The Daily - Guilty of All Charges

Episode Date: April 21, 2021

On Tuesday, after three weeks of jury selection, another three weeks of testimony and 10 hours of deliberations, Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, was found guilty of murder in the death of George Floyd.The jurors found Mr. Chauvin guilty of all three charges: second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. Sentencing will take place several weeks from now. Second-degree murder could mean as long as 40 years in prison.We look back on key moments from the trial and discuss the reactions to the guilty verdict.Guest: John Eligon, a national correspondent covering race for The New York Times. Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: The verdict against Mr. Chauvin brought a rare rebuke of police conduct.After the decision, there was a scene of collective relief and satisfaction in Minneapolis.Here are 13 key moments that shaped the trial.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

So I'm here at George Floyd Square, which is the intersection in South Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed by Derek Chauvin. And when the verdict was read, you know, people put their arms in the air. They celebrated. They yelled. Many people cried. It was just kind of a scene of humanity. People are chanting George Floyd's name now. It's just really a feeling of, in one way, jubilation out here. And in another sense, I also sense a lot of relief from people.

George Floyd! George Floyd! Black lives matter! Black lives matter! Black lives matter! Black lives matter! This is a start! This is a start. From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. We matter.

Yes. We matter. We matter. Derek Chauvin is found guilty of murder in the death of George Floyd. found guilty of murder in the death of George Floyd. My colleague, John Eligo, covered the trial, the verdict, and the reaction in Minneapolis. Say it now! George Floyd!

Say it now! George Floyd! It's Wednesday, April 21st. John, describe what happened on Tuesday at this courthouse in downtown Minneapolis. Set the scene there. So, Tuesday morning, it's the first full day that the jury is deliberating. And they're sequestered in an undisclosed location. So no one knows where they are, but the court officials. And so we are just left to wait, you know, to get some news. Do they have any questions? Is there, you know, how's the deliberations going? Like, we're just kind of

waiting, right? And then out of nowhere at 2.28 p.m., I get an email in my inbox and it says, quote, a verdict has been reached and will be read in open court between 3.30 and 4 p.m., Tuesday, April 20th. And at that moment, it's like all systems go, right? You know, we've been through three weeks of testimony, three weeks of jury selection before that.

And now we've gotten to 10 hours of deliberations. And here we were, like, about 11 months after George Floyd died, we're about to hear the fate of Derek Chauvin. And at 4 p.m., the judge walks in. Everyone is told to rise. I'll rise for the jury. And it's just pin drop quiet in the courtroom. Please be seated. Members of the jury, I understand you have a verdict.

And then he starts to read. State of Minnesota, County of Hennepin. And as he's reading, the cameras are in close on Derek Chauvin's eyes. He's wearing a mask. So all you can really see are his eyes. And you can see them just shifting like from left to right. It's like he was shifting them from looking up at the judge to looking over at the jury. You know, looking up at the judge, looking over at the jury.

He wasn't moving his head at all, just his eyes. And that same shifting kept on happening as the judge read each verdict. So count one. We, the jury in the judge read each verdict. So count one. We, the jury in the above entitled matter as to count one unintentional second degree murder while committing a felony, find the defendant guilty. Guilty. Judge reads count two. We, the jury in the above entitled matter as to count two third degree

murder perpetrating an eminently dangerous act. Find the defendant guilty. Guilty. Count three. Same caption verdict. Count three. Guilty. And at that moment, it's just, there's really no expression on Chauvin's face that you could see. It's just his eyes still shifting. Members of the jury, I'm now going to ask you individually if these are your true and correct verdicts.

Please respond yes or no. And at that point, the judge does a roll call for each juror, asking each juror if that was indeed their verdict. Juror number two, are these your true and correct verdicts? Yes. Juror number nine, are these your true and correct verdicts? Yes. Juror number nine, are these your true and correct verdicts? Yes. Juror number 19, are these your true and correct verdicts? Yes.

Juror number 27, are these your true and correct verdicts? Yes. All 12 of them agree. Then he asks them all one final time together. Are these your verdicts? So say you once, so say you all. Yes. And at that point, you know, the judge thanks them.

