Steve Schleicher, a partner at the Minneapolis law firm Maslon LLP who is working pro bono for the prosecution, said that Chauvin was warned in myriad ways that he was killing Floyd.
"He knew better," Schleicher said. "He just didn't do better."
Chauvin had received hundreds of hours of training during his 19-year career that warned him holding a suspect handcuffed and prone on the ground could lead to deadly positional asphyxia. He dismissed a fellow officer who suggested turning Floyd onto his side once he'd stopped moving. When Floyd told Chauvin he was in pain, he only said, "uh huh," a response Schleicher called "indifferent." And when bystanders warned officers they were killing Floyd, Schleicher said, it only made Chauvin angry.
"He was not going to let these bystanders tell him what to do. He was going to do what he wanted for as long as he wanted," Schleicher said. "The defendant chose pride over policing."
Chauvin's attorney, Eric Nelson of Halberg Criminal Defense, said the jury had to consider what Chauvin knew at the time.
He'd arrived at a "high-crime location" knowing that a dispatcher had called for backup for two other officers after hearing "the sounds of a struggle" over the radio, Nelson said. Chauvin saw that Floyd was under arrest, but would not get into the squad car, Nelson said, and the dispatcher had said that Floyd was over six feet tall and believed to be intoxicated.
Chauvin's training had taught him that neck restraints and "controlled takedowns" were an appropriate, proportional use of force for a suspect resisting arrest, according to Nelson.
"A reasonable police officer understands the intensity of the struggle," he said. "A reasonable police officer would understand this situation, that Mr. Floyd was able to overcome the efforts of three police officers, while handcuffed with his legs and body strength."
The question of whether Chauvin acted reasonably was key to the prosecution's case, as Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill instructed jurors before closing statements began Monday.
"No crime is committed if a police officer's actions were justified by the officer's use of reasonable force in the line of duty in effecting a lawful arrest or preventing escape from custody," the judge said.
The question of whether the force was reasonable will soon go to 12 jurors. With the alternates excused, the jury now consists of five men and seven women. Six of them are white, two are multiracial and four are Black. Their verdict has been anticipated since Floyd's death last Memorial Day, which made international news after millions of people viewed a bystander's video of his arrest.
That footage showed Chauvin pinning Floyd's neck down on the ground 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 rekindled nationwide racial justice protests last summer. Floyd's cries of "I can't breathe" — which, by prosecutors' count, he said 27 times as he died — became a rallying call. Similar protests occurred during the trial last week, when the police killings of Daunte Wright and Adam Toledo made headlines.
But during his closing arguments Monday, Schleicher insisted, "This is not an anti-police prosecution, it's a pro-police prosecution."
He noted that a parade of police officers had taken the stand to testify against Chauvin, because "there's nothing worse for good police than bad police."
"The defendant is on trial not for being a police officer. It's not the state of Minnesota v. the police. He's not on trial for who he was, he's on trial for what he did. That's what he did," Schleicher said, pointing to a photograph of Chauvin with his knee pressing into Floyd's neck. "What the defendant did was not policing, what the defendant did was an assault."
To determine whether Chauvin acted lawfully as a police officer, jurors were told to consider the standard set by the U.S. Supreme Court's 1989 Graham v. Connor
decision, which found that the use of force "must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight."To prove second-degree murder, which carries a 40-year sentence, the jury must find that Chauvin was assaulting Floyd, not acting within the scope of his duty as a police officer.
For third-degree murder, which carries a 25-year sentence, the jury would have to find Chauvin put Floyd in danger and showed a disregard for human life. And for second-degree manslaughter, which carries a 10-year sentence, the jury must find Chauvin was "culpably negligent."
Schleicher played body camera footage from that day to show Chauvin heard Floyd complaining he was in pain, that he knew the risks he was taking, and that he also failed to help Floyd when he was in distress.
"Negligence includes his failure to act," Schleicher said. "In your custody means in your care."
But Nelson pointed out that prosecutors must prove all of the elements to each charge in order to render a guilty verdict. In that sense, he said, a criminal trial is like baking chocolate chip cookies — you can't make them unless you have all the ingredients.
"The state has the burden of proving each and every element beyond a reasonable doubt," he told the jurors. "If you determine that they have done so, you convict. But if they are missing any one single element, it is a not guilty verdict."
That's why both sides spent plenty of time on Monday on the cause of Floyd's death. There, too, the judge had an instruction for the jury, telling them prosecutors need only prove Chauvin's actions were a "substantial causal factor" in Floyd's death.
"The fact that other causes contributed to the death does not relieve the defendant of criminal liability," Judge Cahill said.
Schleicher noted that a pulmonologist, a heart doctor, an emergency room physician and two forensic pathologists had all testified that the primary cause of Floyd's death was a lack of oxygen because of how and how long he was held to the ground.
"George Floyd struggled, desperate to breathe, to make enough room in his chest to breathe. But the force was too much," Schleicher said. "He was trapped with the unyielding pavement underneath him — as unyielding as the men who held him down, pushing him. A knee to the neck. A knee to the back. Twisting his fingers. Holding his legs. For nine minutes and 29 seconds."
Schleicher dismissed the notion that Floyd died from heart disease, or the fentanyl and methamphetamine found in his system, which one toxicologist testified was not at the levels found in most people who die of a drug overdose.
But Nelson noted that Hennepin County Medical Examiner Andrew Baker said that Floyd's heart disease and intoxication were "complicating" factors in his death.
"They just want you to ignore significant medical issues," Nelson said. "The failure of the state's medical experts to acknowledge any possibility at all that any of these factors contributed in any way to Mr. Floyd's death defies medical science and it defies common sense and reason."
During rebuttal remarks, Jerry Blackwell of the Minneapolis law firm Blackwell Burke PA, who is working pro bono for the prosecution, sought to correct what he characterized as Nelson telling "stories" and "shading the truth" during his closing arguments. He said that Nelson mischaracterized Baker's testimony, and ridiculed the notion that Chauvin was afraid of the bystanders who were filming him.
Judge Cahill sustained Nelson's repeated objections to those statements. After the jury left to deliberate, Nelson said those characterizations amounted to prosecutorial misconduct and were grounds for a mistrial, but the judge disagreed, saying the comments were "adequately addressed by the court's instruction to disregard."
Nelson also made a bid for a mistrial based on the media coverage it has drawn. He said jurors were likely aware of protests after the fatal police shooting of Daunte Wright in nearby Brooklyn Center, and that fictional TV shows had also made recent references to the case. He added that over the weekend, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., made comments about the case. She told reporters "we're looking for a guilty verdict," and called for protesters to "stay in the street" if Chauvin was acquitted.
Judge Cahill said he didn't think that was grounds for a mistrial, but he did tell Nelson that Waters "may have given you something on appeal that may result in this whole trial being overturned."
The judge used that moment to express his frustration at elected officials who kept speaking publicly about the case "especially in a manner that is disrespectful to the rule of law and to the judicial branch and our function."
"If they want to give their opinions, they should do so in a respectful manner that is consistent with their oath to the Constitution and to respect a coequal branch of government," he said. "Their failure to do so is, I think, abhorrent, but I don't think it prejudices this jury. They have been told not to watch the news. I trust they are following those instructions."
--Editing by Nicole Bleier.
Update: This story has been updated to include information about the jury makeup and coverage of rebuttal remarks and the defense's request for a mistrial.
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