George Floyd killing: Jury gets case in ex-cops' federal trial
Go Deeper.
Create an account or log in to save stories.
Like this?
Thanks for liking this story! We have added it to a list of your favorite stories.
Updated 5:32 p.m.
The fate of three ex-Minneapolis police officers federally charged with violating George Floyd’s constitutional rights is now in the jury’s hands.
After a month of testimony, the jury began deliberations Wednesday, following instructions from federal Judge Paul Magnuson. The day’s deliberations concluded shortly after 5 p.m. and will resume 9 a.m. Thursday.
It appears the jurors are white, with four men and eight women. Magnuson ordered that juror identities be kept secret for ten years. In the order signed Wednesday, he wrote that he recognizes that the public has a right to access judicial documents, but that the significant public attention to the trial justified sealing the records.
The judge's order doesn't prevent jurors from speaking about the trial after it concludes.
Turn Up Your Support
MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all.
Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao were on the scene of Floyd’s arrest May 25, 2020, as Derek Chauvin, the senior officer on site, pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes as Floyd, handcuffed and face down on the pavement, pleaded that he couldn’t breathe.
Thao, Kueng and Lane are accused of failing to provide medical aid to Floyd. Thao and Kueng are also charged with failing to intervene with the force being used by Chauvin, who was found guilty in April on state charges of murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s killing and later pleaded guilty to the federal charge of violating Floyd’s civil rights.
Floyd’s killing sparked protests across the country and unrest in the Twin Cities after bystander video of the scene was posted online.
569 seconds
In closing statements Tuesday, prosecutor Manda Sertich told the court the three ex-cops disregarded their training and duty to intervene to stop Chauvin’s unreasonable use of force to subdue Floyd.
Sertich, an assistant U.S. attorney, told jurors the defendants did nothing to help Floyd, "contrary to their training, contrary to common sense and contrary to basic human dignity."
She repeated the law enforcement mantra: “In your custody. In your care.”
Starting with Thao, Sertich said he ridiculed bystanders who were pleading with the officers to let Floyd up and provide him with medical aid.
"He would argue with and belittle the people trying to make him do what the law, not to mention human decency and common sense, required him to do," Sertich said.
Sertich told jurors that Thao and his co-defendant watched for 569 seconds as Chauvin “pressed the life” out of Floyd. She said both men were close enough to tap Chauvin on the shoulder and tell him that Floyd needed to be moved, but neither one did.
Kueng pressed Floyd’s handcuffed wrists into his lower back, casually picked gravel out of a squad tire and laughed with Chauvin when he told Floyd that talking uses lots of oxygen, Sertich said. Kueng described it during his testimony as a “moment of levity.”
Lane asked twice whether Floyd should be turned on his side to breathe, but Chauvin and Kueng both said to leave him.
"Even though [Lane] recognized and even gave voice to the mortal danger George Floyd was in, he did nothing to give George Floyd the medical aid he knew that Mr. Floyd so desperately needed," Sertich told jurors. "When the need was the greatest, he did the least.”
Sertich said it was clear even to the bystanders that Floyd needed urgent medical aid.
“They knew these officers they were watching had more power than they did, more authority than they did," and they still stood up for Mr. Floyd,” Sertich told jurors. “In this country we're not prohibited from questioning the police and other public officials. Each citizen has the right to do so. No one is above the law."
The officers' failure to act led to Floyd’s “slow and torturous death,” in public, she added. "They chose not to intervene, they chose not to aid George Floyd as the window to save Mr. Floyd’s life slammed shut,” Sertich ended her argument. “This is a crime."
‘Tragedy is not a crime’
Thao’s attorney Robert Paule said Floyd's death was a "tragedy,' but "a tragedy is not a crime." Paule said that his client did not fail to act out of the legal element of willfulness, "which means a bad purpose or an improper motive.”
Instead, Paule said, the officers thought Floyd was showing symptoms of “excited delirium,” a controversial syndrome that many first responders are trained to recognize. He said the officers were waiting for the ambulance to arrive so Floyd could receive better treatment from paramedics.
Defense attorney Thomas Plunkett described his client Kueng as a young “idealist from north Minneapolis" and told jurors Kueng was not criminally liable because he received inadequate training, lacked experience, perceived a subordinate role to Chauvin and had confidence in the senior officers at the scene.
Plunkett told jurors that paramedics chose to go a couple blocks away to treat Floyd because “the crowd was hostile.”
Defense attorney Earl Gray, who is representing Lane, partly blamed "mob rule and politics" for the government prosecution of the former officers.
"Every reasonable person should just be disgusted,” Gray told jurors. "It’s sort of scary. You can do an innocent act. You can end up in a courtroom like this."
Gray said Lane and Kueng didn't bash Floyd over the head when they were initially detaining him, but were “wrestling” with him, and that Lane followed his training in calling for an ambulance, and then later assisted a paramedic with CPR.
“They’re trying to be cooperative police officers, to cooperate with the arrestee,” Gray told jurors. They’re trying to de-escalate the situation."
In the prosecution rebuttal, Assistant U.S. Attorney LeeAnn Bell said force used by police officers has to be proportionate and reasonable, and that officers who can't find a pulse on wrist can either get up and check neck pulse or start CPR.
"It's not reasonable not to do anything," Bell said.
All three defendants testified in their own defense during the trial.
Conviction not a ‘slam dunk’
The federal charges against the three officers on trial are more nuanced than the state murder case against Chauvin, said Georgetown University law professor Angi Porter.
“They're all about deliberate indifference or deprivation of rights,” Porter said. “I don't think that's a salient [point] for jurors. It really comes down to how they feel in their gut.”
University of St. Thomas law professor Mark Osler said it was a complex case for the government to prosecute.
"I don't think anybody would say the prosecution has a slam dunk conviction at this point,” Osler said. “Because of the nature of the charges, because none of these three were the direct actor with the knee on the neck that killed George Floyd directly, this is a tough case for the prosecution.”
Chauvin, who pleaded guilty in the federal case, is serving a 22 ½ year state sentence for Floyd's murder.
The three defendants in the federal trial also face their own charges for aiding and abetting murder and manslaughter in state court. That trial is scheduled for June.
Floyd's girlfriend Courteney Ross told the media pool reporter Wednesday that she thought the prosecution presented an excellent case in the officers’ federal trial.
“It's been a long month. My heart is with Floyd," Ross said. "If I was a juror they’d come back guilty. They never rendered aid to Floyd. It was clear to see.”
