Derek Chauvin trial: Witness who watched George Floyd being wrestled into squad car breaks down

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The first man to confront police about their treatment of George Floyd on the day of his fatal arrest broke down in tears at Derek Chauvin’s murder trial today as the prosecution played body camera footage of cops wrestling with the handcuffed black man in a squad car. 

Charles McMillian, 61, stepped up to the witness stand after lunch on Wednesday. He said he was driving by the Cup Foods convenience store in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, when he noticed officers struggling with Floyd.  

In body camera footage, which was being released for the first time by the court but had already obtained by DailyMail.com last year, McMillian was heard calling out as cops grappled with Floyd in their squad car. 

McMillian said he ‘tried to make the situation easy,’ by telling Floyd: ‘You can’t win.’ 

Floyd could be heard in the footage telling McMillian: ‘I’m not trying to win. Don’t do me like that, I’m claustrophobic.’ 

As he described how Floyd began to cry out for his mother minutes later while pinned to the ground by the officers, McMillian wept as he revealed that he understood how Floyd felt after losing his own mom. 

‘I couldn’t help but feel helpless. I don’t have a mama either, but I understand him. My mom died June 25th,’ the witness said through tears.  

McMillian told attorney Erin Eldridge that he had pulled over outside Cup Foods when he saw two officers by Floyd’s blue Mercedes simply because he was ‘being nosy’.

He revealed that he had experience of being handcuffed himself and as Floyd became more agitated, having been apparently calm as he was walked towards officers Thomas Lane and J Alexander Keung’s squad car, McMillian said he tried to help.

The court was played footage of the events as McMillian described them. One clip of McMillian on the sidewalk was spliced with body camera footage of Floyd in the squad car.  

‘I’m watching, you know, Mr Floyd,’ McMillian said. ‘He collapsed onto the back seat and I’m trying to get him to understand when you make a mistake, once they get you in cuffs you got to wait there.

‘Once they get you in cuffs you can’t win.’  

McMillian then described how he continued to try to help Floyd after officers Lane, Keung and Chauvin had pinned him to the ground.  

‘[Floyd] kept saying: “I can’t breathe. Mama they’re killing me, they’re killing me.’ He started saying: “My body’s shutting down.”‘

McMillian remembered hearing an officer talking about fetching a ‘hog-tie’ but did not recall ever seeing them use such a restraint.

As more of the video was played McMillian’s voice could be heard urging Floyd: ‘Get up and get into the car. Get up and get into the car man.’

Floyd responded: ‘I can’t.’

Later McMillian could be heard telling Chauvin: ‘Your knee on his neck, that’s wrong man.’

Of his own part in the scene, McMillian said: ‘I was trying to help him. He appeared to be in and out [of consciousness], with foam around his mouth. I said: “Man he said he can’t breathe,” and they said: “Well if he keeps talking he can breathe.”‘

As the state’s questioning came to a close, jurors heard Chauvin speak for the first time.

The officer’s voice was caught on officer Tou Thao’s bodycam as he justified his actions in a brief exchange with McMillian.

When McMillian told Chauvin: ‘I don’t respect what you did,’ the officer replied: ‘Well that’s one person’s opinion. We got to control this guy because he’s a sizeable guy and looks like he’s probably on something.’

In a strange twist McMillian had also told the court how he had met and interacted with Chauvin just five days earlier. He said he had pulled alongside his squad car and said: ‘At the end of the day you go home to your family safe and the next person they go home to their family safe.’

Nelson did not cross-examine the witness. 

After McMillian stepped down the prosecution called Lt Jeff Rugel of the Minneapolis Police Department to the stand to authenticate officers’ body camera footage and other video evidence from the scene. 

Rugel, who runs department’s Business Technology Unit, served as a foundational witness, as he did not have a direct role in what happened with Floyd.  

The prosecution played nearly 30 minutes of body camera footage, stopping at various points to ask Rugel what he saw.  

The videos showed officer Lane brandishing his gun as he first approached Floyd in his vehicle. The officers were then seen kneeling on Floyd as a large crowd gathered. 

In footage from Lane’s camera, Chauvin’s discarded camera could be seen lying beneath squad car 320 into which cops tried to wrestle Floyd. 

The footage had already been released publicly but had not been seen by any of the impaneled jurors and this is the first time that an expert witness has highlighted the discarded body camera.

Rugel told the jury how that Minneapolis police policy demands that officers wear their cameras at all times an activate them during any activity or public interaction.

