Sunday night's protests over the shooting of a man who's been identified as 20-year-old Daunte Wright bore similarities to the protests in reaction to the death of George Floyd last summer. A viral video showed Chauvin, who is white, pinning down the neck of Floyd, who was Black, for about nine minutes. Floyd begged Chauvin to stop, said he couldn't breathe and eventually lost consciousness. He was being arrested for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill.
As Chauvin's trial began its third week on Monday, his attorney, Eric Nelson of Halberg Criminal Defense, asked that jurors be sequestered immediately and also interviewed, to ensure the unrest didn't affect their ability to judge the case.
Nelson said news of the protests had no doubt reached the jurors, one of whom lives in the city of Brooklyn Center, where Wright was shot dead. Sunday's shooting shouldn't enter into the Chauvin case, Nelson said, but he worried they were linked in jurors' minds.
"The problem is that the emotional response that that case creates sets the stage for a jury to say, 'I'm not going to vote not guilty because I'm concerned at the outcome,'" he said.
Steven Schleicher of Maslon LLP, who is working pro bono for the prosecution, opposed the request, saying, "world events happen, things continue to happen in the state despite the fact that we're all here at trial."
Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill denied Nelson's request on the spot, saying jurors would be sequestered only during deliberations, as originally planned. Judge Cahill said he would have considered sequestering jurors had one of them been identified and inappropriately contacted, or if the unrest was in response to a verdict in a similar case.
"I understand the argument for the defense that this now puts them more ill at ease," he said. "But I think sequestering them would only aggravate that. 'Oh, I heard about the civil unrest and now the judge putting us in sequestration. There must be a greater threat to our security.' I think the better way is to continue with the trial as we've been going."
Publicity has been an ongoing issue in Chauvin's trial. The viral video of Floyd's death made international headlines, and only one of the jurors seated for the trial claimed that he hadn't seen it. Halfway through jury selection, the city of Minneapolis announced a $27 million civil settlement with the Floyd family, and two seated jurors were booted after they said the deal tipped the scales for them, and they could no longer be impartial. Several of the seated jurors expressed concern that a verdict either way could spark rioting or make them the targets of abuse.
For two weeks now, those jurors have sat through testimony from bystanders who were traumatized after witnessing Floyd's death, policing experts who testified Chauvin used an unreasonable amount of force, and medical experts who said the way in which Floyd was restrained deprived him of oxygen and ultimately killed him.
That testimony continued Monday, with Dr. Jonathan Rich, a cardiologist at Northwestern University. Rich said that Floyd's medical records indicated he had "an incredibly strong heart," based on electrocardiograms and various tests. Until he was restrained on the ground, he appeared healthy in the police body-worn camera videos, Rich said.
Most cardiac deaths are sudden, Rich said, but Floyd's "deterioration was happening much more gradually and slowly. I could see his speech starting to become less forceful, his muscle movements getting slower." And while the autopsy did show buildup in Floyd's coronary arteries, there was no sign of the total blockage that would indicate a heart attack. His heart itself looked healthy — there was "no evidence at all of even microscopic injury," Rich said.
His testimony was likely meant to temper that of Dr. Andrew Baker, chief medical examiner for Hennepin County, who performed Floyd's autopsy and testified last week that Floyd's heart disease had made him more vulnerable, and that the pressure on his neck was "more than Mr. Floyd could take."
On cross-examination, Nelson asked Rich about Floyd's high blood pressure, for which he was prescribed medication, and the narrowing of his coronary arteries, which were found to be occluded by 70% to 90% during his autopsy.
"Would you recommend someone use meth if they have that degree of blockage?" Nelson asked.
"I would never recommend someone take methamphetamine off the street for any reason," Rich said.
Jurors also heard short but emotional testimony from Philonise Floyd, George Floyd's younger brother. He testified about Floyd's relationship with his family in what's known as "spark of life" testimony — a quirk of Minnesota trial practice that allows prosecutors to introduce evidence about a victim's life, to give jurors a sense of who was lost.
Showing snapshots from Floyd's youth, his school days and one of him with his young daughter, Philonise Floyd spoke of his brother as both a mentor and as a "mama's boy."
"He would lay up on her in the fetus position like he was still in the womb," he said. "He showed us how to treat our mom, how to respect our mom."
Prosecutors' final witness for the day was Seth Stoughton, a former Tallahassee police officer and professor of law and criminology at the University of South Carolina. Like experts before him, he testified about the use of force factors set forth in the U.S. Supreme Court's 1989 Graham v. Connor opinion for what a "reasonable officer on the scene" would have done, considering the threat the suspect posed, the severity of the crime they were suspected of, and whether they resisted arrest.
"Both the knee across Mr. Floyd's neck and the prone restraint were unreasonable and contrary to generally accepted police practices," Stoughton said. "No reasonable officer would have believed that that was an appropriate, acceptable, or reasonable use of force."
Stoughton went through police body-worn camera videos, pulling clips of key moments and assessing what a reasonable officer would have done.
Even when Chauvin first arrived on the scene, he saw that Floyd was in handcuffs, and that two officers were with him. Floyd didn't want to get into the back of the car, but he wasn't resisting arrest, Stoughton said. Once he was forced into the car, then taken back out of it, Floyd thanked officers. They put him on his knees, pushed him onto his side, then forced him onto his stomach. That was unreasonable, Stoughton said, as was the fact that the restraint went on for nine minutes.
On cross-examination, Nelson pointed out that one of the prosecution's other use of force experts, Sgt. Jody Stiger of the Los Angeles Police Department, testified last week that putting Floyd in the prone position was reasonable because at that point, Floyd was "actively resisting."
Stoughton said he disagreed with that assessment.
"I think putting someone prone is unreasonable if they're already handcuffed. The prone position is a transitory position used to restrain someone," he said. "In this case, officers took him out of the car, put him on his knees and on his side. If they had stopped there, I would not have any quibble with their actions."
--Editing by Bruce Goldman.
Update: This story has been updated to include coverage of Seth Stoughton's testimony.
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