MINNEAPOLIS: A prosecutor urged jurors on Monday to convict the white former Minneapolis police officer accused of killing George Floyd, saying the death of the 46-year-old Black man, which was captured on video, was a “shocking abuse of authority.”
“This case is exactly what you thought when you saw it first, when you saw that video,” Steve Schleicher said in closing arguments at the high-profile murder trial of Derek Chauvin. “Use your common sense,” the prosecutor told the jury. “What you saw, you saw.”
“You can believe your eyes,” Schleicher said. “It’s exactly what you knew, it’s what you felt in your gut, it’s what you now know in your heart.” Chauvin, 45, is charged with murder and manslaughter over Floyd’s May 25, 2020 death, which sparked protests against racial injustice around the world and is being seen as a landmark test of police accountability.
Chauvin was captured on video kneeling on the neck of Floyd, who was pinned facedown handcuffed on the ground for more than nine minutes complaining “I can’t breathe.” “This wasn’t policing, this was murder,” Schleicher said. “Nine minutes and 29 seconds of shocking abuse of authority.
“The defendant is guilty of all three counts. And there’s no excuse.”
Floyd “asked for help with his very last breath,” the prosecutor said, but Chauvin did not provide assistance. “He didn’t follow training, he did not follow the department’s use of force rules, he did not perform CPR.”
“George Floyd was not a threat to anyone,” Schleicher said. “He was not trying to hurt anyone.”
Chauvin, a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department, faces a maximum of 40 years in prison if convicted of the most serious charge — second-degree murder. Chauvin’s trial has coincided with rising tensions from two other high-profile police killings.
Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was shot dead in a Minneapolis suburb on April 11 by a white policewoman who apparently mistook her gun for her Taser, and a 13-year-old boy was killed by police in Chicago.
Wright’s killing triggered several nights of protests in Minneapolis and National Guard troops have been deployed in the Minnesota city where shop windows have been boarded up as a precaution.