Today marks day five of the Derek Chauvin murder trial in Minneapolis, MN. Chauvin is the former police officer from Minneapolis that faces charges of 2nd degree unintentional murder, 3rd degree murder and 2nd degree manslaughter in the death of George Floyd after he and three other officers confronted him over Floyd reportedly passed a $20.00 counterfeit bill at a nearby store, creating a scenario that eventually ended with Chauvin's knee on Floyd's neck for between 7 to 10 minutes, including several minutes after Floyd lost consciousness - all caught on cell phone video by bystanders (a nearby video from another angle finds three of the four officers with their knees on Floyd), provoking a summer of unrest that pushed the country only slightly towards reckoning with issues such as police misconduct and systemic racism.
Like a lot of people I've been forced to rely on snippets and news summaries to see what's going on with the trial; mainly because I have work obligations and other things that have to be done.Because of this I won't go massively in depth over the case. Instead I want to bring up a few things that have caught my attention. So here's the sad, the infuriating, and the weirdly understandable.
Let's start with the saddest fact. In one of the bystander testimonies an off-duty firefighter who was on the scene and ended up calling 911 as things happened testified that she saw that Floyd's face looked puffy and swollen and that fluids were releasing from his body. She also said she tried asserting herself as a first responder in an attempt to help him but was rebuffed by the officers (she testified one of them - who was standing in a defense position between the officers and the onlookers - rold her that if she really was a firefighter then she'd "know better" than to get involved).
What makes this truly tragic is that, while hindsight is 20/20 and one can "woulda, shoulda, coulda" anything to death, it's possible that if she were listened to then maybe the outcome would've ended up different. Again that's not a guarantee but at least an effort could've been made to keep him alive where his reported crime (the passing of a counterfeit $20.00 bill) could'[ve been handled by the legal system rather than the events leading up to Floyd's death.
The infuriating part of all this is something that's totally to be expected - the decision of the defense to try and put George Floyd on trial for his own killing, claiming Chauvin and his fellow officers had no choice but to take the actions that ended up killing George Floyd. This is a common move over the past decade, especially in cases where white police officers end up killing unarmed black people. Because of that (and the defenses attempt to paint Floyd as either some mythical being with superhuman powers or too nodded out on drugs to function safely) it's one of the standard ways defense attorneys in these cases try to make a case for the officer having no choice but to kill the person they're on trial for killing. What's infuriating is not just that it seems to work most of the time but that it's almost considered a normal defense.
And then there's the weirdly understandable - the testimony of the clerk at the store pointing out that he couldn't tell if the $20.00 bill was legit or counterfeit and wasn't trained to tell the difference. For a lot of people who've worked cashier positions this rings true to some degree (especially for those working in smaller places) as there might not be training on how to spot a counterfeit bill or not. The bill could've been counterfeit, it might not have been/ Either way it shouldn't have been a detah sentence for George Floyd.
Those are a few thoughts on the trial from what I've gathered and how ti stands thus far. I do want to add that I find it interesting that there are some cops who may be testifying against Chauvin (including one who testified that Chauvin should let his knee off of Floyd's neck once the latter was handcuffed and not resisting - Chauvin kept it on way longer). It's interesting because it almost never happens. This means something went way wrong (even with the jury not baing able to hear about the previous police misconduct cases against Chauvin, this is big news).
At this point one can't say what the verdict will be. While it's possible that Derek Chauvin could be convicted of either murder or manslaughter it's equally likely that he could get off for some reason or another (given how hard it is to prosecute a police officer this is well within the realm of possibility). What is apparent though is that there's something different in this case that calls for some kind of reckoning in the bigger social and political pictures.
Whatever verdict the jury reaches, this is a stepping stone and the struggle for justice will continue.
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