Derek-Chauvin-Trial

Multiple medical examiners took the stand in Derek Chauvin's murder trial on Friday, testifying that George Floyd died from a lack of oxygen. Chauvin's lawyers have repeatedly tried to suggest that Floyd was killed by drugs in his system and heart issues, the New York Times reported.But on Friday, Dr. Lindsey Thomas, a former Hennepin County Medical Examiner who retired in 2017, told the court that it was the knee on his neck that killed him, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported. She spent 37 years as a medical examiner and now works as a forensic pathologist in Reno and Salt Lake City."In this case, I believe the primary mechanism of death is asphyxia or low oxygen," Thomas said."The activities of the law enforcement officers resulted in Mr. Floyd's death and specifically those activities were the subdual restraint and the neck compression. What I observed from all of these videos is this was not a sudden death. It's not like snow shoveling when someone clutches their chest and falls over. There was nothing sudden about his death," she added. "There's no evidence to suggest [George Floyd] would have died that night except for the interactions with law enforcement." Dr. Lindsey Thomas, forensic pathologist. #ChauvinTrialOnHLN pic.twitter.com/PGD0YvjmBv— Morning Express with Robin Meade (@MorningExp) April 9, 2021 "There's no evidence to suggest [George Floyd] would have died that night except for the interactions with law enforcement," Thomas testified. She went on to explain that even though his heart stopped, that does not mean he died from a heart attack. She also shot down attempts by Chauvin's lawyers to say that Floyd died of a drug overdose, telling the court that the methamphetamines and fentanyl did not contribute to his death. WATCH: State’s witness and forensic pathologist, Dr. Lindsey Thomas, says she has ruled out drug overdose as causing George Floyd’s death. #DerekChauvinTrial pic.twitter.com/W1MvWfCaz4— WCCO - CBS Minnesota (@WCCO) April 9, 2021 Other experts, like Dr. Martin Tobin, said that Chauvin's knee, which was on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes, deprived his body of oxygen and "caused damage to his brain that we see, and it also caused a [pulseless electrical activity] arrhythmia that caused his heart to stop." Tobin is an expert on lungs and according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, has spent decades specializing in respiratory and critical care medicine.  Hennepin County Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker is expected to testify on Friday as well, and will be a key witness for both sides. Baker caused outrage in June 2020 when he released his report on Floyd's death, identifying heart problems, the drugs in his system and the choking by Chauvin as possible causes of death. Despite his findings, he still ruled Floyd's death a homicide, citing the "cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression" as the main reason for Floyd's death. Tobin said Floyd's health conditions had nothing to do with his death. Another medical expert, Louisville Police Department police surgeon Dr. Bill Smock, explained what it looks like when someone dies from an overdose of fentanyl and said Floyd's death did not resemble that. "He's breathing, he's talking, he's not snoring, he is saying, 'Please, please, get off me, I want to breathe, I can't breathe.' That is not a fentanyl overdose, that is someone begging to breathe," Smock...

As the Derek Chauvin trial nears the end of its second week, there has been a slew of disturbing takeaways, one being that the former Minneapolis police officer knelt on George Floyd’s neck for a startling nine minutes and 29 seconds, 43 seconds longer than originally reported. Despite the doctor who pronounced Floyd dead concluding asphyxia was likely the cause, Chauvin's defense team is now claiming he died as a result of drugs, according to The New York Times. Actor George Clooney offered a scathing piece of advice in tandem with the claims, sharing his thoughts in an email with renowned civil rights attorney and the Floyd family’s lawyer, Benjamin Crump. “Attorney Crump, you should tell them that if Derek Chauvin feels so confident in that, he should volunteer during his case to get down on the floor in that courtroom and let somebody come and put their knee on his neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds and be able to see if he can survive,” Crump recalled in the email Clooney wrote, according to HuffPost.As Blavity previously reported, Chauvin plead not guilty to second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter charges. The ER actor has vocalized his opinion on the case, which sparked global outrage, claiming that “there is little doubt that George Floyd was murdered.”“This is our pandemic. It infects all of us, and in 400 years we’ve yet to find a vaccine,” the 59-year-old wrote in an op-ed for The Daily Beast.“The anger and the frustration we see playing out once again in our streets is just a reminder of how little we’ve grown as a country from our original sin of slavery,” he continued in his piece.In an interview with Variety, Clooney reflected on 2020, saying “[On the whole], it was a terrible year.” He added that it’s imperative to continue to hold companies accountable in the fight for Black justice. “There was that moment after George Floyd where [the atmosphere] was really electric,” he told the magazine. “I went to companies and said this is the time for you to be donating money to these [diversity and inclusion] causes, and corporations were so clear that they needed to be more involved, and they jumped. You could feel it, a real intent: ‘OK, we have to get a higher level of minorities in decision-making positions.’ So you did see the commitment to it.” “Now the question is about the follow-through because the follow-through is very different from everything happening in the heat of the moment,” he continued. "I think it’s incumbent on all of us to continue to force that argument…and hold people’s feet to the fire as much as possible and to keep pushing these people in positions of power to be more...

