America awaits a verdict

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Sean Rameswaram: Law enforcement looked atrocious in America this week, and I'm pretty sure it looks so bad that that's an objective statement. Last night, Chicago police released video footage of an officer shooting Adam Toledo in the chest, ending his life. Adam Toledo's empty hands were up when he was shot. He was 13 years old. This comes just a few days after the shooting of Dante Wright in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. Officer Kim Potter killed Wright when she pulled out her service weapon and opened fire. Apparently she meant to pull out her taser. Brooklyn Center is a suburb of Minneapolis, just 10 miles away from where the trial of Derek Chauvin is being held. The entire world awaits the verdict, and the Twin Cities are on edge. John Collins has been covering the trial for Minnesota Public Radio. So, I mean, you walk down the street here, and for months and months there have been George Floyd signs in windows. There's still murals up all over the cities of George Floyd. And then downtown Minneapolis, where the court proceedings are taking place, looks way different than it's ever looked. It's got high fences up everywhere. There's barbed wire. There are concrete barriers, especially around government buildings. And even some major streets are blocked off. That's all due to the trial. and well the city and the state have been planning for what's going to happen here for months and months you'll have to remember that Minneapolis and St. Paul were a hotbed not only of protests but of random lootings and random arsons last May and the third precinct building also was burned and the police have not moved back into it I'm not sure even how stable it would be to do that so I think the authorities want to avoid at all costs another precinct going up in flames.

Sean Rameswaram: Let's talk about the trial. Chauvin's charged with second degree unintentional murder, third degree murder, and second degree manslaughter. Are all of these charges ways of saying he didn't intend to kill George Floyd? Those are unintentional. These three are all slightly different, but they all say that he took some sort of action that resulted in taking George Floyd's life. And they vary in the details, and that's what jurors are going to need to parse to decide whether they convict him of zero charges, one charges, all three charges. Prosecutors made the decision that the evidence that they had didn't show that he intended to kill him necessarily. And this is the decision that they have to make, is will jurors buy their arguments? And in this case, they just decided that the best way for them to get guilty verdicts is the unintentional, rather than having to actually prove that he intended to murder George Floyd, too, which would be a much higher ask of jurors. The defense wrapped up its arguments just yesterday. Before we talk about their side, let's talk about the arguments that the prosecution made. What were they telling the jury?

Sean Rameswaram: So the prosecution has the burden of proof of proving that Derek Chauvin is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. So they have the bigger job here. And typically legal experts will say that prosecution has to choose one major argument and stick to that argument. And so what they've been arguing here, essentially, is that Derek Chauvin, by kneeling on George Floyd's neck and restraining him in a prone position, stopped him from breathing and led to his death after nine minutes and 29 seconds of kneeling on his neck. How have they been making it? They called dozens of witnesses. They started out by calling bystanders. At some point, did you make a 911 call? That is correct. I did call the police on the police. And why did you do that? Because I believe I witnessed a murder.

Sean Rameswaram: I stayed up apologizing and apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more and not physically interacting and not saving his life. I offered to kind of walk them through it or told them, if he doesn't have a pulse, you need to start compressions, and that wasn't done either. I would have been able to provide medical attention to the best of my abilities, and this human was denied that. Right. Following the bystanders, the prosecution moved into calling Minneapolis police officers, including Chief Madeira Arredondo and other leadership, to say... Once there was no longer any resistance, and clearly when Mr. Floyd was no longer responsive and even motionless, to continue to apply that level of force to a person proned out, handcuffed behind their back, that in no way, shape, or form is anything that is by policy is not part of our training and it is certainly not part of our ethics or our values

Sean Rameswaram: They then led into calling use of force experts Because at the time of the restraint period Mr Floyd was not resisting He was in the prone position He was handcuffed He was not attempting to evade. He was not attempting to resist. And the pressure that he was, that was being caused by the body weight would, could cause positional asphyxia, which could cause death. And then after that, they moved into medical testimony because George Floyd had some small amounts of drugs in his system, according to toxicology. Mr. Floyd's use of fentanyl did not cause the subdual or neck restraint. His heart disease did not cause the subdual or the neck restraint. And so the medical testimony wanted to show that even though he had these things, that on May 25th, if he had not been detained and restrained on the ground like that for so long, that he would still have been walking around that night with heart disease, but that the restraint and the way he was restrained were the actual causes of his death.

