The prosecution said Chauvin flouted his oath as a police officer and murdered Floyd, choking him to death by pressing his knee onto Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes as horrified bystanders looked on.
Chauvin's attorney said that it took three officers to restrain Floyd, who had eaten some pills during his arrest to hide them from police, and that the pills combined with a chronic heart condition caused his death.
But the two sides agreed: The trial concerned what happened May 25, and not its larger significance.
"This case is about Mr. Derek Chauvin. It's not about all police at all," said Jerry Blackwell, chairman of the Minneapolis law firm Blackwell Burke, who's working pro bono for the prosecution.
Chauvin's attorney, Eric Nelson of Halberg Criminal Defense, concurred, saying "there is no political or social cause in this courtroom."
It was an important reminder in a case that has become a symbol of racism in the criminal justice system. Millions of people viewed a viral video of Floyd's arrest. It showed Chauvin pinning Floyd's neck down for about nine minutes, as Floyd — who was being arrested for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill — begged him to stop, said he couldn't breathe and eventually 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. Protests occurred in every state. Many companies, including law firms, vowed to improve their diversity and inclusion efforts.
The trial, which is being broadcast online and is expected to last four weeks, is drawing countless spectators from around the globe, and the attorneys could no doubt feel their gaze Monday. But the crucial audience was a local jury of five men and nine women, ranging in age from their 20s to their 60s. Two are multiracial, four are Black, and eight are white.
"Common sense tells you there are always two sides to a story," Nelson said during his opening statement in Chauvin's defense. "Common sense tells us we need to examine the totality of evidence and how it can be applied to the question of reasonableness of actions and reactions."
Blackwell told jurors the evidence would prove Chauvin guilty of all three charges brought against him: second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
He said Floyd might not have known the $20 bill he used to buy a pack of cigarettes at a corner store was counterfeit. Even if he did, using fake currency is a misdemeanor, Blackwell noted, and officers "could have written him a ticket and let the courts sort it out."
Instead, one police officer drew a gun on Floyd early into their encounter. When officers tried to put him into a squad car, he told them he was scared and claustrophobic. He was unarmed.
As bystanders watched and filmed the arrest from the sidewalk, Blackwell said, Floyd told Chauvin he couldn't breathe 27 times over the course of less than five minutes. He writhed under Chauvin's knee because his lungs couldn't inflate, Blackwell said, and another bystander's video showed signs he was experiencing an anoxic seizure because he couldn't breathe. His autopsy showed road rash on his neck and fingers.
"He was grinding and crushing [Floyd] until the very breath — no, ladies and gentlemen, the very life was squeezed out of him," Blackwell said.
Chauvin's actions went against police training, Blackwell said, adding that testimony would show that putting pressure above someone's shoulders is considered deadly force and that Chauvin kept digging his knee into Floyd's neck long after he was subdued.
Then Blackwell showed the video of Floyd's arrest. Many of the bystanders who can be heard on it will end up testifying at trial. They include an off-duty Minneapolis firefighter who begged police to check Floyd's pulse, a man with martial arts expertise who told Chauvin that he was "trapping [Floyd's] breathing," and a young woman who noted Floyd's nose was bleeding.
"They come from the broad spectrum of humanity, different races, different genders. You have older people and younger people," Blackwell said. "What they all had in common as they were going about their business, they saw something that was shocking to them, disturbing to them."
Nelson told a different version of events.
A convenience store clerk tried twice to get Floyd to pay or give back the cigarettes before calling the police, he said. When the clerk called 911, he told the dispatcher that Floyd seemed intoxicated. Some friends who were with Floyd as they sat in a nearby parked car would later report he kept falling asleep.
Floyd was six inches taller than Chauvin and 83 pounds heavier, Nelson said. What started as a routine arrest grew more and more challenging, and officers considered using a maximum restraint technique — "it used to be called the hobble or the hogtie," he said.
"You will be able to see the Minneapolis police car rocking back and forth, rocking back and forth," he said. "This was not an easy struggle."
The gathering crowd of bystanders telling Chauvin to get off of Floyd didn't help matters, he said. He noted that on the video that played that morning, officers were called names, like "a fucking bum." The onlookers were perceived as a "growing threat" and distracted officers from attending to Floyd.
"You will learn that Derek Chauvin did exactly what he was trained to do," Nelson said. "The use of force is not attractive, but it is a necessary component of policing."
But he also said force wasn't the cause of Floyd's death. Investigators found pills containing methamphetamine and fentanyl with Floyd's saliva on them in the back of the squad car that officers had unsuccessfully tried to force him into.
Nelson said Floyd died of cardiac arrhythmia. His toxicology report showed both methamphetamine and fentanyl in his system, and that combined with hypertension, coronary disease and a surge of adrenaline "compromise[d] an already compromised heart," Nelson said.
Three witnesses also testified on Monday.
One was Jena Lee Scurry, a 911 dispatcher who sent officers to respond to the call from a clerk at Cup Foods, the convenience store where Floyd allegedly used a counterfeit bill. Scurry could see Floyd's arrest on a live security feed from a camera that happened to be pointed at the store. Between calls, she said, she kept noticing that the video still showed the officers restraining Floyd. It went on for so long, she said, that she asked her colleagues if the screens were frozen.
"My instincts were telling me something wasn't right," Scurry testified.
She called her supervisor, an on-duty sergeant, and said she wasn't sure if she was witnessing a use-of-force situation that would require review, but told him, "all of them sat on this man."
On cross-examination, Nelson noted she was not a trained police officer. He also used her testimony to show the squad car rocked forward and back as officers tried to force Floyd into the back.
Prosecutors used testimony from Alisha Oyler, a cashier at the Speedway across the street from the convenience store where Floyd was arrested, to establish a timeline and show how long Chauvin remained on Floyd's neck. She'd shot a series of short videos on her cellphone, she said, because "I always see police messing with people, and it's not right."
Nelson sought to discredit Oyler's testimony, noting errors in what she'd told investigators. She mentioned a "female cop" when there were none at the scene and said she didn't understand why the police took Floyd back out of the cruiser, when in fact they never got him all the way in, Nelson said.
The final witness was one of the bystanders most outspoken during Floyd's arrest: Donald Williams. He used his security, wrestling and martial arts experience to testify that he recognized that Chauvin was pinning Floyd with a "blood choke," which is meant to constrict the flow of blood in the arteries of the neck.
--Editing by Adam LoBelia.
Update: This story has been updated to include reporting on witness testimony.
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