Lane activate his from inside the squad car as he and Keung arrived at Cup Foods and the footage ran through that initial encounter as the officer cuffed Floyd and urged him to stop resisting through the agonizing moments when he joined Keung and Chauvin in holding the man down.

As the encounter progresses the initial calm with which Floyd accompanied the officers across to their squad car deteriorates as the officers struggle to get him into the car.

Cuffed and chaotic Floyd starts shouting that he can’t breathe as they attempt to get him into the back of the vehicle, ultimately wriggling out through the other door at which point Chauvin arrives.

Lane can be heard saying: ‘Just take him out,’ and is quickly pulled from the car and down onto the street.

Earlier on Monday the prosecution showed never-before-seen surveillance video of Floyd inside the Cup Foods store moments before police responded to a call about Floyd using a counterfeit $20 bill. 

Cup Foods clerk Christopher Martin testified that Floyd’s hands were shaking, he was unable to make conversation and he appeared to be under the influence of drugs. 

Looking back, Martin said he wished he’d never raised alarm about the  fake bill because he believes Floyd might still be alive if he hadn’t, telling the court: ‘This could have been avoided.’ 

Surveillance video from a camera mounted behind the counter showed Martin speaking with Floyd as he used the fake bill to purchase cigarettes. 

Floyd then walked outside as Martin held the bill up and examined it. Martin told the court that he became suspicious of the bill because it had an unusual ‘blue pigment so I assumed it was fake’. 

‘The policy was if you took a counterfeit bill you had to pay for it out of your pay-check,’ Martin explained. ‘I took it anyways and was planning to just put it on my tab – until I second guessed myself and eventually told my manager.’ 

The manager then instructed Martin to go outside and bring Floyd back, he said. When Floyd refused, a co-worker called police. One of the responding officers was Chauvin. 

Questioned by Minnesota Assistant Attorney General Matthew Frank, Martin said that the two things he noticed about Floyd were his ‘size’ and he appeared to be ‘high’. 

However he said that he did not find Floyd’s demeanor to be threatening, saying: ‘He seemed very friendly, approachable, talkative, he seemed just to be having an average Memorial Day living his life. But he did seem high.’ 

An autopsy found Floyd had fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system at the time of his death. Chauvin’s lawyers have argued that his true cause of death was a drug overdose, despite the county medical examiner ruling it a homicide resulting from the police restraint. 

Across the approximately ten minutes of footage, Floyd can be seen meandering through the small store where he had dropped off his cell phone to be fixed. 

He could be seen rifling through his pants pockets, counting and recounting bills, taking them out and replacing them.

At times in the video, which did not have audio, Floyd appeared to be talking to himself or randomly at other customers.

After briefly exiting the store, knocking a piece of fruit to the ground as he left, he returned and again appeared agitated, high and distracted.

At one point he hopped on the spot, shuffled backwards before putting his arms over his head and jigging once more where he stood.

Twitchy and unable to stand still he made his way to the front of the store once more to buy cigarettes with the $20 bill that store clerk Martin immediately believed to be fake.

Martin then narrated a second video showing him speaking with Floyd and his acquaintances in a car parked outside Cup Foods. He said he took two trips out to the vehicle, bringing co-workers with him the second time. 

‘I notified them that they needed to come back into the store and the bill was fake and my boss wanted to talk to them,’ Martin said.

He recalled Floyd sitting in the driver seat ‘kind of shaking his head, putting his hands on his head. Like: “Why is this happening?” kind of thing.’

Floyd repeatedly refused to come back into the store, at which point Martin said his manager instructed a co-worker to call the police. 

He said officers arrived and spoke to the manager while Martin went back to manning the cash register.   

Under continued questioning by Frank, Martin told how, as the store emptied, he became aware of a commotion at the front of Cup Foods. He went outside and was confronted by the already escalated situation.

‘I saw people yelling and screaming I saw Derek [Chauvin] with his knee on George’s neck on the ground,’ he said.

‘George was motionless, limp and Chauvin seemed very…he was in a resting state, meaning like he just rested his knee on his neck.’

Martin, who lived above the store, said: ‘I pulled my phone out first and called my mom and told her not to come downstairs. Then I started recording.

‘Later on that night I deleted it because when they picked George up off the ground the ambulance went straight down 38th and the quickest way to get to the hospital is straight down Chicago Avenue.’