Sean Rameswaram: The medical testimony is particularly important because of what the defense is saying. Tell me what exactly they're arguing. The first argument is, of course, that Floyd died of either the fentanyl in his system or his heart disease or some combination, but that essentially it wasn't due to the restraint of the police officers. The evidence will show that Mr. Floyd died of a cardiac arrhythmia that occurred as a result of hypertension, his coronary disease, the ingestion of methamphetamine and fentanyl, and the adrenaline flowing through his body, all of which acted to further compromise an already compromised heart.

Sean Rameswaram: Their second argument is that the bystanders on the scene were a threat to the police officers who were detaining Floyd. There are cars stopping, people yelling. There is a growing crowd and what officers perceive to be a threat. They're called names. You heard them this morning. A fucking bum. They're screaming at him. causing the officers to divert their attention from the care of Mr. Floyd to the threat that was growing in front of them.

Sean Rameswaram: Their third argument is that Chauvin, by restraining Floyd in a prone position, was just acting like he was supposed to act because that's how he'd been trained. I felt that Officer Chauvin's interactions with Mr. Floyd were following his training, following current practices in policing and were objectively reasonable. Hmm. Tough sell considering you got the police chief in there testifying that Chauvin's kneeling on Floyd's neck was not only in violation of training and policies, but also ethics and values. But I guess all that matters is what the jury thinks.

Sean Rameswaram: What do we know about the jury? Well, so the jury's names are being kept secret until sometime after the trial. We haven't, except for those of us who have been in the courtroom, and that's limited due to COVID, seen their faces. But what we do know is that it's relatively racially diverse for Hennepin County here. It's more diverse than the county itself. And the jury is a mix of three people who identify as Black men, one Black woman, and two women who identify as multiracial. So that's like about half the jury is people of color.

Sean Rameswaram: So there's also the question of how that impacts the eventual verdict and, you know, whether their experiences that maybe they had with police or their relatives did affect the outcome of that they come to when they decide on these charges. I heard one of the jurors has a tendency to fall asleep. Is that true? Oh, one of them seems a little bit sleepy. There was one juror in particular who the pool report says in the back row appeared to be sleeping. The other jurors seemed very attentive watching Nelson and the lieutenant as they were going through and testifying. But when a graphic was shown on the screen about ground control and it was put up on the screen, you saw one juror or you saw all the jurors look up at that graphic. But the other juror that had the head down did not look up as well. So the suspicion is that this juror was sleeping.

Sean Rameswaram: Okay, so Sleepy and the rest of them hear closing arguments on Monday, and then they'll go to hotel where they'll be sequestered until they can come to some sort of consensus. This feels like one of those moments like OJ or Rodney King, where the entire world will be watching for this verdict. But tell me how it feels in Minneapolis, in the Twin Cities, in Minnesota. Where does this leave all of the conversations around police reform there?

Sean Rameswaram: I think it adds some fuel to it, actually. And there are efforts at the state legislature to pass a whole slate of reforms or changes to policing in the entire state of Minnesota. So not only would those affect Minneapolis and give Minneapolis more possibility of affecting actual change and culture change in the police department through actually enforcing policies and making sure that officers who violate policies are disciplined and eventually fired rather than kept on the force. but it allows departments all over the state to start to adjust and start to change. And it's unclear if that's going to make progress in the Republican-controlled Senate, but there's a lot of pressure. And Daunte Wright's killing has once again brought this to the fore. And I don't think it's going away. And I do think that the people who are dedicated to advocating for these changes to policies are not going away and they're not going to be quiet, especially as we are going to have in Minnesota, once again, if this does go to trial with Kim Potter, another stretched out really long amount of time where this is in the forefront of people's minds.

