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Published
Tuesday, April 20, 2021
International News
By the A.M. Costa
Rica wire services
Former
Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was
found guilty of all charges Tuesday in the
death of George Floyd nearly a year
ago, reported Voice of America
Journal, VOA, the U.S. government news
agency funded by the U.S. Congress.
Chauvin had been charged with second-degree
unintentional murder, third-degree murder
and second-degree manslaughter.
After hearing closing arguments Monday, the
12-member jury – comprising six white people
and six people who are Black or multiracial
-- spent about six hours discussing
information from the three-week trial before
coming to a decision.
In their final arguments, a prosecutor
accused Chauvin, who is white, of killing
Floyd, an African American, by kneeling on
his neck for more than nine minutes. A
defense attorney, Eric Nelson, contended
that Floyd died partly from drug use and
that Chauvin was following his police
training in the way he arrested Floyd last
May on the curb of a street in Minneapolis.
Prosecutor Steve Schleicher summed up the
case against Chauvin, who held down the
handcuffed Floyd as Floyd lay prone on a
city street and gasped — 27 times, according
to videos of his arrest — that he could not
breathe.
“He was trapped…a knee to his neck,”
Schleicher said, with Chauvin’s weight on
him for nine minutes and 29 seconds.
“George Floyd was not a threat to anyone,”
Schleicher said. “All that was required was
some compassion, and he got
none.”
“No crime was committed if it was an
authorized use of force,” Nelson argued.
“The state has not proved its case beyond a
reasonable doubt,” the legal standard for a
conviction, the defense attorney concluded
as he asked the jurors to acquit Chauvin of
murder and manslaughter charges.
Floyd was suspected of trying to pass a
counterfeit $20 bill at a nearby convenience
store.
The routine police investigation of a minor
case last May 25 and Floyd’s subsequent
death have resulted in one of the most
consequential U.S. criminal trials in years.
Chauvin pleaded not guilty to the charges
against him. If convicted, he faces up to 40
years in prison.
Last week, Chauvin invoked his
constitutional right against
self-incrimination and did not take the
witness stand. Under U.S. law, the
prosecution must prove the allegations
against defendants, and defendants are
presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond
a reasonable doubt.
Trial judge Peter Cahill told the jury not
to draw any inference on Chauvin’s innocence
or guilt from his declining to testify.
After dismissing the jury Monday, Cahill
criticized Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who
is Black and a member of Congress since
1991, for recent remarks regarding the
trial. Waters told protesters in Minnesota
to “stay on the street” and to become “more
active” and “more confrontational” if
Chauvin is found not guilty.
“I wish elected officials would stop talking
about this case, especially in a manner
that’s disrespectful to the rule of law and
to the judicial branch and our function,”
Cahill said.
Despite Cahill’s plea, U.S. President Joe
Biden Tuesday described the evidence against
Chauvin as overwhelming.
“I’m praying the verdict is the right
verdict,” Biden said during an Oval Office
meeting with Latino lawmakers. “I think it’s
overwhelming in my view. I wouldn’t say that
unless the jury was sequestered now.”
As the case nears its end, authorities in
Minneapolis are bracing for possible street
protests after the verdict. Many stores are
boarded up to prevent a recurrence of the
damage and looting that took place after
Floyd’s death almost a year ago.
“We cannot allow civil unrest to descend
into chaos. We must protect life and
property,” Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said
Monday. “But we also must understand very
clearly, if we don’t listen to those
communities in pain and those people on the
streets, many of whom were arrested for
speaking a fundamental truth that we must
change, or we will be right back here
again.”
Protests,
some of them violent, broke out in many
cities in the United States and throughout
the world after Floyd’s death. The Black
Lives Matter movement was at the forefront
of the demonstrations, but thousands of
people who had no previous connection to the
Black-led protests joined in to condemn
Chauvin’s actions, and more broadly, police
treatment of minorities.
The same issues raised by Floyd’s death came
to the forefront in the community again when
a now-resigned police officer in a
Minneapolis suburb fatally shot a
20-year-old African American man during a
traffic stop on April 11.
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