Derek Chauvin’s attorney began planting seeds of doubt into the jury pool during his opening remarks on Monday morning.
“Common sense tells us there are two sides of every story,” the former Minneapolis police officer’s defense lawyer Eric Nelson told jurors. “There is no political or social cause in this courtroom.”
DEREK CHAUVIN ‘BETRAYED’ HIS BADGE, PROSECUTORS SAY AT START OF MURDER TRIAL
Nelson asked that jurors look beyond the 9 minutes and 29-second video of George Floyd’s death and consider the totality of circumstances that led to Floyd’s arrest, including his drug use and the coroner’s report showing a high-level of fentanyl in his system. The defense argued that Floyd’s habitual drug use caused him to suffer a heart attack and die in the middle of his arrest.
New evidence presented by Nelson also shows Floyd allegedly took drugs, including opiates, prior to his arrest. Nelson said jurors should allow “common sense and reason” to guide them as they consider the totality of evidence in the case rather than focus on politically charged topics such as police brutality.
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“You will learn that Derek Chauvin did exactly what he was trained to do over the course of his 19-year career,” Nelson said, referring to what law enforcement calls a “maximum restraint technique.”