And then we're back looking at Derek Chauvin. It's completely expressionless. Bail is revoked, bond is discharged, and the defendant is remanded to the custody of the Hennepin County Sheriff. The judge instructs the deputies to take him into custody. Chauvin just gets up, kind of nods to the judge, like, okay, puts his hands behind his back, gets handcuffed. We're adjourned. Exchanges a brief word with his lawyer, and then he's taken away to the back and the door is closed.

John, for those who may not know exactly what the three charges that Chauvin was found guilty of mean, can you translate them? Second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. Yeah, essentially, the second-degree murder, which is the most serious charge he faced, that was alleging that in the commission of a felony crime, Derek Chauvin caused the death of George Floyd. And in this case, the felony crime was assault. And whether or not he intended to, that assault resulted in George Floyd's death. Now, the second count that he was facing was third-degree murder. And basically what that says is, again, it was not that he intended to kill George Floyd, but that he acted with reckless disregard for human life. And in those actions of reckless disregard, he caused the death of George Floyd. And the final charge was manslaughter. That was the least serious charge.

What that charge says is that Derek Chauvin created an unreasonable risk and consciously took a chance of causing death or great bodily harm to George Floyd. And the way it's written in Minnesota law, they call it culpable negligence. And again, that is not that he had to intend to kill George Floyd, but that he took actions that an ordinary and reasonably prudent person would see could cause death or injury to George Floyd. So now that we have a verdict, I want to talk about the arguments during the trial that, in retrospect, appear to have led this jury to a unanimous declaration of guilt on all three counts. And I wonder if we should start with the prosecution. Which prosecution argument

and which prosecution witness seemed to land the hardest? You know, Michael, I wouldn't say that there's any one single witness who landed the hardest. I think the strength of the prosecution's case is that it really had this cumulative effect where... My opinion was that no force should have been used. Police officer after police officer. Including the police chief. And said, this is not what we do as policing. That in no way, shape or form is anything that is by policy, is not part of our training, and it is certainly not part of our ethics or our values. There was medical expert after medical expert.

Mr. Floyd died from a low level of oxygen. Pulmonologist, cardiologist, medical examiner. Mr. Floyd died from positional asphyxia, which is a fancy way of saying he died because he had no oxygen left in his body. All of whom said that Chauvin's actions deprived George Floyd of oxygen. Right. And then you had the emotional witnesses,

those people who provided really the conscience of the world, really, right? They stood there and they described how traumatizing and heartbreaking and desperately they wanted to stop Derek Chauvin from doing what he did. Mr. McDonough, do you need a minute? I mean, I can't help but remember... Oh, my God. Charles McMillan, who was a 61-year-old man who was just passing by the area that day

and stopped because he saw the police arresting someone man who was just passing by the area that day and stopped because he saw the police arresting someone. He was just being nosy, he said. I can't, I feel helpless. I don't have a mama either. Can I just stay here? That sort of emotion, I think, was something that the defense had no answer for. Hmm.

was something that the defense had no answer for. Well, speaking of the defense, how should we think about its arguments and why ultimately they fell short? What arguments and what witnesses seem to typify its failure? The defense clearly had an uphill battle here, given all the outrage around this case. But I think when you look at the witnesses

they brought forth and the arguments they tried to lay down, it was just very hard, you know, against the cumulative weight of all that the prosecution presented. I mean, for instance, they had a policing expert. Good afternoon, Mr. Broad. Good afternoon. Barry Broad. In terms of the use of force, what relevance does possible drug influence have in an analysis? Has quite a large impact in my opinion. How so? Well, because people on the influence of drugs may not be hearing what you're trying to ask them to do. They may not understand. They may have total, they don't feel pain. He tried to suggest that not only did George Floyd not really feel pain. Does the person need to have their legs controlled in this situation?

