiencing severe stress, as opposed to pretending or resisting the prison .
The judge said he would reconsider allowing her to be a rebuttal witness if the defense somehow opened the door, but allowing her to testify could bring all evidence of Floyd’s arrest in 2019.
“There is clearly a question of cause of death here, and it is highly contested,” said Cahill, noting that both arrests involved Floyd’s heart problems and drug ingestion.
The county coroner called Floyd’s death a homicide, with an initial summary that said he “had a cardiac arrest while being restrained by the police”. Floyd was pronounced dead in a hospital 4 km away from where he was detained.
The full report said he died of “cardiopulmonary arrest, complicating the subjugation, restraint and compression of the neck”. A summary report listed fentanyl intoxication and recent use of methamphetamine under “other significant conditions”, but not under “cause of death”.
The previous arrest “adds a little more weight” to the defense plan to argue that Floyd put his life in danger by swallowing drugs again and that, combined with his health problems, caused his death, said Ted Sampsell-Jones, professor of the Mitchell Hamline Law School.
“The jurors shouldn’t be influenced by that sort of thing, but they are human,” said Sampsell-Jones.
Local defense lawyer Mike Brandt said it could also hamper prosecutors’ attempts to portray Floyd as a “gentle giant” whose reaction to the 2020 incident was due to the stress of the meeting, and which Chauvin exacerbated.
Still, it doesn’t necessarily undermine the prosecution because they can point to different results, said another local lawyer, Ryan Pacyga. “The prosecution can come back and say, ‘Wait, he didn’t die before.’ What’s the difference? They will point to the knee at the neck, “said Pacyga.
Floyd, who was black, was pronounced dead on May 25 after Chauvin, who is white, pressed his knee to his neck for about nine minutes while he was handcuffed and begging that he was unable to breathe. Floyd’s death, captured in a video widely viewed by onlookers, sparked weeks of sometimes violent protests across the country and led to a national trial on racial justice.
The 13 jurors seated until Thursday are divided by race: seven are white, four are black and two are multiracial, according to the court.
Local legal experts and defense lawyers said the last two judges chosen were almost always alternates, and some said they had never seen it done otherwise. But the court said that would not necessarily be the case for Chauvin’s jury. Spokesperson Kyle Christopherson said that alternates 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 different, like taking numbers out of a hat,” said Sampsell-Jones, adding that the judge needs all the jurors to pay attention during the trial. “If it is the last two, and it gets published in the press, then the last two may find out that they are substitutes. Which is what Cahill needs to avoid.”
The woman chosen on Friday morning – a white woman in her 50s – is in between jobs, said she was a volunteer with the homeless and wants to work on affordable housing issues.
She said she has never personally seen police officers respond to blacks or minorities more strongly than whites and that a person should have nothing to fear from the police if they cooperate and carry out orders. She hardly said that it means that a person deserves to be harmed.
“If you are not listening to the commands, obviously something more needs to happen to resolve the situation,” she said of the actions of the police. “I don’t know how far the steps need to go.”
The opening statements are on March 29 if the jury is complete by then. This process is about to end almost a week early.
Three other former officers face a trial in August for Floyd’s death on charges of helping and encouraging second-degree murder and wrongful death.