After a week of emotional testimonies and heated cross-examinations, Derek Chauvin’s trial for the murder of George Floyd begs the question: Who’s actually being tried right now?
The legal defense team representing Chauvin, the ex-cop who has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for kneeling on Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, is not only placing blame on the slain 46-year-old Black man, but the bystanders who were present. Chauvin's attorney, Eric Nelson, argues that Floyd’s death was caused by his opioid drug use, other underlying health conditions, and the adrenaline flowing through his body.
But in a bizarre twist, Nelson has also pointed the finger at the crowd of innocent Minnesota bystanders who witnessed Floyd’s death on May 25, suggesting that they had made the responding officers fear for their safety and thus distracted them from focusing on the incident at hand.
ADVERTISEMENT
In a desperate attempt to push this theory, Nelson cross-examined several bystanders who were at the scene of Floyd’s death, constantly asking them if they were angry, shouted at officers, or witnessed others doing so.
“Do you recall saying, “I dare you to touch me like that. I swear I’ll slap the fuck out of both of you’?” Nelson asked Donald Williams II, a Black mixed martial artist, who was heard in a bystander video cursing at the police officers as he saw Floyd dying.
“Yeah I did. I meant it,” Williams replied.
“So again, sir, it’s fair to say that you grew angrier and angrier?” Nelson pushed.
“No,” Williams said. “I grew professional and professional. And I stayed in my body… You can’t paint me out to be angry.”
Throughout the trial, Nelson would continue to interrogate the bystanders—who again, did not resort to violence or play any direct role in the death of Floyd—on their visible anger at witnessing the police killing a man.
Alyssa Funari, a bystander who was 17 when she filmed Floyd’s death, dismissed Nelson’s assertion that the crowd was violent or aggressive when she testified that she asked the officers why they were still “on top of” Floyd. But Nelson doubled-down, asking her whether she had told investigators after the incident that she was “angry.” Funari agreed that she was angry.
Minnesota Assistant Attorney General Erin Eldridge then asked Funari: “So when you say ‘angry,’ what do you mean?”
“I was upset because there was nothing that we could do as bystanders, except watch them take this man’s life in front of our eyes,” Funari said.
“And when you say, ‘we,’ were all of you doing what you were doing—meaning not getting physical and not throwing punches or making threats to the officers?” Eldridge asked.
“Correct,” Funari responded.
And it was that confirmation that seemed to demolish Nelson’s weak attempt to shift the blame.
It’s a shame to see these bystanders re-traumatized and badgered for a crime they didn’t commit. During similar trials involving the killing of unarmed Black civilians, the slain is typically being tried subliminally before the jury as an aggressor in an attempt by the defense to justify their death. We saw this happen during the George Zimmerman trial, as his attorneys suggested that he was acting in self-defense against 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was unarmed when Zimmerman shot him in cold blood. In 2013, a six-person jury rendered a not guilty verdict on all counts for Zimmerman.
But I can’t recall a recent case where bystanders were interrogated in such a way to frame them as being more liable for a killing than the person charged with it. Nelson’s aggressive questioning of these witnesses, some of which were underage at the time of the crime, came across as a desperate deflection of the harm done by his client. Regardless of how upset or frustrated these witnesses were, they never physically interfered with Chauvin’s decision to press his knee on an armed Black man in public for over nine minutes. Nor did any of them attack or actively impede the three other officers on the scene—Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao, who are charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and manslaughter—from doing their jobs.
There’s a reason those four men are being tried in a court of law. Remember as the second week of this trial begins that it is not, as some headlines have had it, the “George Floyd Trial.” Derek Chauvin is on trial here and, absent any serious defense, his lawyer is trying to make this trial about anyone and anything else.
