Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm
The trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin started on Monday. Chauvin you will remember is the now former Minneapolis who planted his knee on the neck of George Floyd for 8 minutes and 46 seconds resulting in his death. The summer of 2020 became symbolic with the anger and sadness of the results of Chauvin's treatment of Floyd and by symbolism, America's treatment of African-Americans from 1619 when the first Africans arrived to this very day.
Now in a legal sense everyone will say that Chauvin is only accused of murder and he must be proven in court but like everyone one of you watching that video I cannot see how Chauvin's defense gets him out of serving decades in prison for the act he committed on the day of Floyd's death. That is until I think about other cases such as Eric Garner in New York and Mike Brown in Ferguson and who could forget the 1992 video tape beating of Rodney King. All of these interactions resulting in Black men dying at the hands of cops did not result in any jail time so despite what the world has witnessed there remains a sliver of doubt in the American justice system and the possibility that George Floyd's family will see any justice dispensed is still a dream until the jury or judge says "We find the defendant... guilty"!
In watching the opening day of the trial on Monday, the prosecution played the entirety of the video of Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd's neck taking the life out of Floyd even after Floyd lay there trying to communicate "I Can't Breathe!" and what we now realize based on that video was that Derek Chauvin's kneeling on Floyd's neck was actually a whooping 9 minutes and 29 seconds! We already knew that 8 minutes and 46 seconds was a long time and if you just start a timer and wait that long you will see how long that time can be. To hear that it was even longer does not take away how devastatingly long that Chauvin was killing Floyd but in my opinion just underlies the fact that there was plenty of time for Chauvin to at the very least release his hold and let Floyd breathe... let Floyd live. But then again, I'm not a coroner, I am not a lawyer. However, we have all seen the video and we all know what human decency is so we can leave that there for you to ponder on.
This trial will and it's outcome will be transformative. It is not a stretch when people say that the American justice system is on trial here. People are tired of what appears to be police brutality leading to death of citizens... Black people not resulting in punishment of those police officers where normal citizens would long be throw away in prison. The danger here is that everyone is expecting a conviction but as Joy Reid of The ReidOut on MSNBC mentioned to the sister of George Floyd on Monday evening, "If it turns out that the outcome is not conviction, what will you think about the American criminal justice system?"
There is a reason why we need to think of the possibility even though we all seen the video, even though we all want to see justice served. People over the age of 40 can tell you that they witnessed the video beating of Rodney King in 1992 and the outcome of that trial. You can go back to the murder of Emmitt Till in the 1960's and the outcome of the resulting murder trial. African-Americans have seen this story for decades, for centuries sadly so as much as it seems a slam dunk, as much as we want Chauvin to be put away for the rest of his natural days please keep in mind the conviction of police officers in America is rare and in a justice system where guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is needed we must let this trial play out and not expect what will happen. The old adage goes "don't get too high, don't get to high". We all hope that when this all over there will be some definite change in policing, in fact we hope that change has already begun in police forces to do better all over North America.
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