Martin said he assumed from this that Floyd was already dead and deleted his recording as he didn’t want to have to show it to anybody or answer questions about it in the aftermath.

Asked how he had felt as he absorbed what he had just witnessed, Martin said ‘disbelief and guilt’.

Martin, who had earlier told jurors that he had almost not reported the fake bill and only done so after second-guessing himself, said: ‘If I would have just not taken the bill this could have been avoided.’

Asked if he still worked at Cup Foods, Martin’s voice cracked as he said: ‘No. I didn’t feel safe.’

Under cross examination by Chauvin’s attorney Eric Nelson, Martin said that he recognized Floyd’s male companion as a man who had come in earlier and tried to pass a fake $20 that he immediately saw was similar to the one he was later offered by Floyd.

Asked why he called out the earlier customer while he took the bill from Floyd, Martin said: ‘The other person that had come in kind of seemed like he was trying to scheme…with George it seemed like he didn’t know [it was fake].

‘I was trying to do him a favor.’

Nelson questioned Martin further about Floyd’s behavior and why he believed him to be high.

According to the teen Floyd appeared to have difficulty forming words, was doing stretches and side-lunges and was slow to respond to his casual questions.

Taking issue with the characterization in re-direct, Frank sought to establish that Floyd was not so high as to have any difficulty making his purchase, to which Martin replied: ‘Correct.’ 

A morning dominated by video ended with the jury being shown footage recorded by a Cup Foods customer parked across the street from Floyd’s SUV shortly before lunch.

Seen for the first time the video put a new perspective on events, showing the arrival of officers Thomas Lane and J Alexander Keung, the first on the scene that day.

Witness Christopher Belfrey, 45, said that he started recording when parked directly behind the SUV as he was ‘startled’ to see Lane draw his handgun.

Belfrey explained that he pulled to the other side of the street, not wanting to ‘get in the middle’ of whatever was occurring and continued recording.

The court watched the footage in which Floyd can be seen, apparently cuffed and compliant, seated against a wall having been removed from his vehicle.

According to Belfrey, Lane and Keung then walked Floyd across to their squad car and put him in it.

He said that he had simply gone home at that point because ‘I thought he was detained. I thought it was over.’

The court took a quick break mid-morning during Martin’s testimony after a juror complained of feeling faint and suffering a ‘dizzy spell’. The juror, a white woman in her fifties, raised her hand to signal distress and had been fanning herself and looking flushed.

Judge Cahill halted the proceedings for a few minutes before everyone returned to the court. The judge asked the woman, who declined medical attention, how she was feeling, to which she responded: ‘I’m shaky but better.’

Cahill asked if the incident was ‘stress-related’, explaining that the court had to make a record of it, and the juror told him that it was, adding: ‘I’ve been awake since 2am. [But] I think I’ll be okay going forward.’

The jurors swapped seats to allow her easier access to the exit should it be necessary. Two alternates were appointed in the event that any of the seated jurors are unable to continue through to deliberations.

As the proceedings progressed Chauvin, who was smartly dressed in dark grey suit, white shirt and blue tie, looked on and took copious notes on a yellow legal pad, as he’s done each day in court.  

The 45-year-old is charged on three counts in connection with Floyd’s death: second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

If convicted on the most serious count, Chauvin faces a possible 40 years in prison. 

If found guilty of manslaughter he faces a maximum penalty of ten years though he could be free within five.

Much hangs on the outcome of this trial – not least the likely fates of Thomas Lane, 38; J Alexander Keung, 27; and Tou Thao, 35; the three officers currently awaiting trial for aiding and abetting in Floyd’s death.    

First on the stand on Wednesday was off-duty Minneapolis firefighter and paramedic Genevieve Hansen, 27, who resumed her witness testimony after it was cut short on Tuesday when she was admonished by Judge Peter Cahill for repeatedly interrupting and talking back to Nelson during cross examination. 

Hansen, 27, had wiped away tears as she recalled how she had identified herself as a first responder and begged to help Floyd when she believed he was dying outside the Cup Foods store in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020.

But soon after her demeanor changed as she was questioned by Nelson, who asked if she would describe bystanders at the scene of Floyd’s arrest as upset or angry. 

Hansen replied: ‘I don’t know if you’ve seen anybody be killed, but it’s upsetting.’ 

At this point Judge Cahill stepped in and cautioned Hansen for being argumentative, instructing her to ‘just answer his questions’. 

