Onumba.com – The closing argument for the prosecutors in the Derek Chauvin murder trial pretty much boiled down to five simple words: “You can believe your eyes.”
Never mind the glib, animated courtroom labyrinths, maneuverings, and all of the other courtroom stuff. Much of that were the expected acrobatic theatrics typical in high profile cases involving combatant attorneys pitted against each other in a litigation brawl.
It was one of those rare trials where the outcome was pretty much a cinch, if justice meant anything. The video footage of that macabre incident on May 25, 2020 showing Chauvin’s knee pressing down on George Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds with his hand in his trouser pocket, left the jury with no other choice but to convict him of murder.
But Eric Nelson, the leader of defense team, had a job to do: defend his client. In that job, he faced a herculean task of leaping over a Leviathan hurdle posed by the “knee” on the “neck,” which, throughout the trial, became the massive pink elephant in the room he pretended wasn’t there.
In short, the defense team was peddling upstream and needed a divine thaumaturge to pull it off. Their strategy was to chuck in everything and the kitchen sink, raising questions over how much drug Mr. Floyd had in his system, how much exhaust fume he inhaled, how enlarged his heart was and how sick he was prior to that tragic day. All of that and some of the other strategic nonsense were mere distractions.
Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo nailed it:
“Once there was no longer any resistance, and clearly after 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 policy.”
Sure —— the cavalcade of witnesses, the parade of medical experts and the throng of law enforcement professionals called to testify brought clarifying insights to the arguments made by the maneuvering defense and the prosecution teams. While the defense desperately looked to puncture sufficient holes in the prosecution case to sow doubt in the minds of the jurors, the seemingly more aplumb prosecution made sure to keep those jurors focused on a triptych of key facts of the case: the notorious knee, 9 minutes 29 seconds and the gales of painful ululations of “I can’t breathe” in between agonizing wails of “mama.”
In the end, it was a no-brainer. The jurors saw what everyone else saw, deliberating for no more than 10 hours before handing down a guilty verdict on all three counts against Chauvin, who was then summarily handcuffed and whisked away as he mumbled some words to his lawyer.
The only African-American male juror, 31-year old High School Basketball Coach Brandon Juror Mitchell, described his feelings.
“You’re watching somebody die on a daily basis,” Mitchell told CNN. “It felt like every day was a funeral and watching someone die every day.” He said that were it not for one juror who repeatedly sought clarifications about the Judge’s instructions, it would have taken no more than “20 minutes” to deliberate the case.
Of course, the 45-year old former cop most certainly will appeal the verdict. That’s the only push back he got left. But it will be a Hail Mary effort by his lawyers probably now cobbling up grounds for the appeal. Realistically, the defense has zero chance of prevailing and overturning the guilty verdict. Dude is going to spend time in the calaboose. He can count on that.
Chauvin will be sentenced June 16 and faces up to 40 years behind bars. How much time he actually gets, however, remains to be seen.
Moving forward though, something else remains to be seen, and that is whether this historic guilty verdict will help impel the kind of change the country needs to blunt, certainly not eradicate, the menace of racism and the potency of White supremacy in this country.
Philonise Floyd, George Floyd’s brother, embraced this victory with huge relief, calling it freedom for everyone.
“Justice for George, it means freedom for all,” Floyd said. “The world has sparked, and lit up with a blaze tonight. And it’s a celebration. Business can be taken care of tomorrow, but it’s a celebration today.”
Civil rights icon Rev. Jesse Jackson was overjoyed too, but his was tempered with caution, decrying the endemic nature of police brutality against African-Americans.
“It’s a relief, but the celebration is premature,” Jackson told CNN’s reporter Sara Sidner in Minneapolis outside Cup Foods where Floyd took his last breath.
“We still have a lot of work to do. This is a first down, not a touchdown.”
While lauding the verdict reached in Derek Chauvin’s trial as “significant” Jackson said that more is needed to stop police killings.
Jackson cited Daunte Wright, a Black man, who was killed in another police shooting just 10 miles away from the spot where Floyd’s ghastly encounter with Chauvin occurred.
“We’re going to bury Daunte Thursday, the killing continues. We must break the backbone of legal lynching forever. Police killing people is getting away with legal lynching,” Jackson said.
The racism in other spheres of American life continues as well.