Sean Rameswaram: So there's going to be a lot of possibilities for people to try to enforce the changes that they've been talking about wanting to make. Dante Rice! Dante Rice! Dante Rice Do you know the difference between the gun and the taser Yeah And Dante don get it And Dante don get it Balshuk! Balshuk! Balshuk! Balshuk! Balshuk! Balshuk! Balshuk! Balshuk! Balshuk!

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Sean Rameswaram: My name is Erica Alvarez. I'm an 18-year-old graduating high schooler from Katy, Texas. Specifically, I am one of the co-founders of Katy for Justice, which is, I think, the first social justice group in Katy, Texas. My name is Jody Armour. I'm 61 years old. I'm a law professor at the University of Southern California Law School. Jody and Erica met on Zoom last night.

Jody Armour: I gotta say, I love that horse in the background. Yeah, yeah. I am a real fanatic for horses. I grew up in Akron, Ohio. I'm a hayseed from the country in a lot of ways, and I really love, love horses.

Erica Alvarez: The police killing of George Floyd changed Erica's life. It inspired her to organize protests in her community. I am an immigrant, first generation. I moved in from Venezuela, I think, four, almost five years ago now, a month before eighth grade happened. And I was expecting the best. And then once we had George Floyd and many more cases happen, once we started being aware of that and looking at the news more and following up with it, I saw just how huge the problem is.

Jody Armour: Yeah, I can remember the day, the time and the weather I first saw the videotape beating of Rodney King. It was in 91, and the airwaves were being saturated by the videotape of Rodney King being brutally beaten by these officers. And I remember many people were shocked and disbelieving, while many of the rest of us were not so surprised.

Jody Armour: So many in the black community said to ourselves, yeah, this is what we've been telling you is happening all along, has been happening all along. And people were not crediting us as, you know, believable. And now here was ocular proof. Here was smoking gun evidence of what we'd been saying had been going on. And so it was a confirmation, a vindication, I think, that many of us felt. And we were sure that there was going to be followed up by a vindication in the court when these officers were tried.

Jody Armour: They went to Simi Valley. The Simi Valley jury looked at that video that we all looked at and were outraged by. And they said, we don't see anything outrageous in this video. We don't see anything criminal in this video. and they acquitted the four officers. And that was the next big day, I remember.

Jody Armour: I remember the day I first saw the video hit the airways, and I remember the day I heard the verdict came from the Simi Valley jury of an acquittal for all four officers, and it was like a gaslighting of America, a black America in particular. You were telling us that the video that we just saw with our own eyes did not show morally condemnable police brutality, that there was nothing criminally wrong there, And it wasn't just the police officers who we could be upset about, because you could say, oh, there's bad apples anywhere. That was always the narrative back then. But this was the jury. These were representatives of the community, speaking with the voice of the community, as representatives of the community, telling us the community doesn't see anything wrong here.

Jody Armour: Yeah, in a lot of ways, I tell my students, ain't nothing changed but what year it is. You know, you see a lot of the same brutality, a lot of the same kinds of incidents that, you know, divide the country and polarize the country along racial lines, along economic lines, and along a lot of, you know, social fault lines, unfortunately. So a lot hasn't changed, but then a lot has.

Jody Armour: I mean, there has been a monumental shift in the way ordinary citizens think about blame and punishment, thanks to the grassroots activism of Black Lives Matter and their allies. You see the concrete fruits of your efforts right at the ballot box with new DAs, new measures to defund the police, new approaches and discussions about how to think about crime and punishment.

Erica Alvarez: Yeah, I think the George Floyd case and the Black Lives Matter movement from this summer was a turning point because I was actually taking two classes online. I was taking AP government and AP macroeconomics online over the summer just to get ahead. And during my AP government class, which was, I think, in July, we had a copy of the virtual textbook and we reached a page about demographics and politics. And it briefly touched on the Black Lives Matter movement. And there was this picture of a protest, a small congregation of Black Lives Matter protest in front of some sort of official building. And the sign said Black Lives Matter I can breathe because of the Eric Garner case And I was just so taken aback that it could have just been a snapshot from June 2020 And I would not have noticed any difference.