If you’re interested in sharing your opinion on any cultural, political or personal topic, create an account here and check out our how-to post to learn more.Opinions are the writer’s own and not those of Blavity's.____George Floyd should be alive today. Regrettably, the heinous acts committed by a group of officers resulted in his death. Now, America has once again been forced to accept a watered-down, delayed and second-class form of justice. As the Derek Chauvin trial unfolds in Minnesota, young people across the country, cohorts of millennials and Generation Z, will be processing the signal the verdict sends to them about the state of our justice system.To better understand the debacle at play, we must explore what justice means in its truest form: the quality of being just, impartial or fair.Justice would be a living and breathing George Floyd helping his young daughter with her homework. True fairness would be George Floyd’s neighborhood having the adequate investments needed to achieve the American dream without a constant struggle for equity. True impartiality should have been the removal of Derek Chauvin as a police officer after his first citizen complaint, not 18 complaints and a murder charge.Sadly, George Floyd, his family, Black America and all those actually committed to justice won’t ever get the real justice they seek for all the lives lost at the hands of excessive policing and the unfettered spread of white supremacy throughout America.Instead of working to change the status quo, democrats and republicans deny the truth, fudge facts and slow walk change that is desperately needed. Instead of working to treat the underlying symptoms, we have seen widespread denial that has exacerbated cases of police brutality, an entrenched system of failed policy and more instances of widespread racial violence."No, you can't paint me out as angry,” said Donald Williams II, an eyewitness to Floyd’s heinous killing, during a heated exchange with former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin’s lawyer, Eric Nelson. “I would say I was in a position where I had to be controlled. Controlled professionalism, I wasn't angry.”A country isn’t defined by the invisible land borders on a map, but by its collective stories. For America, the so-called “city on a hill,” those stories seem to be coming up void in the case of justice, and it’s critically shaping a new generation at a defining time.Data recently released by HIT Strategies, Washington, D.C.’s only Black and millennial-owned polling firm, designated racism, discrimination and injustice as top issues among young voters of all racial and age groups. Sadly, lawmakers in Washington, D.C. and state capitals throughout the country have met these concerns and any push for real, preventative policy change with deaf ears, paralysis and inaction.What makes this paralysis so damning is it comes amid a dual crisis: the COVID-19 pandemic that local, state and national leaders have been forced to meet with more swift action, and the centuries-long epidemic of racism.For the past year, we have witnessed the right and wrong ways to manage national crises. For almost three months, the Biden administration effectively managed the COVID-19 pandemic by telling people the truth and working tirelessly to change the status quo and treat the underlying symptoms that created the crisis. As it relates to the other crisis, the racism epidemic scourging America, we have witnessed the opposite.Whether it be the life of George Floyd or that of Eric Garner, America must acknowledge that its stories are incongruent with realities laid bare in cities across America. If we truly want to make this country fulfill its promise of liberty and justice for all, it will require us to admit that the story we tell ourselves about justice is a lie. It’s on all of us to write a story based on the truth.Once we admit the truth, we can chart a course that gets it right. That new chapter should be driven by swift action to end racism and reform the broken system that we call American policing. If we do that, we can prevent another George Floyd. More importantly, we can ensure that every American gets the justice they deserve.Justice in its true form ensures that police actually protect and serve, not harm. This should be a marked difference from the water-down, delayed and second-class process currently playing out in the Hennepin County Courthouse. What story will the Chauvin verdict tell? Young people are...

