ST. PAUL, Minnesota — The most important piece of evidence used to convict Derek Chauvin of murder last year was bystander video that showed the former Minneapolis police officer choking George Floyd with his knee.
But defense attorneys for three of Mr. Chauvin’s fellow officers, who are accused of violating Mr. Floyd’s civil rights, began their case on Monday by telling a federal jury that there is much more to the story than the video – an argument Mr. Chauvin’s lawyer also used at trial.
There was Mr. Floyd’s drug use, they said. His erratic actions when officers attempted to arrest him. Charged with a felony — passing a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes. They added that the area around Cup Foods, where a convenience store clerk had called the police because of Mr Floyd, was a high-crime area where street gangs were active, raising the level of fear for officers.
Early on, defense lawyers also acknowledged that Mr Floyd’s death was devastating, before arguing that their clients were not responsible.
“George Floyd’s death is truly a tragedy,” said Robert Paule, attorney for one of the defendants, Tou Thao, a veteran officer who was Mr Chauvin’s partner. “However, a tragedy is not a crime.”
A felony, however, is exactly what the three officers committed, a federal prosecutor told the jury in opening argument. Speaking directly, Samantha Trepel, the prosecutor, explained to the jury the law that requires officers to intervene when they see a colleague using excessive force. She explained that officers are constitutionally obligated to protect those in their custody and to intervene if they see another officer abusing a suspect.
“Failure to do so is a crime,” said Ms Trepel, who repeatedly described the defendants as ruthless in failing to stop Mr Floyd’s murder. “They saw Mr. Floyd suffer a slow, excruciating death,” she said, and “didn’t lift a finger” to help him.
The three former officers are on trial for willfully violating Mr Floyd’s civil rights in a case that touches on a critical issue for US policing: the duty of officers to intervene against fellow officers when they witness misconduct. The law requires them to do so and police departments train officers on the duty to intervene, but prosecutions are extremely rare. This partly reflects the high level of proof of will, which involves some element of intent – or at least the awareness that an agent is doing something wrong, but doing it anyway.
The trial is taking place in a much less intense atmosphere than that which surrounded Mr. Chauvin’s state trial in a heavily fortified courthouse in downtown Minneapolis. It attracted crowds of demonstrators and was guarded by soldiers from the National Guard.
Some of Mr. Floyd’s family and friends were in the courtroom on Monday, including his brother, Philonise Floyd; his nephew Brandon Williams; and Courteney Ross, who was Mr. Floyd’s girlfriend.
In a brief interview, Ms Ross said this trial was just as important to getting justice for Mr Floyd as the trial of Mr Chauvin was. “I know when someone calls for help, the right thing to do is help them,” she said.
In this trial, the central issue is not the brutality of Mr. Chauvin, but an aspect of police culture that is much more common: the deference that most officers give to their superiors – Mr. Chauvin was the officer the most senior on the scene – and the reluctance of many to speak up when witnessing misconduct.
Ms Trepel also offered insight into how the prosecution plans to present its case in the coming weeks. Many officers will speak up, she said, and testify to the training officers receive on the duty to intervene as well as the dangers of holding a handcuffed suspect face down, as they did with Mr. .Floyd. She said witnesses, some of whom testified at Mr Chauvin’s trial, will testify about the “slow motion murder they were watching”.
Understanding the civil rights trial over the death of George Floyd
Police culture put to the test. The federal civil rights trial of three former officers for their role in the killing of George Floyd centers on a critical issue in American policing: the duty of officers to intervene against fellow officers when they witness misconduct.
Lawyers for the three former officers appeared to outline a defense based on several pillars: that Mr. Floyd’s own actions in initially resisting arrest justified the aggressive police response; that two of the officers, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng, were recruits, and that Mr. Chauvin was the training officer for one of them; and that the third officer, Mr. Thao, was busy keeping the group of passers-by at bay while acting, in Mr. Paule’s words, as a “human traffic cone”.
One of the attorneys, Thomas Plunkett, who represents Mr Kueng, hinted he would also try to pin the blame on the Minneapolis Police Department itself, saying its training was insufficient. He said training at the Police Academy on Duty to Intervene was “little more than a word on a PowerPoint”.
Earl Gray, Mr Lane’s solicitor, drew attention to Mr Floyd’s height – saying he was a big man who was ‘all muscle’ and might have had ‘superhuman strength’. The language echoed past defense strategies when officers are tried for killing black men who have been criticized as racist.
During opening statements, Mr. Gray was the only one to say that his client, Mr. Lane, planned to take the stand in his own defence.
Ms. Trepel, for her part, briefly explained to the jury the actions of the three officers that day and argued that each had committed crimes by failing to intervene to prevent the violation of Mr. Floyd’s constitutional rights against a seizure. abusive and not to be refused. freedom without due process.
By posting a still image from a city surveillance camera that showed the four officers with Mr. Floyd as they struggled to arrest him on Memorial Day in 2020, she argued that Mr. Thao was able to see what Mr. Chauvin was doing, and that he was informed by passers-by that Mr. Floyd was in great distress.
As for the other two officers, she said being rookies was no defense and suggested that because they were new, the training they received on the use of force and the duty to intervene should have been fresh in their minds — even though it “can be awkward and uncomfortable” to report a fellow officer.
Ms Trepel concluded her opening statement by telling the jury she was confident that once all the evidence was presented they would convict the defendants of ‘choosing to do nothing and watching a man die’.
