Court picks first three jurors for trial in George Floyd’s death
Potential jurors walked one by one into a Minneapolis courtroom on Tuesday and while they had never met Derek Chauvin in person, they said they knew exactly who he was: the police officer who kept his knee on George Floyd’s neck. during a deadly arrest last year that sparked a worldwide outcry.
Almost everyone told the court that they had seen video of the May 25 arrest recorded on a passerby’s phone showing Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, pleading for his life, which was inescapably spread across the internet and others. media.
Many admitted that they had already formed a negative opinion about Chauvin, who was fired from the police.
“That’s the only thing I’ve seen of this person: that video,” juror No. 9, a woman who appeared to be mixed race in her 20s and 30s, told the court, trying to describe her views on Chauvin, who is white. “It just makes you sad. Nobody wants to see someone die, whether it’s their fault or not. ”
Still, she was “super excited” to receive the subpoena from the jury, a feeling that only grew after she realized it would be one of the biggest cases seen in the United States in years.
After assuring Hennepin County District Court Judge Peter Cahill that she would be fair and impartial, she became the second of three jurors seated on the first day of jury selection.
“Amazing!” she responded to the judge.
Chauvin, released from jail last October on $ 1 million bail, politely stood up when his attorney introduced him to potential jurors. Dressed in a gray suit, dark tie, and black mask, Chauvin filled pages of a yellow notepad with notes.
His trial is considered a landmark case on police violence against blacks in the United States. Many of the issues that led the judge to reserve three weeks for selecting 12 jurors and four substitutes it only came quickly to the fore on Tuesday.
There was a common belief that parts of the American criminal justice system are racist, as seen in the nervous 19-year-old who said when questioned by Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, who distrusted the police and recalled that his father he was racially profiled during a meeting. traffic stop. The judge dismissed him.
Although the judge promised jurors to remain anonymous during the trial, some feared becoming a target or said they were nervous about the rings of barbed wire fences and concrete barricades around the tower in the downtown Minneapolis where the trial is taking place.
One potential juror, a self-described Christian family man, wondered if his house could be spray painted or his windows smashed if his name were to come out. The judge also removed him.
Chauvin’s attorneys also used two of their 15 peremptory challenges whereby they can reject a juror without citing a reason, while prosecutors from the Minnesota attorney general’s office consumed one of the nine.
But after the defense rejected a second Hispanic person, prosecutors complained that the defense was illegally excluding jurors on the basis of race, which the defense denied.
The judge concluded that there was insufficient evidence to overturn his dismissal.
The court had mailed prospective jurors an unusually detailed 16-page questionnaire last year asking them what they knew about Floyd’s death and asking for their views on the Black Lives Matter movement, which took over the world after Floyd’s death. Floyd in police custody.
The second potential jury called, a white male who worked as a chemist in an environmental testing laboratory, said he “disagreed” with the claim that Minneapolis police generally use disproportionate force against blacks.
He said he supported Black Lives Matter and understood that it meant “all lives matter equally.”
Cahill told him shortly after that he would be the first juror to sit down.
Chauvin’s attorneys say he correctly followed the training given to him by the Minneapolis Police Department. The medical examiner ruled that Floyd’s death was a homicide caused in part by police restrictions, but noted that Floyd had recently ingested the opioid fentanyl.
Chauvin’s attorneys maintain that an overdose was the leading cause of death.
One potential juror, a financial auditor, said he had seen on the news that Floyd had used “hard” drugs and been convicted of crimes in the past, but would not allow that to affect the weighting test presented at trial. Floyd had been convicted of cocaine possession and robbery in the past.
“If you are under the influence of drugs it does not determine whether you should be alive or dead,” said the man. He became the third and final member of the jury seated on Tuesday.
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She is a freelance blogger, writer, and speaker, and writes for various entertainment magazines.