Minutes later Cahill sent the jury out for the day before turning to an increasingly combative Hansen and telling her in no uncertain terms: ‘You will not argue with the court, you will not argue with counsel.’    

In stark contrast to the high emotion of yesterday, questions were brief and subdued on Wednesday morning.

Asked by Nelson if she had provided ID at the scene of George Floyd’s death, Hansen said no before confirming to Frank that her assessment had been that the dying man required, ‘immediate medical attention.’

Under questioning by Assistant Attorney General Matthew Frank on Tuesday, Hansen had explained how her desperate pleas to be allowed to provide Floyd with life-saving medical assistance were ignored by the officers who pinned him down and blocked by officer Thao.

‘I tried calm and reasoning, I pleaded and was desperate. I was desperate to help,’ Hansen said. 

Her calls fell on deaf ears as Chauvin remained unmoved and Officer Thao told her to remain on the curb, at one point saying: ‘If you really are a Minneapolis firefighter you would know better than to get involved.’ 

In court Hansen said: ‘That’s exactly what I should have done. There was no medical assistance on the scene and I could have given [it].’ 

She told the court how she had observed the three officers on top of Floyd and known in an instant it wasn’t right.

‘The officers were leaning over his body with what appeared to be the majority of their weight on him,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t moving, he was cuffed and three grown men putting all their weight on somebody – that’s too much. 

‘Chauvin seemed very comfortable with the majority of his weight balanced on top of Mr Floyd’s neck. In my memory he had his hand in his pocket. He wasn’t distributing the weight on the car, on the pavement.’

Hansen, who is a qualified EMT with state and national licenses, said that she had assessed that Floyd had a ‘altered level of consciousness,’ that concerned her greatly.

She said that his face was ‘smooshed’ into the pavement and said: ‘I was really concerned. I thought his face looked puffy and swollen which would happen if you were putting a grown man’s weight [on him].

‘I noticed some fluid coming from what looked like George Floyd’s body and a lot of time we see a patient release their bladder when they die – that’s where my mind went. He was restrained but he wasn’t moving.’

Hansen said she recognized that Floyd was unconscious because he was not responding to the ‘painful stimulae’ of Chauvin’s knee on his neck. 

‘What I needed to know was whether or not he had a pulse anymore,’ she said. But she said she was not permitted access to the scene and the officers ignored her offers to talk them through CPR.

She said she felt ‘helpless.’ ‘There’s a man being killed,’ she said, ‘and had I had access I would have [helped]. This human was denied that right.’

Before she took the stand jury saw video she had recorded on the scene and heard audio of the 911 call she placed immediately after.

Her voice trembling with shock and emotion she could be heard telling the operator: ‘I literally just watched police officers not take a pulse and not to do anything to save a man and I am a first responder myself and I literally have it on video.’ 

In an uncomfortable cross-examination, Hansen became visibly frustrated with Nelson’s line of questioning and refused to be drawn into an admission that she would be distracted from her job if a threatening crowd were gathered telling her she was ‘doing it wrong’.

Time after time Nelson attempted to get an admission out of her until she said: ‘I think a burning structure where there are buildings and homes and people living on either side is much more concerning than 20 people.

‘I’ll repeat myself, I know my job, I’m confident in doing my job and there’s nothing anybody can do to disturb me.’

She also refused point blank to believe Nelson when he told her that medics had been called five minutes before she arrived on the scene, saying that a fire rig would have already arrived if that were true.

Nelson told her, ‘You arrived at 8.26.29. The medics were called at 8.21 – code 3.’

She snapped back: ‘I don’t believe that.’

As Nelson’s cross examination continued, Hansen became less and less tolerant of his questioning. When he asked if she had grown angry, she said she had been ‘desperate’ before admitting: ‘I got quite angry after Mr Floyd was loaded into the ambulance and there was no point in trying to reason with them anymore because they had just killed somebody.’

In response to Nelson’s observations that she had called Officer Thao ‘a b***h,’ that she had become angry and that the crowd had grown more vocal and threatening as the incident progressed, she said: ‘I don’t know if you’ve ever seen anybody get killed. It’s quite upsetting.’ 

That’s when Judge Cahill moved to dismiss the jury before scolding Hansen and telling her to come back to finish her testimony on Wednesday. 

Trial attorney Jerry Blackwell promised that the jury would hear from witnesses who had ‘called the police on the police’, in his opening statements Monday.