Erica Alvarez: Sometimes it feels like, to me, I keep waking up to a racial injustice groundhog day. You know, you see that same pattern repeating itself over and over. And you think we're stuck in a loop. can we ever get out. So sometimes I feel like we are stuck in that loop. It's inevitable. I get fatalistic. But then on the other hand, what keeps me going sometimes is seeing how grassroots activists like y'all have been able to move the needle by reaching voters and having concrete effects at the ballot box.

Jody Armour: Yeah, I wish I knew when I was 18 that activism isn't always going to result in immediate victories. In fact, you may have to go through long stretches, long, long stretches of defeat before you get to victories. And so when I was coming along and starting when I was 18, we were just going into the Reagan years. And then we saw defeat after defeat. Reagan and then Clinton came along and said, we're going to end welfare as we know it, the old FDR program. I'm going to gut it. I'm going to give more money to police, more money for prisons. And we sat through defeat after defeat after defeat and keeping going despite in the face of all of those defeats.

Jody Armour: It's not until you get to 2014, 15 that you start really seeing a change that this generation of activists has brought about. And recognizing then, you know, I wish someone had told me that you can keep the faith through those hard times, especially if you're not just dependent on victories to give meaning to your activism. I think it would help make it easier for me to get through some of those years, because some of those years I really did become dispirited and almost, you know, kind of lost my way because of defeat after defeat after defeat.

Erica Alvarez: Oh, yeah, I agree. I think it's important to, no matter how many defeats or failures we might face, to keep on trucking, so to say. That's the only way things will be achieved. We just cannot let another Black body who has been brutalized by the police be forgotten and, you know, not do anything about it.

Erica Alvarez: Do I think it's going to happen? Maybe, maybe not. I've lost a lot of trust in the judicial system. But even if he doesn't, it's not going to discourage me. It's just going to make me want to fight even harder at the end of the day.

Jody Armour: Yeah, I'm bracing myself for a possible acquittal. I don't think it's likely, but I think it's still possible because I know that Walter Scott, we saw him getting shots in the back. You remember Walter Scott and the first trial, the jury was deadlocked after seeing the video of him being shot in the back. Philando Castile, we see the officer standing over him, was acquitted. Terrence Crutcher had his hands up in the middle of the road and was shot by an officer. You know, she was acquitted. Right. So I'm bracing myself for that possibility and recognizing that even if that possibility doesn't come to pass in this case and there is a conviction, it doesn't really mean that much in the bigger picture if we think that that's the bar now.

Jody Armour: The bar is you can't lean on a black person's neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds while they're gasping for air and saying they can't breathe. If that's the only bar you have to clear, that's an awfully low bar, right? And for us to think that we've accomplished something when it comes to real reform by that kind of result in that kind of case would be deluding ourselves.

Sean Rameswaram: Well, it has been a pleasure speaking with you today, Jody. Yes. It's been really insightful and a really good conversation to have. Thank you.

Jody Armour: And I really wasn't exaggerating when I said that, you know, I wish I was on top of this at 18 as you are. Man, I could be a good bit further down the road even now. So keep it going. Stay strong. I love it. Thank you. Thank you.

Sean Rameswaram: Jody Armour is a law professor at USC. Erica Alvarez is a graduating senior out in Katy, Texas. She's off to Rice University, where she plans to continue her activism. If you're looking for way more coverage of the Derek Chauvin trial, Minnesota Public Radio has got your back. They have a podcast called In Front of Our Eyes that features trenchant reporting, including that of John Collins, who you heard earlier in the show. Again, it's called In Front of Our Eyes. I'm Sean Ramos for him. This one's Today Explained. Thank you.