During the earlier May 2019 arrest, Floyd was a passenger in a car that was stopped by police. Retired Minneapolis Police Officer Scott Creighton testified Tuesday that Floyd "turned away from me, toward the driver's seat continually as I was giving him the command to see his hands."
Chauvin's attorney, Eric Nelson of Halberg Criminal Defense, played Creighton's body-worn camera footage, which showed he had his gun pointed at Floyd, as another officer shouted, "Spit it out."
Michelle Moseng, the paramedic who was called to the police station that day to treat Floyd, testified that Floyd's blood pressure was 216/160, that he told her he had taken several Percocet — "seven to nine, every 20 minutes for a while" — and that she worried he might have a stroke or a heart attack.
Hennepin County District Court Judge Peter Cahill decided last month that evidence of the May 6, 2019, arrest could be presented to jurors at Chauvin's trial. The autopsy after Floyd's May 25, 2020, death found methamphetamine and fentanyl in his blood, and investigators found half-dissolved pills containing those narcotics and covered in Floyd's saliva in the back of the police squad car that officers tried to force Floyd inside of.
Judge Cahill advised the jury on Tuesday that the testimony was meant "solely for the limited purpose of what effects the ingestion of opiates may or may not have had on the psychical well-being of George Floyd," adding, "This evidence is not to be used as evidence of the character of Mr. Floyd."
The narcotics testimony is meant to raise doubts about the cause of Floyd's death. Prosecutors allege Chauvin killed Floyd by essentially choking him to death.
The case became international news last spring, when millions of people viewed a bystander's video of Floyd's arrest.
It showed Chauvin pinning Floyd's neck down for about nine minutes, as Floyd — who was suspected of using a counterfeit $20 bill — begged him to stop, said he couldn't breathe and eventually lost consciousness. The video of a Black man gasping for breath under the knee of a white police officer was viewed by millions and rekindled nationwide racial justice protests last summer.
Most of the jurors had seen that infamous video, but it's unlikely any of them had seen the bodycam footage from one year prior, in which Creighton told Floyd, "Show me your fucking hands," as he pointed his gun at him.
On cross-examination, Assistant Attorney General Erin Eldridge noted Creighton had his gun drawn and another officer threatened to taze Floyd. She noted Floyd was awake and able to stand up.
"Mr. Floyd didn't drop dead while you were interacting with him, correct?" she asked.
During her cross-examination of Moseng, Eldridge said Floyd's high blood pressure wasn't anything new, that he had been prescribed medications for it and admitted he hadn't been taking them. Moseng's notes from that day showed Floyd was alert. His breathing was normal, as was his pulse. He told her he had been addicted to opiates for over a year and didn't feel he needed to be hospitalized. Still, he went to the hospital, where he was monitored for two hours and then released, Eldridge said.
The testimony about the 2019 arrest kicked off a day that paraded a mix of witnesses who covered some of the defense's most consistent themes — Floyd's drug use, the threat a gathering crowd of concerned bystanders may have posed to police, and the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court's Graham v. Connor
standard for reasonable force required considering "the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than [using] the 20/20 vision of hindsight."Nelson used Tuesday's testimony from Shawanda Hill, Floyd's ex-girlfriend who was in the car with him shortly before police arrived, to introduce evidence of Floyd's sleepiness the day he died — something Nelson mentioned in opening arguments to suggest Floyd was high.
She testified that she ran into Floyd in the Cup Foods convenience store, where he seemed "happy, normal, talking, alert." In the car, they talked for about eight minutes. Then she was on the phone with her daughter and Floyd fell asleep. When she tried to rouse him, he "would make a little gesture and nod back off," she said. She mentioned he had told her he was tired because he'd been working.
Testimony of Minneapolis Park Police Officer Peter Chang included his assessment of the crowd. Chang came to Cup Foods during Floyd's fatal arrest when he heard dispatch request backup. He watched Floyd's car as well as Hill and another passenger, while the other officers took Floyd over to their squad car. His bodycam video showed Chang pacing, Nelson noted.
"I was pacing back and forth," Chang agreed. "I was concerned for the officers' safety because of the crowd, so I just wanted to make sure the officers were OK."
On cross-examination, he agreed that he assumed that if the other officers needed his help, they would have radioed.
The defense's use of force expert, Barry Vance Brodd, testified Tuesday as well. He contradicted the prosecution's experts by insisting that Chauvin did not use deadly force when he pressed into Floyd's neck while holding him prone for nine minutes.
Floyd's death was an accident, he said, like a suspect who falls to the ground and fatally hits his head after being tased by an officer. Just because he died, Brodd said, didn't mean it was deadly force.
In fact, he said, officers could have used more force against Floyd, particularly when they were trying to get him into the squad car and he was "actively resisting arrest."
Because Floyd was believed to be intoxicated, Brodd said, he could be erratic, not feel pain, or have "superhuman strength." That meant Chauvin was right to keep him restrained, Brodd said, contradicting testimony given the day before by University of South Carolina professor Seth Stoughton, who said drug use was a risk, not a threat that justified additional force.
Brodd also contradicted other experts who'd said putting someone in the prone position for that long risked positional asphyxia. He said that was only a risk if "someone is very obese," and that "any resistor, handcuffed or not, should go onto the ground in a prone control."
"I felt Derek Chauvin was justified, was acting with objective reasonableness, and was following Minneapolis Police Department policy and current standards of law enforcement in his interactions with Mr. Floyd," he said.
During a lengthy and detailed cross-examination, Steve Schleicher, a partner at Maslon LLP who is working pro bono for the prosecution, got Brodd to contradict his assertion that the prone position wasn't a use of force. He admitted that if a restraint causes pain, it can be considered force, and that Chauvin's knee on Floyd's neck could have caused Floyd pain. Schleicher asked if police could use force on someone who's compliant. Brodd said they couldn't but "they can control that person."
"Do you recall noting Mr. Floyd saying his neck hurts?" Schleicher asked. "Because your testimony is premised on this not being a use of force because there was no pain involved."
Schleicher also used Brodd's testimony to show that Chauvin knew at the time he was causing Floyd pain, and that "a reasonable officer would know that he's not responsive, he's not resisting." Schleicher played a video where Floyd told officers, "My stomach hurts. My neck hurts. Everything hurts." Chauvin could be heard saying, "Uh huh," acknowledging each complaint. Schleicher also noted that as Floyd's voice grew "slower" and "thicker," a fellow officer asked Chauvin if they should roll Floyd onto his side, and Chauvin said, "No, keep him here."
"He's hearing this information from his fellow officer, deciding a different course of action," Schleicher said. "Is there any noncompliance you were able to see in that clip? ... And the defendant has not changed his position … he's still kneeling on Mr. Floyd."
--Editing by Bruce Goldman.
Update: This story has been updated to include coverage of the cross-examination of Barry Brodd.
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