Hansen is the third witness called by the state who did just that; the first was 911 dispatcher Jena Scurry and the second Donald Williams.

On Tuesday the court heard from four witnesses who were minors at the time of Floyd’s death and spoke of how they felt helpless as they watched the handcuffed black man lose consciousness and the cops pinning him down ignored their pleas.  

Day Two Recap – Prosecution calls six witnesses who stood on the curb and watched cops holding Floyd on the ground 

Some of the most striking testimony on Tuesday came from nine-year-old witness Judea, who described how she and her cousin Darnella Frazier had gone to Cup Foods for snacks when they found Floyd pinned to the ground by Chauvin and two other police officers. 

Judea recalled how Chauvin didn’t move even after paramedics arrived and ‘asked him nicely to get off of him’. 

‘He [Chauvin] still stayed on him [Floyd],’ Judea said. She said the medics eventually ‘just had to put him off, get him off of him.’

Gently questioned by Blackwell about how she felt as she saw these events, Judea said: ‘I was sad and kind of mad. If felt like he was stopping his breathing and kind of hurting him.’ 

Judea’s cousin Darnella, who was 17 years old when she recorded the most famous viral video of the ordeal last spring, took the stand on Tuesday morning and told how she felt helpless as she watched Floyd lose consciousness. 

‘There’s been nights I’ve stayed up apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more and not physically interacting, not saving his life,’ Darnella said.  

‘But it’s not what I should have done –  it’s what he [Chauvin] should have done.’

Another witness on Tuesday named Alyssa, who is 18 now but was 17 at the time of Floyd’s death, echoed Darnella’s account, telling the court: ‘I felt like there wasn’t really anything I could do as a bystander. The highest power was there, and I felt like I was failing [Floyd].’ 

The prosecution played video Alyssa had filmed after she and her friend arrived at Cup Foods to pick up an auxiliary cord for her phone, in which Floyd was heard crying out that he couldn’t breathe while bystanders yelled for Chauvin and the other officers to get off him. 

Recalling what she saw of Floyd as he lay pinned beneath Chauvin’s knee, his lower body held down by officers Lane and Keung, Alyssa said: ‘He was struggling with his ability to breathe. He was focused on trying to breathe.

‘At first he was vocal but he got less vocal and you could tell, he was talking with smaller and smaller breathes and he’d spit a little and he’d try to move his head a little because he was uncomfortable.

‘I knew that if he were to be held down much longer he wouldn’t live.’  

Both Darnella and Alyssa – neither of whom were shown on camera in court because they were minors at the time of Floyd’s death – testified that they started filming because they felt that what they were seeing ‘wasn’t right’.  

Darnella asserted that Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck even harder as the growing crowd begged him to stop – and that he didn’t remove his knee even when paramedics were searching for a pulse. 

Under questioning by Blackwell, Darnella said: ‘I heard George Floyd saying: “I can’t breathe, please get off of me.” He cried for his mom and he was in pain. 

‘It seemed like he knew it was over for him. He was terrified, he was suffering. This was a cry for help.’ 

When an ambulance finally arrived, Darnella claimed that paramedics treating Floyd had to tell Chauvin to remove his knee from the unconscious man’s neck.

‘The ambulance person had to actually tell him to lift up. He checked his pulse first while Chauvin’s knee still remained on Floyd’s neck,’ she said. ‘The paramedic did a “get up” motion, basically telling him to remove his knee.’  

Darnella said that she felt ‘threatened’ by both Chauvin and fellow officer Tou Thao who she said ‘were quick to put their hands on their mace’ when a woman who identified herself as a fire fighter asked Chauvin to check for a pulse and she and Darnella made to move towards Floyd where he lay.

‘Officer Thao and Chauvin, he put his hand on his mace, they put their hands on their mace. I can’t remember if they actually pointed it at us,’ Darnella said.

Asked if, at any point, Chauvin had ‘got up or let up’ she said: ‘If anything he actually was kneeling harder. It looked like he was shoving his knee in his neck.’ 

At the close of her testimony Darnella broke down as she told jurors how witnessing and filming Floyd’s death affected her life.

‘When I look at George Floyd I look at my dad, I look my brothers, I look at my cousins, my uncles because they are all black,’ she said. ‘I have a black father, black brother, black friends and I look at that and I think how that could have been them.’ 

The first witness to deliver testimony on Tuesday was mixed martial arts fighter Donald Winn Williams II, who told the court that he called 911 about Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck because he believed he ‘witnessed a murder’. 