Courteney Ross, George Floyd's girlfriend, took the stand on Thursday in Derek Chauvin's murder trial and spoke at length about their relationship as well as their struggles to overcome opioid addiction. Ross spoke at length about how the two managed their opioid addiction that resulted from physical injuries, like many others across the country. The U.S. Department of Health estimated that in 2019, 10.1 million people ages 12 or older misused opioids. Ross had pain in her neck that she was prescribed opioids for and Floyd had spent decades playing organized sports. As Blavity previously reported, Floyd was a decorated high school basketball and football player in Texas before attending Texas A&M University–Kingsville on a sports scholarship. But he injured his back and struggled for years with pain in the lower section, Ross said."Floyd and I both suffered from an opioid addiction. Both Floyd and I, our story is a classic story of how many people get addicted to opioids. We both suffered from chronic pain, mine was in my neck and his was in his back. We both had prescriptions but after prescriptions that were filled, we got addicted. We tried really hard to break that addiction many times," she told the court through tears. Chauvin's lawyers have repeatedly honed in on Floyd's drug use and one of their main arguments is that Floyd died partially from the fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system as opposed to Chauvin's knee, which was pressed down on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes.   In recent years, she said Floyd struggled with grief over his mother's death and the two would at times relapse after recovering. After his mother died in 2018, he was “kind of a shell of himself, like he was kind of broken,” according to Ross. “He didn’t have the same bounce that he had. He was devastated. He loved his mom so much. He talked about her all the time. I knew how he felt. It’s so hard to lose a parent that you love like that,” Ross said. The two met in 2017 while Floyd worked as a security guard at the Salvation Army’s Harbor Light Center, a Minneapolis transitional housing facility. Ross was going through a difficult time in her life and was crying in the lobby of the Salvation Army’s Harbor Light Center. “Floyd had this great deep southern voice. Raspy. And he’s like, ‘Sis, you OK, sis?’ And I wasn't OK. I said, ‘No, I’m just waiting for my son’s father. Sorry.’ He said, ‘Well, can I pray with you?’ I was so tired. We had been through so much, my sons and I. And this kind person, just to come up to me and say can I pray with you, when I felt alone in this lobby. It was so sweet. I had lost a lot of faith in God,” she said. Because he was new to the city, she spent years showing him around Minneapolis and Minnesota, sharing a love of outdoor activities and food. Both also shared a love of children and she said he adored his children. “Floyd liked to work out every single day, lifting weights. He did sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups, just within his house. He would go biking…he loved playing neighborhood sports with kids. He was the type of person who would run to the store,” the 45-year-old said. But even with how active the couple was, both struggled with chronic injuries that doctors told them should be dealt with through prescriptions for oxycontin and oxycodone.  "Addiction in my opinion is a lifelong struggle, so it's something we dealt with every day. It's not just something that comes and goes, it's something I'll deal with forever," she added.  Mary Moriarty, a former chief public defender in Hennepin County, told KHOU11 that Ross' testimony was key because until now, the public has not known why Floyd used drugs. “We haven’t really known anything about why George Floyd was addicted to drugs. We haven’t known that at all. Now we know he had some chronic injuries. He tried prescription pills, and then – like many Americans – he became addicted to the painkillers,” she said. “So the state is going to be arguing, yes, he had a high level of drugs in his system, but it didn’t kill him. It was Chauvin’s actions that did,” she said.George Floyd's girlfriend is testifying to their opioid use. So many families will identify w/the story of addiction as a result of chronic panic & the struggle to beat it, which isn't a linear path. We should treat addiction as a public health issue, not a criminal justice one.— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) April 1,...

The world has been spellbound by the Derek Chauvin trial this week as witnesses took the stand each day to recount what happened on May 25, 2020. But one woman, local high school teacher Kaia Hirt, is calling for more to be done beyond the trial to address larger issues with police brutality in Minnesota.On Monday, Hirt chained herself to a fence outside of the Hennepin County Government Center, calling for local officials to do more to reform the police departments in Minneapolis, according to The Minneapolis Star-Tribune. "I'm frustrated by local and state officials' failure to address racist policing in the community. We will not have justice until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are," Hirt told the newspaper."When we say nothing about the things that are going on in our world…We are failing them as educators," she added. The 10th grade teacher chose the Hennepin County Government Center because that is where Chauvin's murder trial is being held. The Champlin Park High School teacher said her protest was done in honor of the families of those killed by police. She said that while George Floyd's family received a settlement and the officer who killed him is on trial, many other families have to live with the reality that the officers involved in their cases never faced punishment. Hirt explained that she is a member of Good Trouble for Justice, a protest organization that will have a different member chained outside of the courthouse every few days. Hirt said she took two days off to chain herself to the fence and that someone else will take over for her once she goes back to work. The group's goal is to eventually set up a meeting between families of those killed by police and Gov. Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, according to The Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Hirt said they want to end qualified immunity for police officers and is urging lawmakers in the state to work harder on various police accountability bills. Hirt and many other members of Good Trouble for Justice spent weeks ahead of the trial protesting, starting an effort to put locks with the names of those killed by police on the fence erected outside of the court house. “The police can be so violent. They literally terrorize and traumatize. I have so many brilliant students at school of all colors. Any of them or my kids could be next,” Hirt told The New York Times. “I shouldn’t be afraid of the police in this country. I am not afraid now,” she...

