Most were asked the same question: How did you react when you learned you were a potential juror on this particular case?
The answers ranged from "shocked" to "excited," to a resigned, Midwestern "oh boy."
One man described inhaling deeply, running his hands through his hair and quietly cussing to himself.
The trial set to start Monday in Hennepin County District Court has drawn international headlines because perhaps the most potentially damning piece of evidence against Chauvin has already been viewed by millions of people.
An infamous bystander video showed the defendant pinning Floyd's neck for more than eight minutes, as Floyd — who was being arrested for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill — begged him to stop, said he couldn't breathe and lost consciousness.
The image of a Black man gasping for breath under the knee of a white police officer rekindled a nationwide racial justice movement last summer. There were protests in every state. Many companies, including law firms, vowed to improve their diversity and inclusion efforts.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys always knew it wouldn't be easy to find jurors who were a blank slate, and the court set aside three weeks for jury selection.
Some issues — the difficulty of finding people who hadn't already made up their minds about the case and feuds over the demographics of a jury deciding a case infused with racial justice issues — were expected. Others couldn't have been predicted, like two seated jurors getting booted after their impartiality was tainted by news of a $27 million settlement between the city and the Floyd family.
Here are some of the biggest issues that cropped up during voir dire in an unusual case with national significance.
Getting a Vibe
In December, potential jurors received a 14-page questionnaire about what they knew of the case.
The results highlighted how difficult it would be to find jurors who could go into the trial presuming Chauvin's innocence. Among the 326 members of the jury pool who filled out a questionnaire, 10 had positive feelings about Chauvin and 214 had a negative view of him, according to a court filing from the defense.
The questionnaire included some less-conventional queries about potential jurors' opinions of an initiative to defund the Minneapolis Police Department and their support for the Black Lives Matter movement and the "blue lives matter" countermovement.
They asked about issues the nation is grappling with, according to Aisha Braveboy, state's attorney for Prince George's County, Maryland.
"Those questions aren't on the typical jury questionnaire," Braveboy told Law360 Pulse. "I think it shows how national this trial really is, how the response to these types of issues might influence who the prosecutor or the defense want on that jury."
The questions that prosecutors brought up in courtroom interviews seemed even more removed from the murder case.
Especially when jurors stated they had "neutral" opinions of both Chauvin and Floyd, attorney Steven Schleicher of Maslon LLP, who is working pro bono for the state, would ask their opinions of coronavirus-fueled shutdowns, of football players kneeling during the national anthem, of whether the siege on the U.S. Capitol building in January was a protest or a riot.
Those questions could point to a juror's political sensibility, according to Jill Huntley Taylor of Taylor Trial Consulting.
"You take their answers about the Capitol protest or mask-wearing or other political issues and you try to get a vibe of how they feel about this particular issue," she said.
That's especially important for jurors who claim to be neutral, because they may be hiding or unaware of their own biases. It's up to a prosecutor to "understand how that person looks at the world," she said.
"People who are neutral on a lot of things need to be paid attention to. Neutral may be an answer someone gives because they don't feel like their real views are going to be well-received," she said. "If they truly are neutral, and they haven't been exposed to much of [the Chauvin case], why is that? And from all these other attitudes, where do I think they're going to land when they do hear about it?"
Race and Real-World Experience
On the first day of jury selection, Schleicher accused Chauvin's attorney, Eric Nelson of Halberg Criminal Defense, of eliminating potential jurors because of their race.
Only one juror had been selected, a chemist who was white. He'd been questioned after a woman who identified as Hispanic was dismissed when the defense used one of its peremptory challenges — strikes that allow attorneys to dismiss a limited number of would-be jurors without stating why.
When a third potential juror, who also identified as Hispanic, was dismissed by Nelson, Schleicher challenged the strike under Batson v. Kentucky
, a 1986 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that bars excluding potential jurors because of their race.Schleicher said the defense's first two peremptories signified a pattern. He noted the Hispanic man who'd been struck and the white juror who'd been seated both had run-ins with the police when they were young, and both said they could set those experiences aside.
