Derek Chauvin Trial Opening Statements: Defense Puts Blame on Witnesses – The New Republic

Not long into the official opening of State v. Derek Chauvin on Monday, the voices of community members who protested police violence in Minneapolis were invoked, starting with those at the scene of what prosecutors call the murder of George Floyd. Prosecutor Jerry Blackwell showed the jury a video still image of those witnesses: the teenagers who recorded Chauvins knee pressed into Floyds neck for eight or nine minutes as Floyd cried out for help, along with the others who were recorded trying to offer Floyd aid, and who chastised the officers for using their bodies to restrain a motionless man.

Chauvins defense, meanwhile, doesnt have to provide an alternative theory as to what caused George Floyds death. Yet in his opening statement Monday, Chauvins defense attorney Eric Nelson claimed that what killed George Floyd, in part, was an ingestion of drugsallegedly to conceal them from policeand that the people gathered, who watched Chauvin and the other officers move Floyds inert body onto a stretcherdidnt know the full story. In fact, Nelson told the jury, the angry crowd appeared to officers to be a threat. They called officers names, he continued, causing officers to divert their attention from the man they had restrained beneath them.

Nelsons characterization of the crowd was a revealing moment for the defense, one meant perhaps to appeal to some of the jurors who, when asked their views on Black Lives Matter, had responded, All lives matter. The same officers who perceived Floyds already prone body as an ongoing threat had also perceived the witnesses recording them as a threat. To follow the defenses logic, if Floyd was somehow culpable in his own death, so were the bystanders. To the extent that Black Lives Matter is on trial in this case, it will concern the conduct of the people who stood witness to Floyds death.

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Derek Chauvin Trial Opening Statements: Defense Puts Blame on Witnesses - The New Republic