As the jury started its deliberations on the culpability of former US police officer Derek Chauvin, who faces murder charges over the death of George Floyd, concerns are being raised that even the guilty verdict is unlikely to lead to any systemic changes
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th April, 2021) As the jury started its deliberations on the culpability of former US police officer Derek Chauvin, who faces murder charges over the death of George Floyd, concerns are being raised that even the guilty verdict is unlikely to lead to any systemic changes.
Chauvin, a former officer of the Minneapolis Police Department, is facing murder and manslaughter charges after Floyd, 46, died following an arrest attempt on May 25 last year.
While trying to arrest Floyd who was accused of using a fake $20 bill at a local convenience store, Chauvin, now 45, kneed on the neck of the African American man three times for almost a total of ten minutes.
After complaining "I can't breathe" when Chauvin's knee was on his neck, Floyd became unconscious during the arrest and died later at a hospital.
Floyd's death triggered mass protests in a large number of major cities in the United States, where demonstrators denounced police brutality and demanded justice for African Americans who suffered at the hands of US police officers.
Despite Chauvin being fired from his job the next day after Floyd's death last year, the trial against the former Minneapolis police officer only started on March 29.
Chauvin is facing three charges: second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
In Minnesota, the second-degree murder charge carries a maximum prison sentence of 40 years, while third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter charges carry a prison sentence of up to 20 years and 10 years, respectively.
However, for someone who doesn't have a criminal record like Chauvin, a guilty verdict on the second-degree murder charge is expected to be sentenced to 12.5 years in prison, under the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines.
A team of 14 jurors have been selected for Chauvin's trial. The jury is made up of nine women and five men. Eight of the jurors identify as white, four as Black and two as mixed race.
The 14 jurors include: a white man in his 20s, a white woman in her 20s and a multiracial woman in her 20s; a white man in his 30s and two black men in their 30s; a black man in his 40s, a white woman in her 40s and a multiracial woman in her 40s; four white women in their 50s and a black woman in her 50s.
The jury has listened to testimonies of 38 witnesses from the prosecution and seven witnesses from the defense.
As Chauvin is facing all three charges, the jury must consider each charge separately and come up with a verdict for each charge. All the verdicts must be unanimous, which means all the jurors must agree to a guilty verdict.
If a unanimous verdict cannot be reached, Judge Peter Cahill in Minnesota may declare a mistrial. If this happens, the prosecution will have to decide whether to retry Chauvin.
The prosecution presented 38 witnesses during the trial.
Those witnesses are: the 911 dispatcher who handled the call that led to the attempted arrest of Floyd, eyewitnesses at the scene of the arrest, paramedics who responded to the scene, Minneapolis police officers including police chief Medaria Arradondo who testified against Chauvin, forensics experts and medical examiners who testified on what caused Floyd's death, as well as Floyd's family members including his younger brother and his girlfriend for three years before his death.
Chauvin's defense team introduced seven witnesses that included: former police officers who worked with the defendant, an eyewitness who was traveling with Floyd in the same SUV, and a former medical examiner who argued a number of factors, including Floyd's heart disease and the drugs he was taking at the time of his arrest, caused his death.
Chauvin decided not to testify in the trial by invoking his "Fifth Amendment privilege" to not risk making any self-incriminating statements.
MORE PROTESTS REGARDLESS OF VERDICT
After almost six hours of closing arguments and rebuttal, the jury failed to reach a verdict on Monday. The jury is expected to resume their deliberations on Tuesday.
Nevertheless, regardless of whether Chauvin will be found guilty of the murder charges, Floyd's family members and racial justice advocates have denounced the charges against Chauvin as being lenient before the trial even began.
When charges of third-degree murder and manslaughter against Chauvin were announced in May last year, Floyd's family issued a statement through civil rights attorney Ben Crump.
"The arrest of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the brutal killing of George Floyd is a welcome but overdue step on the road to justice. We expected a first-degree murder charge. We want a first-degree murder charge. And we want to see the other officers arrested. We call on authorities to revise the charges to reflect the true culpability of this officer," the statement said.
During Chauvin's trial this month, the court introduced strict rules prohibiting Floyd's family members from speaking to news outlets outside the courtroom, the New York Times reported.
Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California serving in the US House of Representatives, attracted harsh criticism from Republicans this week, after she called on the protesters to "stay in the streets" when commenting on Chauvin's trial on Saturday.
"We're looking for a guilty verdict and we're looking to see if all of the talk that took place and has been taking place after they saw what happened to George Floyd. If nothing does not happen, then we know that we got to not only stay in the street, but we have got to fight for justice," Waters said.
The US congresswoman went on to call on the protesters to become more "confrontational."
"We have to stay on the street. And we've got to get more active, we've got to get more confrontational. We've got to make sure that they know that we mean business," she said.
Police departments in a number of major US cities began to make preparations for possible protests in anticipation of the verdict of Chauvin's trial this week.
An African American scholar explained why a guilty verdict against Chauvin is far from enough in addressing the systematic injustice black people experience at the hands of police officers in the United States.
"Chauvin should be found guilty of second-degree murder. But a conviction would not offer the kind of national catharsis on race and policing that America longs for. One former police officer being held accountable for the death of another innocent Black person is not a sea change; it speaks only to the strength of the prosecution, the pathos of the testimony, the weight of the evidence and the sentiments of 12 jurors," Peniel Joseph, a professor of ethics and political values at the LBJ school of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post.
The academic illustrated the goal of the ongoing civil rights movement.
"Full Black citizenship and dignity, the twin goals of the civil rights movement, will come about only when we can create a world where George Floyd and Daunte Wright are allowed to flourish and live, instead of becoming martyrs of a system that ensures that Black lives matter less than White ones," he said.
Daunte Wright is an African American man who was shot and killed by a white police officer on April 11 in Brooklyn Center, which is just 11 miles away from the scene where Floyd's arrest took place.
Kim Potter, the police officer who fired the shot that killed Wright, appeared to have thought she was firing her taser when she tried to restrain Wright during the arrest attempt.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has charged Potter with second-degree manslaughter, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years.