Hennepin County District Court Judge Peter Cahill denied the Batson challenge, noting that the struck juror said he could be swayed to abandon his opinion that Chauvin killed Floyd if the facts proved otherwise, which shifted the burden of proof onto the defense.
Race doesn't factor into the charges at issue in the case, but Floyd's death has become emblematic of racism in the criminal justice system, according to Brian Dunn, managing partner at The Cochran Firm who represents victims of police misconduct in civil rights cases.
"You have a white defendant who's on trial for a crime with racial overtones and a Black victim who lost his life," Dunn told Law360 Pulse. "And superimposed on that is the fact the white defendant happens to be a cop. This is really a unique situation. This is the first time I've ever heard of the prosecution making a Batson challenge, ever."
Usually, it's the state that is angling for an all-white jury, and the defendants who make Batson challenges to preserve their right to appeal a conviction, Dunn said.
But prosecutors can't appeal verdicts — doing so would be a violation of double jeopardy — and Batson challenges can easily be thwarted if the other side provides a race-neutral reason for its strike.
Batson challenges in this case functioned to keep the defense on its toes, Dunn said. He likened it to a baseball pitcher throwing a ball to first base to keep a runner from stealing second.
"It keeps him honest. It lets him know, 'I'm watching you,'" he said.
Schleicher raised a second Batson challenge on the third day, after another man who identified as Hispanic on his questionnaire was struck by the defense.
But Judge Cahill said the man was torn about presuming innocence, and that he'd likened the footage of Chauvin with his knee on Floyd's neck to "a World War II occupation force." The judge added that of the jurors seated at that point, one was multiracial, three were white, one was Hispanic and one was Black.
"I see no pattern whatsoever from the defense of striking racial minorities," the judge said.
But each strike should be considered on its own merit, Braveboy said, and diversity on the jury doesn't automatically excuse a Batson challenge.
"Ultimately the prosecutor is there to ensure there's fairness in the process, and so each of the jurors should be judged based on whether they can be fair and impartial, not because they've met a quota of people of color on a jury," she said.
Batson came up once more when a man said he hadn't formed any opinions about Chauvin but added, "It's sad, another Black man being murdered in police hands." The potential juror, who was Black, said he'd experienced racism "on a day-to-day basis."
He, too, was eliminated by the defense on a peremptory challenge. Nelson had argued the man should be struck for cause, but Judge Cahill disagreed, saying the man could be impartial.
The potential juror had said if he ended up in the deliberation room, he'd be able to understand why juries reach not guilty verdicts in such cases. That showed that he was prepared to reach a verdict of not guilty if necessary, Judge Cahill said. But while the judge wouldn't strike for cause, he added that the defense had a "substantial basis" for using one of its peremptory strikes: the man's strong negative view of the Minneapolis Police Department.
Though Schleicher didn't make a Batson challenge, he was disappointed the man was eliminated, since "he was simply reflecting on reality as he sees and perceives it every single day."
Taylor said the incident shows how jury selection fails to account for the ways race and experience are compounded.
"The question is whether having a lived experience makes you biased. And if so, doesn't that mean a lot of people are biased based on their race, because their lived experience is different?" she said.
Some courts are beginning to take this into account, Taylor said. Three years ago, the Washington state court system created a rule barring some peremptory challenge justifications that are "associated with improper discrimination." They include "expressing a distrust of law enforcement or a belief that law enforcement officers engage in racial profiling."
Two Lost
An already grueling process got even messier on March 12, when the city of Minneapolis announced it had agreed to pay the Floyd family $27 million to settle civil claims that unconstitutional policing practices ultimately led to Floyd's killing.
Half the jury in the criminal case had been seated by then.
The deal in the separate federal suit had an "incredible propensity to taint the jury pool" in the state's murder trial, Nelson said during a hearing on March 15. He called the timing of the settlement announcement "suspicious."
Schleicher said the civil settlement was completely out of the prosecution's control, that they hadn't been consulted about it.
"It would be our strong preference that we be trying this case in a vacuum with no pretrial publicity," he told the judge. "I don't even know which way that cuts, if it's for us or against us."