They did. But he also said that Derek Chauvin actually could have used or should have used more force than he did. That it's one of those situations where they were justified in the maximum restraint and chose not to. You know, and these were things that I think to the ordinary listener seem just preposterous, right? Thank you, Your Honor. Your Honor, the defense calls Dr. David Fowler. And then they also brought on a medical examiner, Dr. Fowler. So in this case, can you just kind of describe the layers of factors that lead you to your conclusion that this was a sudden cardiac event? Yes. And he tried to kind of throw the kitchen sink in terms of the causes of death of George Floyd. So we have a heart that's vulnerable because it's too big.

That it was his heart problems. There are certain drugs that are present in his system. It was the drugs in his system. There is another drug, fentanyl, which slows down your breathing. It was all these things except for Derek Chauvin kneeling on him. And he actually said he would rule the death undetermined. And he even threw out one theory that... We've got the carbon monoxide, which has the potential to rob some of that additional oxygen-carrying capacity. Maybe because George Floyd's face was right by the tailpipe exhaust of a police car

that he may have been poisoned by the carbon monoxide coming out of there. How do you know the car was even on? But then the prosecution got up and very effectively kind of just shot down his testimony. It was a question I specifically asked. And then I made an observation of

water dripping from what appears to be a tailpipe. He had no answer for that. He didn't know if the car was on. He had no test results to show that there was any sort of carbon monoxide. You didn't see any information or data from anybody who says, I either turned the car on or I'm the one who turned it off. You didn't see either one, did you? Correct. What the defense really had to do was create some sort of doubt in the jurors' minds

that Derek Chauvin was a significant cause of George Floyd's death, and they were not able to get there at all. They were not able to chip away or poke holes in the very robust prosecution case that said that Derek Chauvin was at fault for George Floyd's death. We're talking about arguments and strategies here, but on some level, it feels like the entire trial seemed to be contained in the nine-minute video that everyone in the world watched back in May of 2020.

And is it fair to say that that video, as evidence in this trial, was simply insurmountable for the defense? I would say that in a very real way that yes, I mean, the defense kept trying to make the point like it's not about the nine minutes and 29 seconds that Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd's neck. It was about the 16 minutes and 59 seconds that preceded that from the time Derek Chauvin arrived on the scene to the time he took George Floyd down to the pavement.

They were saying, you know, you need to look at the totality. That was a main theme of the defense. But let's be real, Michael, that was a horrific video. Like, police officers, police chiefs in other departments when this happened were saying that that's not policing. So that video, there was really no overcoming that. And there was really no explanation as to why he felt the need to stay on George Floyd's neck even after he went completely limp and completely motionless. Right. I mean, in the closing arguments, the prosecution said to the jury,

believe your eyes, believe what you're seeing in this video. And it sounds like the defense just couldn't get the jurors to look away from that video and couldn't rebut what they were seeing in that video. Precisely. It's a hard thing to unsee once you've seen it. We'll be right back. John, with the trial over and with Chauvin found guilty, I want to explore the reaction to this verdict. You were in the public square that has been named after George Floyd in Minneapolis

as the verdict was read. Can you describe the conversations that you had with people there? You know, the first thing I did when I got there, even before going out into the crowd, I went into Cup Foods, which was the store where George Floyd was shopping right before he was killed.

It's the place where he was alleged to have spent a fake $20 bill that got the police called on him. And I ran into this guy, Billy, who was one of the co-owners. He owns it with his brothers. He's kind of like this burly guy with this big beard and his fingers are clasped

and he keeps twiddling his thumbs. You can tell he's very nervous. He's like, we're closing and we're getting out of here. It's not safe. And he was just very worried about being around because as we were in his store, at first there was maybe a couple dozen people outside of that, mostly reporters at first. And then as, you know, it got closer and closer to four o'clock when the verdict was supposed to be read. It just grew into like hundreds of people. And Billy just wanted to get out.

He wanted to have nothing to do with that. So that to me was just really a sign of how anxious people were. And then once the verdict's read, I see people start cheering. You know, people are pumping their fists in the air. They're waving Black Lives Matter flags. Some people are hugging.

