By Brooke Anderson
Derek Chauvin’s defense team has made reference to George Floyd’s arrest and drug use in May 2019 in court on Tuesday after the prosecution rested its case against the former Minneapolis Police officer.
The defense called its first witness who was retired Minneapolis Police officer Scott Creighton, who testified that he approached Floyd on the passenger side of a red Ford Explorer on May 6, 2019.
He ordered Floyd to show his hands and put them on the dash, and he said Floyd was unresponsive and non-compliant to his demands.
A body-camera footage of the incident revealed Creighton offering increasingly loud commands with curses at Floyd, who appeared distressed and tells the officer he doesn’t want to get shot.
Creighton pulled his service weapon in the encounter.
“He keeps moving his hands around. He won’t listen to what I have to say,” Creighton says in the footage.
The second witness, retired paramedic Michelle Moseng, testified that she treated Floyd medically after the arrest. He told her he was addicted to opioids and had been taking multiple Percocet pills every 20 minutes that day, including as an officer walked up to the car.
She found Floyd had a high blood pressure reading of 216 over 160 and recommended he be taken to the hospital.
Floyd was taken to the hospital and not jail.
The testimony is, at least ostensibly, part of the defense’s argument that Floyd died of drug and health problems on May 25, 2020, rather than due to Chauvin’s actions. Defense attorney Eric Nelson has also argued that Chauvin’s use of force, though ugly, was appropriate , adding that a hostile crowd of bystanders distracted Chauvin from taking care of Floyd.
Judge Peter Cahill allowed limited evidence of the incident, only to show the physical effect of opioid drugs on Floyd, and avoid any potential for bias.
Derek Chauvin’s defense is using these 3 arguments to try to get an acquittal in George Floyd’s death.
“This evidence is being admitted solely for t
Ingestion Of Opiods
he limited purpose of showing what effects the ingestion of opioids may or may not have had on the physical well-being of George Floyd,” Cahill told the jury on Tuesday. “This evidence is not to be used as evidence of the character of George Floyd.”
The defense’s case began Tuesday after Minnesota prosecutors called 38 witnesses over 11 days. The defense sped through five witnesses before lunch, including a passenger in the vehicle with Floyd last May and an officer who responded to the scene.
Excessive
Prosecutors have sought to show that Chauvin used excessive and unreasonable force when he kneeled on the neck and back of George Floyd, who was handcuffed and lying prone in the street, for nine minutes and 29 seconds last May.
Chauvin, 45, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter charges. The defense’s case is expected to last only a few days, and closing arguments are expected for next Monday, Cahill said Monday.
While the trial has focused on Chauvin and Floyd, the societal stakes of the high-profile case were made vividly clear when police shot and killed a Black man Sunday in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center, just 10 miles from the courthouse where Chauvin is standing trial.
On Monday night, police fired tear gas and stun guns to disperse demonstrators defying a curfew outside the Brooklyn Center Police Department, while protesters threw “bottles, fireworks, bricks and other projectiles at public safety officials,” according to a tweet from Operation Safety Net.
Happy And Normal
Shawanda Hill, Floyd’s friend and a passenger in the vehicle when he was arrested last May, testified that Floyd was “happy, normal, talking, (and) alert” when she saw him at the Cup Foods corner store. He offered to give her a ride, so she got into the back passenger side of the vehicle he was driving.
Store employees came to the vehicle to discuss a suspected counterfeit $20 bill Floyd had used, but he was sleepy, hard to wake up and wasn’t that coherent, she testified. When police arrived to the vehicle, she again tried to wake up Floyd, she said.
“I kept saying, baby get up the police is here. So he looked, and we look to the right and the police tapped on the window with the flashlight,” she testified. “When he seen the man, the man had a gun at the window when he looked back to him. So he instantly grab the wheel, and he was like, ‘please please, don’t kill me! Don’t shoot me!'”
Floyd was “very” startled by the officer with his gun out, she said. He did not complain of shortness of breath or chest pains and was not acting abnormal, she testified.
Upon arrival, Chang was asked to watch over Floyd’s vehicle and keep tabs on the two passengers who had been with him, Hill and Morries Hall, according to more than 25 minutes of Chang’s body-camera footage played in court.
The three of them stood across the street from where Chauvin kneeled on Floyd and so only partially saw what was going on in front of Cup Foods.
“They got to push him in this car. He’s fighting to get out. What is he doing? Now he is going to jail,” Hill can be heard on the recording. “They still fighting him, ah man, what is he doing?”
In court, Chang testified that he heard the bystanders on scene yelling.
“The crowd was becoming loud and aggressive, a lot of yelling across the street,” he said. “I was concerned for the officers’ safety too, so I kept an eye on the officers and the car and individuals.”
On cross examination, Chang noted to prosecutor Matthew Frank that when he arrived, he heard on the radio “code four,” which indicated the scene was safe.
Floyd was seated on the sidewalk before officers tried to put him in the police car, and Chang told jurors during that time Floyd was peaceful and not agitated. Floyd gave his date of birth and full name to officers, he said.
Delirium
A Minneapolis Police officer and medical support coordinator who previously testified for the prosecution retook the stand to discuss how officers are trained to treat excited delirium.
Officer Nicole Mackenzie testified that excited delirium is a condition with a variety of conditions, including psychosis, agitated delirium, superhuman strength and hypothermia. She said officers dealing with excited delirium are trained to get more resources, physically restrain the suspect and call for emergency help because they can quickly go into cardiac arrest.
On cross-examination, Mackenzie testified that one of the things that officers are told to do during training is to roll suspects on their sides because excited delirium can compromise breathing.
The training class on excited delirium was taught at the police academy to former officer Thomas Lane, but Judge Cahill told the jury there is no evidence Chauvin took the class. Mackenzie’s testimony was allowed solely to show what Lane may have meant when he mentioned excited delirium during Floyd’s arrest.