"The problem is it cuts," Judge Cahill said. "That's the concern."
On March 17, the seven people who were empaneled during the first week were called back into the courtroom via videoconference. Judge Cahill asked each of them if they'd caught wind of "extensive media coverage" about a development in the civil lawsuit.
Three jurors said they'd avoided media as instructed and hadn't heard of the deal. Two more said they'd heard about it and insisted it would have no bearing on their presumption of Chauvin's innocence. But two said they could no longer remain impartial.
One of them, a delivery driver who identified as Hispanic on his jury questionnaire, noted that during his first interview in the courtroom, he'd been asked about his initial impressions of Chauvin.
"Clearly the city of Minneapolis has strong opinions as well," he said. "This just confirms my opinions that I already had. ... I think it will be hard to be impartial."
The judge also excused a white sales manager who was willing to serve on the jury even though he was supposed to get married on May 1, when deliberations would likely be underway. He said the $27 million figure "sent the message that the city of Minneapolis felt something was wrong, and they wanted to make it right."
"That sticker price shocked me and kind of swayed me a little bit," he told the judge.
Typically, civil settlements are announced after a verdict is reached in a related criminal case. Braveboy said the timing of the settlement was "unfortunate."
"What the judge has asked and will require the jury to do is set aside anything they've heard, and make a judgment based on evidence and witness testimony in the courtroom," she said. "And that is what we all have to believe and trust will happen in this case."
Many jurors commented on the size of the settlement, and Dunn confirmed it was "gargantuanly high."
"I almost feel bad for the taxpayers of that town," he said. "And I'm a guy who sues police for a living."
He said jurors could interpret that settlement to mean "justice has already been served in this case," or it could seem to imply Chauvin's guilt. Either way, he said, "it takes the consciousness of the jurors outside of what's happening in that courtroom to some other event. It's spoiling the brew."
The World Is Watching
Another question in Nelson's regular rotation asked to potential jurors was whether they had any concerns for their safety.
The courthouse has been fortified with concertina wire, concrete barricades and fencing. National Guard troops have been deployed there.
Several media outlets are devoted to gavel-to-gavel coverage of the proceedings, and anyone could tune in to jury selection online. But potential jurors weren't shown on camera and were only referred to by juror number. The judge and attorneys were careful to keep any sensitive or potentially identifying information from being broadcast.
While jurors are remaining anonymous now, the judge has said he will make their names and possibly even email addresses available once he deems it "safe to do so."
Taylor thought initially that Nelson's questions about safety might be an attempt to set up a cause challenge for people who he didn't want on the jury. But that didn't happen much.
He did ask, however, whether one verdict or another would raise more safety concerns.
"For some jurors, it's a really valid question to wonder to what extent they're going to be concerned about a verdict that's not going to be favorably received by the public or by their private personal public," Taylor said. "They want to know you're not going to be making a decision based on your concerns about safety."
Several potential jurors said they were concerned for their family. One man said he worried about people trying to intimidate him by breaking a window in his home or threatening his wife and children.
And while some found courthouse security measures and the promise of anonymity comforting, others worried about their safety returning home each night during the trial and about their names being made public after the case ends.
Many described the prospect of serving on the jury as a heavy responsibility. A few called it a burden.
"Jurors are people. They're human beings," Braveboy said. "Most of us don't have to serve in high-profile trials where the world is watching. You have reporters who are in the courtroom, you have supporters outside of the courthouse."
Dunn was a young attorney at The Cochran Firm during the O.J. Simpson trial, which was also contentious and televised.
"I thought the world had learned from that to never do it again," he said.
While the facts of the Simpson and Chauvin cases are vastly different, the public scrutiny is similar, he said. Both trials became about the "stain to our psyche" left by years of racism in the criminal justice system, Dunn said, and neither case could erase that stain.
"This trial is designed to be about one person. It's designed to be about this man's guilt or innocence," he said. "But what it is turning into, whether we like it or not, is a referendum on our nation and our attitudes toward racism within the administration of justice as a whole."
--Editing by Orlando Lorenzo and Brian Baresch.
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