Derek Chauvin Found Guilty in the Murder of George Floyd
Content warning: Discussion of police violence and Black and Latinx death.
MINNEAPOLIS - A verdict was reached on Tuesday, April 20, finding former police officer Derek Chauvin guilty of murder and manslaughter after killing George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, during an arrest in May 2020.
The murder trial of 45-year-old, white, former police officer Derek Chauvin began on March 29, 2021 capturing public attention across the U.S. and the world. This trial has been closely watched as it was Chauvin who was filmed on May 25, 2020 killing George Floyd, a 46-year-old, unarmed, Black man, when he was arrested for allegedly trying to pass a $20 counterfeit bill at a neighborhood market. The murder of Floyd sparked possibly the largest protests in U.S. history, with data suggesting 15 to 26 million people across the country participated in these protests against police brutality and support for the Black Lives Matter movement.
A portrait of George Floyd by Peyton Scott Russell at East 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The murder of Floyd was well-documented by bystanders who filmed Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds despite his pleas and warning that he could not breathe.
During the trial, Chavin’s defense attorney claimed that Floyd died from a fatal combination “of Floyd’s underlying heart disease, adrenaline and the fentanyl and methamphetamine he had ingested prior to the arrest.” Put more succinctly, the defense argued that Floyd died due to a phenomenon called “excited delirium.” Excited delirium, or the agitated state of a person “after taking drugs, having a mental health episode or other health problem” is a highly contested concept in the medical field and there is no universally accepted definition of the syndrome. Nevertheless, the concept has been attributed to in-custody deaths within recent decades and one study has found that “it is mostly cited as a cause only when the person who died had been restrained.”
Several expert witnesses were called into court either to support and or deny the viability of “excited delirium” as the cause of Floyd’s death. One witness, Dr. Bill Smock - an expert in forensic medicine, testified that he believes excited delirium is in fact real but Floyd met none of the phenomenon’s 10 criteria, which requires a person to meet at least six to be diagnosed.
Excited delirium, Floyd’s physical size and health conditions have all been used by the defense as an explanation for Floyd’s death and Chauvin’s use of lethal force. These arguments have received much criticism for their use of racist tropes such as drug use, criminality and superhuman strength that resulted in blaming the murder victim for his own death. Ultimately, these arguments failed in proving Chauvin’s innocence.
In the midst of this police brutality trial, several more instances of police violence have sparked protests across the U.S., including in Minneapolis. First, on April 11, 2021, police shot and killed Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old, Black, young father, during a traffic stop in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center. Officer Kim Porter shot Wright as he got back inside his car and began driving away to avoid arrest. Porter claimed she meant to use her Taser on Wright, but instead shot him with her gun, leading to her resignation and a charge of second-degree manslaughter.
On April 15, 2021, Chicago police body camera footage was released showing the fatal March 29 shooting of 13-year-old, Latinx child Adam Toledo by Officer Eric Stillman. Stillman initially reported seeing a gun in Toledo’s hand but the footage revealed this to be false as Toledo had raised his hands up in surrender and was shot almost instantaneously.
While the guilty verdict of the Chauvin trial has provided some law enforcement accountability, the ongoing police violence reveals the lack of true justice for BIPOC communities in the U.S. as lives continue to be lost.
