Derek chauvin not guilty3/22/2023 ![]() Beginning on March 29, the prosecution called a total of 38 witnesses, kicking off the trial with the emotional testimony from about a dozen bystanders who witnessed the murder firsthand. ![]() Jurors must have watched the fatal encounter and various angles of it - a combination of bystander cellphone video, store and street surveillance footage, and police body camera video - more than three dozen times.Īside from the power of the footage itself, the prosecution provided a strong case, legal experts noted. The Derek Chauvin trial and verdict, briefly explainedĪt the core of the trial was the video of Floyd’s death: Floyd pleading with officers, saying 27 times he couldn’t breathe, a crowd of bystanders growing over the nine minutes and 29 seconds in which Chauvin held Floyd down. Sign up to receive our newsletter each Friday. Vox’s German Lopez is here to guide you through the Biden administration’s burst of policymaking. The law favors police - giving them latitude to use force - plus, Americans, including jurors, tend to trust police officers.Īs Chris Slobogin, the director of the criminal justice program at Vanderbilt University, told Vox, “The jury is composed of citizens of the community who want the police to protect them.” For example, only seven police officers have been convicted of murder for police shootings since 2005. That’s rare in a system where it’s uncommon to prosecute police for killing someone, let alone convict them. The former Minneapolis police officer was found guilty of all three charges - second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. Though the amount of video footage of the killing was unprecedented and the momentum for justice was undeniable, history did not necessarily point to an easy conviction. Footage of the murder of George Floyd last May has been viewed by millions worldwide, sparking ongoing international protests against police brutality and igniting policy changes to reform and reimagine the role of police. ![]() It exists there, but it cannot live there.The Derek Chauvin verdict has been nearly a year in the making. Now, in the remorseless bureaucracy of the law, that simple fact has been placed in the record for all time. George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin, an officer of the Minneapolis Police Department. It was not, God help us, carbon monoxide from the car under which he’d been pinned by Derek Chauvin. It was not down to George Floyd’s drug use. The crowd watching in horror was not a mob, not something to fear, unless you were killing someone. I never thought he would be acquitted of all three, but I never thought the jury would find Chauvin guilty of everything, that it would reject every bit of the hackneyed sleight-of-hand trickeration tried by the defense in this trial. I thought the three counts left the jury too many escape routes. Truth be told, I did not think the prosecution would run the table, gaining a conviction on all three counts. He left the courtroom with his fingertips behind him as though he were waving goodbye. He put his hands behind him to be manacled without being asked. And when the rituals of finding him guilty were finally done, the jury congratulated and discharged, his bail revoked and himself remanded to custody, Derek Chauvin stood up without being prompted. His eyes danced above his blue mask because that’s what the scene is when verdicts come in during the tail end of a pandemic. Back and forth, quicker and quicker, his eyes danced as each of the three guilty verdicts read. His eyes danced as the verdicts were read.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |