Chauvin trial: Closing arguments
Reporting from Minneapolis
Eric Nelson, the defense lawyer, is attacking the person who was perhaps the prosecution’s most engaging medical witness, Dr. Martin Tobin, saying that at the moment that Dr. Tobin said George Floyd was using his fingertips and knuckles as leverage to breathe, he was actually in the side recovery position, which should have allowed him to breathe. “You cannot take an isolated single frame and reach any conclusions,” he says.
Reporting from Minneapolis
He is also attacking another point in Dr. Tobin’s analysis: The moment he saw Derek Chauvin’s boot tip lift off the ground, increasing the weight on Floyd. Nelson says it maybe lasted a fraction of a second.
Reporting from Minneapolis
This is part of the job of a lawyer, to point jurors to those small things that they might otherwise miss. Nelson also made the point here that the knuckle push happened shortly after Floyd was taken to the ground, suggesting that he could not really have been struggling for air already at that point.
Eric Nelson, a lawyer for Derek Chauvin, said in his closing arguments that Mr. Chauvin did not mean to hurt George Floyd, pointing out that the arresting officers called for an ambulance twice while holding Mr. Floyd down.
All of the evidence shows that Mr. Chauvin thought he was following his training. He was, in fact, following his training. He was following Minneapolis police department policies. He was trained this way. It all demonstrates a lack of intent. There is absolutely no evidence that Officer Chauvin intentionally, purposefully applied an unlawful force.
Reporting from Minneapolis
Just one example of how the local medical examiner, Dr. Andrew Baker, presented a problem for the prosecution: He said he did not watch the bystander video before performing the autopsy of George Floyd because he did not want to be biased, and he found no evidence of asphyxia, two things that Derek Chauvin’s defense just cited. But Dr. Baker did watch the video after the autopsy, before determining the cause of death, as virtually any medical examiner would have — the video, many forensic pathologists told me, is medically relevant, precisely because evidence of asphyxia often does not show up during autopsies.
Reporting from Minneapolis
If you’re finding the defense argument hard to follow, you’re not alone. Both sides have been long-winded, but it is in Derek Chauvin’s best interest to ask the jury to determine the relevancy of multiple possible factors in George Floyd's death — the more the better.
Reporting from Minneapolis
“It’s tragic. It’s tragic,” the defense attorney, Eric Nelson, says. That’s the first we have heard from Derek Chauvin’s side any empathy about how this all ended.
Reporting from Minneapolis
Defense attorney Eric Nelson asks if an officer would apply an unlawful use of force knowing that there are multiple video cameras filming him. But the public sees videos of police officers behaving in disrespectful, devastating and even fatal ways virtually every day.
Reporting from Minneapolis
Would Derek Chauvin purposefully have done something that he knew was unlawful when he knew he was being filmed? One argument of activists is that body cameras don’t work because officers may not care if they are filmed — because they rarely get punished.
Reporting from Minneapolis
“Officers are human beings capable of making mistakes in highly stressful situations,” defense attorney Eric Nelson says. It sounds like an attempt to tell the jurors that even if they think Derek Chauvin was wrong, it may have been a mistake. That speaks more to manslaughter than murder. (Chauvin is charged with both.)
Although this trial is the first in Minnesota history to be televised, Judge Peter A. Cahill has placed strict restrictions on what the cameras can capture. There have been no close-ups during dramatic moments and no shots of the jurors.
Two members of the news media are allowed in the courtroom at any given time, and there is room for only one member of Mr. Floyd’s family and one member of Mr. Chauvin’s.
While the judge’s orders may seem restrictive, the normal court rules in Minnesota forbid any visual or audio trial coverage without the consent of both sides (in this case, the prosecution objected on the grounds that it could make witnesses reluctant to testify). Even with consent, the normal rules say there can be no audio coverage of potential jurors during jury selection, witnesses can decline to be shown and any motions heard outside of the jury’s presence are out of bounds.
But because the pandemic has placed sharp restrictions on the number of people who can be in the courtroom, Judge Cahill wrote that allowing cameras to capture the proceedings was the only way to ensure the right to a public trial. During jury selection, the candidates were heard, but not seen.