And I remember going up to one woman, Janae Henry, and she just had tears coming off falling onto her black face mask that she was wearing. I'm super grateful. And I can rest tonight too because I live up the street and my grandmother lives up the street and my father lives up the street and we will be, everybody will be, you know, able to relax. And then now Dante Wright is the next case, and I hope

we get justice for that. It's been a hell of 11 months, huh? Yes. Then there was a young man named BJ. And I kind of caught sight of him because he had one fist in the air and he's kind of just pumping the fist, head down, kind of shaking it, tears coming out of his eyes again. A woman was standing behind him rubbing his back.

And he said it's a new day in America, right? I mean, you know, everybody saw it. But still, you're sitting back thinking, you know, back to the Rodney King days. Everybody saw that, too. Those cops got off. I just I was I was really worried. I was worried about my city. Thank God my city will not burn tonight.

This is this is a new day. This is something beautiful. This is this is something different. It's finally some little piece of justice. And so it was this moment where I think he saw the fabric of America just shift that very tiny bit. America's tolerance for dead Black people has usually been pretty high. Hopefully it'll actually start to resonate a little bit more now that we are actually people. Thank you so much for your time.

I appreciate it. And then, Michael, I actually saw a familiar face, this young woman named Kia By for who I met last year when I was doing some reporting. And she'd been out at George Floyd Square continuously almost every day over the past 11 or so months. For those of us who have been boots on the grounds day in and day out here on 38th and Chicago, we've been here almost 365 days in order to get this type of justice. And this had been the culmination of a long activist struggle to hold specifically Derek Chauvin, but more broadly the system accountable. And so I could really sense not only a sense of like happiness in her voice, but a sense of like resolve, like this is the beginning of something better.

I mean, you've got people that have actually stepped up from the precinct that are like, no, this isn't proper, this isn't right, and they need to be held accountable. We have community members, black, white, Asian, brown, yellow, green, whatever, holding people accountable in ways that you've never seen them do before. This is about accountability. This is about everybody stepping up. That you see recording.

That is the biggest weapon we have right now is our phones. Pull them out. Speak on it. Speak up for that person that's laying on the ground. Speak up for the person that's being punched in the top of their head.

Speak up for the person that's being slammed across the front of the vehicles. That's your job as a bystander, as a community member. She talked about everyone

having their cell phones down and more people stepping up and making sure that they use those tools that they have to ensure that police cannot get away with these types of things again. We're not asking anymore. We're demanding what we deserve. But we are owed.

We're gonna keep moving. All I can say is, we gonna going to keep marching, ten toes down. And we're going to continue to say everything with our whole chest. We have to. We have to. John, from the start, the context of this trial was years and years and years of police killings of Black Americans. And so even though the jury in this case, and we've talked about this with you, was instructed to render a verdict on Derek Chauvin, right? And not anybody else, not the whole world of policing. This case was always going to be seen, it feels like, by the rest of the country as a verdict on policing and accountability for policing.

And it sounds like the people you were talking to were seeing it that way, and that their relief, their resolve, their hope, it was in the context of that broader question of policing. Absolutely, because think about the scenario. If he was not found guilty, then what does that say about what police are allowed to do. And so for many people, yes, Derek Chauvin should be held accountable as a measure of justice for George Floyd. That was obviously on a lot of people's minds. But beyond that, what's going to happen the next time a police officer encounters a Black man for some sort of minor violation, right? What's going to be those actions next?

So I think there's a legacy here that is very important to many Americans. And there's a precedent that needs to be set that police officers cannot just act with impunity. And especially in a case like this, where you had almost 10 minutes of an officer just completely ignoring the life of someone beneath his knee. I think for many Americans, a line has to be drawn somewhere and accountability needs to be had so that in the future, things can actually be different.

John, based on your reporting, do you think that this case actually does have any bearing on the next trial of a police officer who kills a Black American? And I'm asking that because there were several aspects about this case that feel unique, right? There was no split-second decision-making here. It wasn't a case of a cop being afraid of being shot. That just wasn't a factor here. So all the familiar police defenses fell away. But that might not be the case in the next trial of a police officer. Yeah, I think it's really hard to say, honestly.