The teenage store clerk who was working at the store where George Floyd allegedly tried to cash in a fake $20 bill moments before he was killed, testified on Wednesday during the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Christopher Martin, the 19-year-old who worked at the Cut Foods where Floyd visited prior to his fatal encounter with police, said that he felt a great deal of guilt when he came out of the store and witnessed Chauvin's knee pressed on Floyd's neck. He lamented over not being able to cover the bill himself. "If I would have just not taken the bill, this could have been avoided," Martin told the court, according to Newsweek.According to a Twitter thread posted by PBS reporter Yamiche Alcindor, the teenager explained that the store had a policy stating if an employee accepted a counterfeit bill, then the money would be deducted from their paycheck. “The Cup Foods cashier who sold George Floyd cigarettes and handled the alleged fake $20 bill, testified that his pay would have been docked by his manager for accepting a fake bill and that his manager made him go talk to Floyd instead of going out himself,” Alcindor tweeted.Striking: Christopher Martin, the Cup Foods cashier who sold George Floyd cigarettes and handled the alleged fake $20 bill, said he told his manager that he could dock his pay $20 to pay for the alleged fake bill. But the manager decided to have police called on Floyd instead.— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) March 31, 2021According to Newsweek, the 19-year-old clerk approached the car with another co-worker and asked Floyd to return to the store. When Floyd refused, Alcindor tweeted that Martin said he went back and told his manager he would take care of the $20 himself but was instructed to try again. After another unsuccessful attempt, the manager instructed his employees to call the police on Floyd.When the police arrived, Martin said he came out of the Cut Foods to make sense of all the commotion."I saw people yelling and screaming," he told the jury on Wednesday. "I saw Derek with his knee on George's...

Charles McMillian, a witness to the killing of George Floyd, cried heavily on Wednesday during the trial of Derek Chauvin. The court was forced to go into recess after McMillian broke down as the video showed Floyd struggling to breathe and calling out for his mother while Chauvin and the other officers violently held him down, HuffPost reported.  Video of McMillian left many watching the trial, and those following along online, astonished and in tears as well. McMillian was the first person to arrive as the officers pushed Floyd's face and body into the concrete. He can be seen on video begging Floyd to not resist and to let the officers arrest him, telling him, "You can't win."As the 61-year-old recounted the incident, he cried profusely, telling the court "I feel helpless," as he described how he's felt since that day. Like many others who have testified during the first three days of the trial, McMillian said he has been haunted by Floyd's death and specifically highlighted how the father kept calling out for his own mother. “I don’t have a mother either, I understand him,” McMillian said. The court was forced to go into recess as McMillian cried.Charles McMillian, who tried to speak to George Floyd as officers first tried to put him in a police car and then later as Floyd shouted for his mama while Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck, just broke down on the witness stand. Court on a break now.pic.twitter.com/otRlBocOuZ— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) March 31, 2021 Before the recess, McMillian said he was driving by when he saw the officers trying to force Floyd into the back of the police car as he yelled about being claustrophobic. He stopped his car and approached the scene, talking to Floyd as the officers held him down. “I’ve had interactions with officers myself. I understand once you get in the cuffs you can’t win. You’re done. That’s just the way I look at it,” he said, adding that he tried to get Floyd to go into the back seat of the police car but that Floyd said he couldn't. This is the third day of gut-wrenching testimony from witnesses who saw Chauvin choke Floyd to death for more than nine minutes. The court also heard testimony from 19-year-old Christopher Martin, a cashier at Cup Foods who reported the alleged fake $20 bill to his boss, which triggered the...

