The defense for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has already created doubts that George Floyd was murdered under Chauvin’s knee. And that’s before the defense has even begun to present its own case.
But we really need to hear testimonies from two people in particular, and at least one of them is trying to get out of it.
Morries Hall was with Floyd that fateful day in May of 2020. He was in the car with him when police first approached. But his attorney this week argued that Hall shouldn’t be required to testify because his testimony could be used to incriminate him in a potential separate trial, should prosecutors end up also charging him with Floyd’s murder.
The medical examiner found potent levels of fentanyl, methamphetamine, morphine, and oxycodone in Floyd’s system. Given that Floyd had, according to the examiner, a “severe” level of heart disease, Chauvin’s defense attorney, Eric Nelson, will be suggesting (he doesn’t have to prove it) that Floyd might have died not because Chauvin killed him or was in any way negligent, but because his heart gave out due to the stress caused by a fatal cocktail of drugs that strained his cardiovascular system.
“This will include evidence that, while they were in the car, Mr. Floyd consumed what were thought to be two Percocet pills,” Nelson had said in his opening statement, referring to a common brand name of oxycodone. “Mr. Floyd’s friends will explain that Mr. Floyd fell asleep in the car and that they couldn’t wake him up, that they kept trying to wake them up to get going, that they thought the police might be coming.”
Floyd’s friends are Hall and Shawanda Hill.
The problem for Hall is that Floyd’s girlfriend has testified that she believed Floyd had at least once before received drugs from Hall. The defense is suggesting that Floyd swallowed some pills before he was arrested by police and that those pills may have been given to him by Hall.
Hall’s attorney argued to the court that “this leaves Mr. Hall open to third-degree murder … liability to drug activity that leads to an overdose.”
The judge has not yet ruled on whether Hall will be required to take the stand, but how could he not be? Hall and Hill are the two people who were physically with Floyd in the moments leading up to his arrest and eventual death.
On Friday, Dr. Lindsey Thomas, a medical expert for the prosecution, disputed that a drug overdose was the cause of Floyd’s death, claiming that “it was not the type of death that’s been reported in fentanyl overdose, for example, where someone becomes very sleepy then just sort of gradually, calmly, peacefully stops breathing.”
If either Hall or Hill or both had previously told investigators that Floyd was falling asleep and they were having difficulties waking him, that complicates Thomas’s assertion.
There’s no question that the jury, and the public, need to hear from Hall and Hill. Chauvin’s life depends on it.
