File picture: The prosecution rested after practically three weeks of testimony from bystanders, medical doctors, cops and others.
By Amy Forliti and Steve Karnowski | Related Press
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Federal prosecutors rested their case Monday towards three former Minneapolis cops charged with violating George Floyd’s civil rights.
The prosecution rested after practically three weeks of testimony from bystanders, medical doctors, cops and others.
J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao are charged with violating Floyd’s constitutional rights whereas appearing below authorities authority. All three are accused of depriving Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, of medical care whereas he was handcuffed, facedown as Officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee onto Floyd’s neck for 9 1/2 minutes. Kueng knelt on Floyd’s again and Lane held down his legs whereas Thao stored bystanders again.
Kueng and Thao are additionally accused of failing to intervene to cease the Could 25, 2020, killing, which triggered protests worldwide and a reexamination of racism and policing. The fees allege that the officers’ actions resulted in Floyd’s dying.
Earlier Monday, Darnella Frazier, the teenager who recorded the broadly seen video of Floyd’s killing, started crying as she began testifying, prompting the choose to take a fast, sudden break.
Frazier, who was 16 when Floyd was killed, said her identify and present age, which is eighteen. When prosecutor LeeAnn Bell requested her whether or not she is at present in class or working, Frazier started crying, saying, “I can’t do it. I’m sorry.”
Fraizer’s testimony resumed after a brief break.
A use-of-force professional testified Monday that the three former Minneapolis cops ought to have intervened. However protection attorneys hammered away at Tim Longo, the police chief on the College of Virginia at Charlottesville, throughout a tense day of testimony that was peppered with emphatic objections, quite a few warnings from the choose that the data was repetitive, and combative cross-examination.
Lane’s lawyer, Earl Grey, challenged Longo on whether or not he was asserting that “my consumer, a four-day veteran” ought to have thrown Chauvin off Floyd. Each Kueng and Lane had been rookies, only a few days into their jobs as full-fledged officers.
“I believe somebody ought to have completed one thing, sure,” Longo replied.
Grey continued, thundering, “What else ought to they've completed moreover that?”
“Nobody requested Chauvin to get his knee off his neck,” Longo mentioned after somewhat extra dialogue.
Longo testified earlier that an officer has an obligation to take “affirmative steps” to cease one other officer from utilizing extreme power.
“The time period ‘intervene’ is a verb, it’s an motion phrase. And it requires an act. And what you do is, you cease the conduct,” he mentioned.
In the case of an obligation to offer medical assist, he mentioned, Thao “didn’t do something” and Kueng took no additional motion after checking Floyd’s pulse, and discovering none.
Longo mentioned that when Lane gave chest compressions to Floyd in an ambulance, he was fulfilling his responsibility to offer medical assist. However, he mentioned, that doesn't apply to what occurred earlier than that time, when no assist was given.
Thao’s lawyer, Thomas Plunkett, steered that Longo reviewed solely supplies that prosecutors “cherry picked” for him and didn’t look additional. He pressed a protection theme that the Minneapolis Police Division bears accountability for Floyd’s killing for coaching its officers poorly.
Plunkett performed a part of a coaching presentation that confirmed violent confrontations between officers and topics, with audio of a locker room speech given by actor Al Pacino, enjoying a coach within the 1999 soccer film “Any Given Sunday,” exhorting his gamers to struggle “inch by inch” as a result of it's going to make the distinction between profitable and dropping — and residing and dying.
Plunkett mentioned the video is the very last thing recruits see of their use-of-force coaching and requested if it was according to accepted police insurance policies and practices. Longo replied that he discovered the video “very disturbing,” due to its pictures of individuals dying and getting harm, however that he didn’t know the context by which it was offered.
Prosecutors started presenting their case on Jan. 24 and mentioned late Friday that they anticipated to relaxation Monday. Protection attorneys will then begin presenting witnesses. The lawyer for Lane has mentioned his consumer will testify. Attorneys for Thao and Kueng haven’t mentioned if they may.
Chauvin, who's white, was convicted of homicide and manslaughter in state courtroom final 12 months and later pleaded responsible to a federal civil rights cost.
Lane, who's white; Kueng, who's Black; and Thao, who's Hmong American, additionally face a separate state trial in June on costs alleging that they aided and abetted homicide and manslaughter.