Minneapolis on edge as jury considers George Floyd verdict

The jury in the trial of Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd was told to ‘believe your eyes’ and find the former policeman guilty of murdering the black father of five.

George Floyd’s family and Reverend Al Sharpton, right, arrive at the courthouse in Minneapolis on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

The jury in the trial of Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd was told to “believe your eyes” and find the former policeman guilty of murdering the black father of five as the prosecution summed up its case.

“What you saw, you saw … the defendant pressed down on ­George Floyd so his lungs did not have room to breathe,” Steve Schleicher said, emphasising the nine minutes and 29 seconds that Floyd was restrained under Mr Chauvin’s knee.

Arguing that the evidence proved that Mr Chauvin, 45, had gone beyond reasonable force to meet the standard of assault required for conviction, he told the court in Minneapolis: “This was not policing, this was murder.”

Defence lawyer Eric Nelson argued that Mr Chauvin had ­behaved as any “reasonable” officer would. He asked the jury to look at the case through the eyes of an officer called out to deal with a suspect he was told was “large and possibly under the influence of alcohol or something else”.

Mr Chauvin arrived on the scene to find that two officers had been unable to contain Floyd in the back of a police car, Mr Nelson said, and made the “reasonable” decision that a higher level of force was required.

The jury was sent to a hotel on Monday night (Tuesday AEST) to consider its verdict in a trial being watched nervously across America and likely to have implications for the future of policing and race relations.

Minneapolis is on edge with the National Guard deployed on the streets and razor wire around the court. Tensions were raised after the death of another black man last week when a police­woman shot and killed Daunte Wright, 20, a few kilometres from the court. The officer has been charged with manslaughter.

The downtown courthouse where Chauvin awaits the jury’s verdict is surrounded by skyscrapers whose doors and windows are boarded up, while the court itself is protected by armoured military vehicles and 3m concrete walls.

Mr Schleicher sought to focus the jury on the case before it by summing up the ways that, he said, Mr Chauvin had broken the force’s rules on restraint and failed to act in a reasonable manner. “The defendant had 800 hours of training — you met the people who staff the training centre and they told you, ‘We don’t train this’,” Mr Schleicher said. “He ­betrayed the badge … This is not an anti-police case, this is a pro-police case. The defendant abandoned his values, abandoned his training.”

Floyd’s shouts of “I can’t breathe” became a rallying cry for protesters across the US last year and Mr Schleicher reminded the jury that Mr Chauvin’s chief officer, Medaria Arradondo, testified that the use of force was excessive. He played a video clip of Mr Chauvin responding to Floyd by saying: “It takes a lot of oxygen to say that.”

Mr Nelson reminded the jury of testimony that some suspects feigned a medical emergency to avoid arrest, adding that Floyd shouted “I can’t breathe” seven times while he was trying to ­escape the police car before he was restrained on the road.

A conviction on any of the charges — second-degree murder, third-degree murder or manslaughter — will require the jury to return a unanimous verdict.

The Times