Derek Chauvin defends actions with George Floyd in video shown at trial

Derek Chauvin defended his actions to a bystander after holding George Floyd to the ground with his knee for about nine minutes, according to new video.

People walk past a mural showing the face of George Floyd in the West Bank.

Derek Chauvin defended his actions to a bystander after holding George Floyd to the ground with his knee for about nine minutes, according to new video played at the former Minneapolis police officer’s murder trial that for the first time provides a justification in his own words.

In a clip from Mr. Chauvin’s body camera recorded shortly after Mr. Floyd had been taken away in an ambulance, Mr. Chauvin can be heard defending his actions to Charles McMillian, a witness to the incident outside Cup Foods in south Minneapolis.

“I don’t respect what you did,” Mr. McMillian, 61 years old, says he told Mr. Chauvin at one point in their conversation, which can be hard to decipher.

“That’s one person’s opinion. We’ve got to control this guy because he’s a sizeable guy,” Mr. Chauvin said at another point, referring to the 6-foot-4-inch, 223-pound Mr. Floyd. “It looks like he was probably on something.” The body-camera footage, which hadn’t been previously aired, amounts to a rare instance of Mr. Chauvin defending how he handled Mr. Floyd on May 25, 2020. He has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter, and his lawyer has blamed Mr. Floyd’s drug use and medical conditions for his death.

But Mr. Chauvin has been largely silent about using his knee to hold Mr. Floyd’s neck to the ground while Mr. Floyd begged for his life and eventually passed out in front of a group of angry bystanders. Mr. Floyd, who was 46 years old, was pronounced dead later that evening. His death and Mr. Chauvin’s tactics drew widespread outrage and fuelled protests and riots for several months.

Prosecutors say Mr. Chauvin used excessive force in the incident. A conviction on the second-degree murder charge requires the jury to determine that Mr. Chauvin was committing an assault that led to Mr. Floyd’s death. Mr. Chauvin and three other officers involved in the incident were fired the following day.

The body-camera footage was among several never-publicly-aired clips that prosecutors played for the jury during the third day of Mr. Chauvin’s trial.

Prosecutors spent much of Wednesday afternoon playing the body-camera footage of the other three officers from beginning to end. It shows Mr. Floyd, in handcuffs, struggling to avoid getting into the squad car, complaining that he has claustrophobia and is unable to breathe. After the officers give up on placing him in the car, they put him on the street, leading to the final nine minutes 29 seconds during which prosecutors say Mr. Chauvin held his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck.

At one point, one of the officers asks Mr. Chauvin, the senior officer on the scene, whether they should roll Mr. Floyd over. He says no. It also shows the officers’ unsuccessfully trying to find Mr. Floyd’s pulse.

Mr. Chauvin’s camera fell off during the encounter, so it only recorded the parts of the incident before Mr. Floyd was put on the ground and after Mr. Floyd was taken away.

The prosecution also played a video portraying a wobbling and intoxicated Mr. Floyd, spending what store clerks believe was a forged $20 bill. Later, prosecution video shows Mr. Floyd struggling with officers as they attempt to arrest him.

Arguing that jurors could believe their eyes in assessing the former officer’s guilt, prosecutors focused Monday and Tuesday on viral video of Mr. Floyd pinned to the street under the knee of Mr. Chauvin. On Wednesday, the video testimony revealed a more complex portrait of what happened on May 25, 2020.

Joseph Daly, a retired professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minn., said the prosecution has made a tactical decision to show all the video it has rather than just the most helpful parts.

“You put out your good facts, but you also put out your bad facts to address them ahead of time, so it doesn’t look like you’re trying to hide something,” he said.

Christopher Martin, now 19 years old, testified Wednesday that he was the clerk who accepted the bill. “It had a blue pigment to it like a $100 bill would have, so I thought that it was fake,” he said.

Mr. Martin said he had a pleasant conversation with Mr. Floyd, even though the older man was a bit slow in his responses and appeared to be high. When Mr. Floyd gave him the bill, Mr. Martin said he immediately suspected it was fake but decided to accept it as a favour to Mr. Floyd, since he seemed impaired. He said he did so knowing that managers had told him that he would have to replace any counterfeits he accepted with his own money.

Mr. Martin and other co-workers twice went out to Mr. Floyd’s car to try to persuade Mr. Floyd to return to the store. After he refused, a co-worker called 911.

Later, as Mr. Floyd lay on the ground under Mr. Chauvin’s knee, Mr. Martin could be seen pacing behind a crowd of onlookers and putting his hands on his head. Asked what was going through his mind, he said, “Disbelief and guilt,” he said. “If I had just not taken the bill, this wouldn’t have happened.” After the Cup Foods video, prosecutors also showed bystander video of Mr. Floyd struggling as police tried to put him in handcuffs, and later police body-camera footage of Mr. Floyd struggling to avoid getting into the squad car, saying he was claustrophobic and couldn’t breathe before Mr. Chauvin began to kneel on his neck.

This handout photo provided by the Hennepin County Jail shows Derek Chauvin's booking photos.

Mahmoud Abumayyaleh, one of the co-owners of Cup Foods, watched the trial from a TV hung on the wall at the end of the produce bin inside the store while its former employee, Mr. Martin, testified in court Wednesday morning.

Mr. Abumayyaleh said he had never seen the surveillance video before because authorities seized it before he had a chance to review it.

“It’s weird,” he said as multiple phones rang in the store. They went unanswered because Mr. Abumayyaleh said the store was getting calls about the trial and employees “can’t entertain all those questions.” Inside the store, a photo of Mr. Floyd wearing a Salvation Army vest and with his back to the camera was taped to a wall above the cash registers. A painting of a city skyline included the phrase, “I am George Floyd.” Mr. Abumayyaleh said he planned to watch the trial daily because “we’d like to know the outcome.” As he listened to his former employee’s testimony about how the store used to handle counterfeit bills, he offered more context. “We never make our employees pay for counterfeit bills. We use that as a deterrent for them to check counterfeit bills,” he said.

He added that on that day, employees were trying to get Mr. Floyd back into the store to talk about the $20 bill. “We are almost sure he didn’t know it was fake, and we had a good relationship with him, George Floyd.”

The Wall Street Journal