Because on the one hand, as you mentioned, this case is particularly egregious, right? So I think that egregiousness of this made this a situation where it might be easier to find people who are willing to convict, who are willing to say, no, what the police officers did was wrong. But on the other hand, I think the fact that it was so egregious in some ways opened the world's eyes to the fact that police officers sometimes can act in a very depraved and egregious way, right? For those who may have doubted that, for communities not as affected by that dynamic who might doubt it, this was their chance to see it in a very stark way. So in that sense, I think in the future, maybe juries, maybe people who come from communities that are not over-policed like that, that are not policed in that way, maybe they'll think twice before just believing that the cop had good intentions right away or just believing that the victim was someone who was doing wrong and deserved what they got.

You're saying holding police accountable inevitably leads to holding perhaps more police accountable. Yeah, exactly. This case is all about accountability. I'm curious how you, yourself, as somebody who covered the aftermath of George Floyd's death, the protest movement it created, the trial, and now the verdict, are thinking about the meaning of this case, what it means and what it doesn't mean.

I think that this case, it really, in many ways, opens the eyes of a lot of people to a reality that police are all too often killing black and brown people in America. I mean, we couldn't even get through the three weeks of the Chauvin trial without a police officer killing someone somewhere in America every single day. Every single day. Every day, someone in America died at the hands of police. helps underscore the sometimes egregious manner in which police interact with the communities that they are meant to serve, and that sometimes police officers will look at people who are accused of very minor things, who come from particular communities, who look a certain way. They will treat them without the same respect and humanity

that you would think would be afforded to any human being. And I guess the other takeaway for me is that when people speak up, like it can really have an impact. When WNBA teams and NBA teams decide not to play, that gets people in power to listen and to try to affect change. We've seen how government officials now talk about these issues. We've seen the governor here in Minnesota talk about systemic racism, talk about the lack of humanity that is often shown to black people. talk about the lack of humanity that is often shown to Black people. We see police departments in cities having to address how their policing is done and how much funding they need to do that. These are all changes that happen because in this case, people saw something that horrified them and they spoke up and they pushed for change.

that horrified them, and they spoke up, and they pushed for change. So I think this case really helps to show the power that people can have when they see something wrong, and they demand and push for something to change. Thank you, John. We appreciate your time. Thank you. Shortly after the verdict, members of George Floyd's family held a news conference in Minneapolis. I would like to thank the jury. I mean, everybody, thank God. That's all they got, almighty. Thank you. And you know what, people? We're not done yet. I'm going to put up a fight every day because I'm not just fighting for George anymore. I'm fighting for everybody around this world. we know we'll never

get George back and that's the sad part but we are fighting and we're going to continue to fight because we've all individually and together as a family had that conversation that if we could have been there with George on that day there probably would have been more than one death. Oh, man. I'm just grateful. I'm grateful that my grandmother, my mother, my aunts,

they just got to see this history made. I'm even grateful my brother's not here. I'm grateful and I'm proud of him. I will salute him at every day of my life. I will salute him every day of my life. I will salute him because he showed me how to be strong. He showed me how to be respectful.

He showed me how to speak my mind. I'm going to miss him, but now I know he's in history. What a day to be a Floyd man We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Tuesday, the European Union declared that the benefits of Johnson & Johnson's single-dose COVID-19 vaccine outweighs the risks and called for a warning label about a possible link between the vaccine and rare blood clots. rollout of its vaccine in Europe, which it had suspended after the United States discovered six cases of blood clots in women who had received the vaccine. Distribution of Johnson & Johnson's vaccine in the U.S. remains paused, but the EU decision

raises the possibility that American regulators may soon follow the same path by lifting the pause and requiring a warning label. Today's episode was produced by Jessica Chung, Michael Simon-Johnson, Rachel Quester, and Asta Chaturvedi. It was edited by Paige Cowett and Lisa Chow, and engineered by Chris Wood. Special thanks to Shaila Duwan. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.