Williams was heard in Darnella’s video yelling at Chauvin to check for a pulse and accused him of placing Floyd in what he called a ‘kill choke’. He resumed his testimony on Tuesday morning after it was cut short on Monday. 

Under questioning from Frank, Williams described how Chauvin continued to press his knee into Floyd’s neck as paramedics struggled to find a pulse. 

He revealed that he called the police in the aftermath of the scene that he described in horrific detail because he said: ‘I believed I had just witnessed a murder. I felt the need to call the police on the police.’

Williams began to cry as jurors were played audio of the 911 call he placed as he stood outside Cup Foods, in which he named officer 987 and said: ‘He just pretty much killed this guy. He wasn’t resisting arrest. He had his knee on his neck. He wasn’t resisting arrest or nothing, he was handcuffed.’ 

Williams could be heard shouting at Officer Thao: ‘Y’all murderers man, y’all murderers’ before the call ended.

Earlier Williams told how Thao put his hands on his chest and pushed him back to the curb as he watched Floyd in ‘tremendous pain…his eyes rolling back, his mouth open, drooling, trying to gasp for air and trying to breathe as he’s down there and move his face from side to side I’m assuming gasping for air.’ 

On cross-examination, Chauvin’s attorney Nelson attempted to undercut William’s presentation of himself as a controlled and professional observer of events who remained schooled by his training and experience in sports and security.

Nelson appeared to be trying to provoke Williams into a display of anger as he repeatedly tried to discredit his claims to having remained calm.

‘You started calling [Chauvin] names didn’t you?’ Nelson asked. ‘You called him, “a tough guy.” You called him “such a man,” “bogus.” You called him a “bum” 13 times. You called him a “bitch.”‘

But while Williams agreed to all of these assertions he would not be persuaded to agree to Nelson’s characterization of him as “angry” or threatening.

Asked if he had told Officer Thao that he hoped he would shoot himself he said: ‘No..I said you will shoot yourself in two years because of what you did.’

Nelson also tried to cast doubt on just how much Williams really understood what he was seeing  – pointing out that the officers had been dealing with Floyd for 15 minutes before he arrived or that an ambulance had been called, and stepped up in urgency, just three minutes before he came upon the scene.

In an at times testy to and fro Nelson quizzed Williams about whether it was possible for a person to lose consciousness in a choke hold then come round and start fighting again.

Ultimately Williams agreed that this was possible but when questioned once more in the prosecution’s re-direct he told the jury that when a fighter loses consciousness in an MMA fight the fight is stopped, ‘right away’ and medical attention given, ‘right away’. 

Just before he was excused, when asked if an MMA fight ends when a person ‘taps out’ – communicating with their opponent that ‘that’s enough’ – Williams was equally clear as he agreed and said: ‘That’s the rules of the fight.’ 

Day One Recap: Both sides deliver opening statements with prosecution painting Chauvin as a murderer who ‘betrayed the badge’ and defense insisting that Floyd died of outside factors, including drug use 

Trial attorney Jerry Blackwell kicked off Monday’s proceedings with an opening statement where he showed jurors the bystander video of Floyd’s fatal arrest that sent shockwaves around the country and around the world last spring.  

‘You can believe your eyes. That it’s homicide, it’s murder,’ Blackwell told the jury after the video ended.  

Blackwell emphasized that Chauvin ‘did not get up, did not let up’ for nine minutes and 29 seconds, even after Floyd stopped breathing and despite the fevered pleas from bystanders for him to release Floyd.  

Blackwell said Chauvin ‘betrayed the badge’ he wore as a police officer and said that ‘sanctity of life and protection of the public’ – the very essence of policing – were at the heart of the case. 

‘What you will learn is that the use of force has to be evaluated minute by minute. What may be reasonable in the first minute may not be reasonable in the fourth or in the ninth minute 29 seconds,’ Blackwell said.

‘What Mr Chauvin used was lethal force. The evidence is going to show you there was no cause in the first place to use that against a man who was defenseless, who was handcuffed, who was not resisting.’ 

There was no doubt, Blackwell told the jury, ‘Someone pressing down on him for 9 minutes and 29 seconds is enough to take a life.’

As he told the jury all of the things that this death was not about – a heart attack, overdose or high blood pressure – Blackwell sought to tighten the jurors’ focus on those 9mins and 29 seconds.  