Minneapolis firefighter Genevieve Hansen gave stirring testimony on Tuesday, the second day of the murder trial of Derek Chauvin in the killing of George Floyd last year. In her testimony, Hansen said she was off duty and walking home from a community garden when she heard a woman screaming that someone was being killed. As a firefighter, she is also a trained emergency medical technician, and when she arrived at the scene she immediately knew Floyd was in danger.She said she approached now-fired officer Tou Thao, who was holding back the crowd, about performing CPR on Floyd to save his life. "I had already assessed that [Floyd] was in an altered state of consciousness. What I needed to know was if he had a pulse. He wasn't moving, and he was cuffed. And three grown men putting all of their weight on somebody is too much. The first thing that concerned me was his face was smushed into the ground. Swollen. It appeared swollen to me," she said.She approached Thao, who allegedly "said something along the lines of, 'If you really are a Minneapolis firefighter, you would know better than to get involved.' I got there and I could have given medical assistance. That's exactly what I should have done," she added.  The court played video where Hansen can be heard begging the officers to check Floyd's pulse. Lawyers asked her why her tone in the video changed as she asked to help him, and she began to cry as she explained that she could see he was dying.She started cursing and yelling when she realized Floyd was urinating on himself as a result of being choked unconscious or even deceased. "Because I was desperate to help... Because there was a man being killed and ... had I had access to a call similar to that, I would have been able to provide medical attention to the best of my abilities. And this human was denied that," she said.Lawyers for the state later played the 911 call where Hansen described what happened."Hello. I'm on the block of 38th and Chicago, and I literally watched police officers not take a pulse and not do anything to save a man, and I am a first responder myself, and I literally have it on video. I just happened to be on a walk," she told the operator. Like many others who testified on Tuesday, she said she now lives with the regret of not calling 911 sooner."I should have called 911 immediately but I didn't and when things calmed down I realized that I wanted them to know what was going on. I wanted to basically report it," she said.Hansen noted that she stayed at the scene because she was worried about what the officers would do next, considering how they treated Floyd. Still struck by this: Genevieve Hansen, the off-duty firefighter on the scene as George Floyd died, said she stayed on scene after Floyd was taken away bc she worried about the Black people and people of color --like Donald Williams -- possibly being hurt by remaining police.— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) March 30,...

Darnella Frazier, the teen who recorded the heavily circulated video of George Floyd’s final moments, testified in the trial of Derek Chauvin on Tuesday, sharing with the courtroom that the horrifying event still keeps her up at night as she regrets not being able to do more."There have been nights I stayed up apologizing & apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more & not physically interacting & not saving his life,” she said, according to a tweet from PBS reporter Yamiche Alcindor. “But it’s like not what I should have done, it’s what he [Chauvin] should have done."Darnella Frazier who filmed death of George Floyd at 17: "There have been nights I stayed up apologizing & apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more & not physically interacting & not saving his life. But it’s like not what I should have done, it’s what he should have done."— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) March 30, 2021In an emotional audio-only testimony given her minor status at the time of Floyd's death, she said she lived nearby the area where Floyd was killed. On May 25, 2020, Frazier said she was taking her 9-year-old cousin on what they thought would be a typical trip to the grocery store when she saw "a man terrified, scared, begging for his life,” USA Today...

Day two of Derek Chauvin's murder trial left those watching awestruck by the testimony of multiple witnesses who were there when the Minneapolis officer choked George Floyd to death. Chauvin is facing charges of second and third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for kneeling on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes, setting off global protests in 2020. Donald Williams, one of the first witnesses called, was peppered with questions from Chauvin's lawyer, Eric Nelson, about his interaction with the officer as he knelt on Floyd's neck. Nelson went through Williams' entire recorded interaction with Chauvin and the other officers holding Floyd down, attempting to paint the witness as violent, angry and threatening toward Chauvin. “Do you recall saying I dare you to touch me like that, I swear I’ll slap the f**k out of both of you?” Nelson asked.“Yeah I did. I meant it...you can’t paint me out to be angry,” Williams responded.In a tense exchange, bystander Donald Williams pushed back when the Derek Chauvin's attorney asked whether he grew more and more angry with Chauvin during the fatal arrest of George Floyd. "I stayed in my body. You can't paint me out to be angry."https://t.co/Bp9eGQz81O pic.twitter.com/nF6HwTHNTl— CBS News (@CBSNews) March 30, 2021Williams later said he decided to call the police on Chauvin and the other officers after Floyd's body was taken away from the ambulance. Nelson and Williams went back and forth for minutes over his remarks toward Chauvin."They pretty much just killed this guy who wasn't resisting arrest. The man was already in handcuffs....The dude was not responsive when the ambulance came and got him," Williams said in a 911 call played for the jury. He cried heavily as the call played, and recalled how painful it was to see the officers take Floyd's life. Williams is a mixed martial arts fighter and has experience with chokeholds, explaining that he instantly knew Floyd was in trouble by the way Chauvin was kneeling on his neck."The officer on top was shimmying to actually get the final choke in while he was on top, the kill choke. [Chauvin] looked at me right here. The only time he looked up was when I said it was a blood choke. We looked at each other dead in the eye, and when I said it he acknowledged it," he said, adding that he is haunted after watching Floyd "fade away."WARNING: This video contains content that could be triggering for...