When it was the defense attorney Nelson’s turn to deliver his opening statement he sought to do the exact opposite, telling the jury: ‘This case is clearly about more than 9 minutes and 29 seconds.’

To Nelson this was about reason, doubt and common sense. This was about the ‘totality’ of everything that went before and all that came after those minutes and those seconds.

Nelson argued that Floyd’s death was caused by his underlying heart disease, ‘adrenaline’ and drug use – asserting that he had ingested ‘what are thought to be two Percocet pills’ before his fatal encounter with police. 

He said the jury will hear from two of Floyd’s friends who claimed they had trouble waking him up after he took drugs on the day he died.  

‘Mr Floyd’s friends will explain that Mr Floyd fell asleep in the car and that they couldn’t wake him up to get going,’ Nelson said. ‘They thought police might be coming. They kept trying to wake him up.’ 

Nelson also argued that at no point did Chauvin betray his police training.  

‘You will learn that Derek Chauvin did exactly what he had been trained to do over the course of his 19-year career. The use of force is not attractive, but it is a necessary component of policing,’ Nelson said.

He concluded: ‘When you hear the law and apply reason there will only be one just result. That will be to find Mr Chauvin not guilty.’ 

The prosecution’s first witness on Monday was Jenna Scurry, a 911 dispatcher who watched live video of police kneeling on Floyd testified that she called the officers’ supervisor with concerns about their use of force.  

It was Scurry who sent officers to the Cup Foods at 38th and Chicago Avenue on May 25, 2020, after receiving a call about a man using a counterfeit bill.

Blackwell mentioned Scurry in his opening statement and said that upon seeing live video of Floyd’s arrest: ‘She did something that she had never done in her career. She called the police on the police.’ 

Questioned by Frank, Scurry told how she had seen surveillance footage of the incident from one of the city’s pole mounted cameras and been struck by a ‘gut instinct’ that ‘something wasn’t right’. 

The video, which had not previously been released publicly, showed Chauvin and fellow officers Lane and Keung perched atop Floyd next to a squad car while officer Thao looked on. 

Scurry noted that she wasn’t watching the stream the entire time because she was fielding other calls. But she said that as she glanced away and back again, she was struck that the officers hadn’t moved and asked a colleague if the screen had frozen. 

‘I first asked if the screens had frozen because it hadn’t changed. I thought something might be wrong,’ she said.

‘They had come from the back of the squad to the ground and my instincts were telling me that something was not right.

‘It was an extended period of time. I can’t tell you the exact period and they hadn’t told me if they needed any more resources but I became concerned that something might be wrong.’ 

She said that she hadn’t wanted to be a ‘snitch’ but she recognized what appeared to be use of force and stated: ‘I took that instinct and I called the sergeant.’

Frank played audio from the call, in which Scurry said: ‘I don’t know if they had to use force or not. They got something out of the back of the squad and all of them sat on this man. So I don’t know if they needed to or not but they haven’t said anything to me yet.’ 

‘You can call me a snitch if you want to,’ she added.

She said she made the call to ‘voice my concerns’ and noted that she had never made one like it to a police sergeant before.    

Cross examining Scurry, Nelson was at pains to underscore gaps in what she saw and the facts that she had no police training, little knowledge of what the calls to which she sent officers actually looked like and pointed out that her attention was not trained on the screen at all times.

Jurors were shown yet more previously unseen video footage as the afternoon progressed this time in the form of a series of cell phone recordings made by Alisha Oyler, a cashier at the Speedway gas station opposite Cup Foods who was the state’s second witness. 

‘Trying not to cuss’ and frequently failing to recall events Oyler explained that she had first noticed police ‘messing with someone’ outside the Dragon Wok restaurant opposite Cup Foods. 

She said she had watched officers handcuff Floyd and take him across to the now infamous site of squad car 320 in front of the store’s entrance and continued to record events on her cell phone as she stepped out to have a cigarette.

She said she had done so because the police were ‘always messing with people and it’s not right’.

Monday’s hearing ended with the first half of Williams’ testimony. The MMA fighter said he witnessed Chauvin ‘shimmying’, or adjusting his position on Floyd’s neck, in a recognized martial art maneuver designed to double-down on and tighten a choke hold.

He told how he watched Chauvin squeeze the life out of Floyd and said that when he called him out for using a blood choke the former officer looked him straight in the eye and did not stop. 

Williams said that he had watched Floyd ‘fade away like a fish in a bag’.