The perception preemptively created by the media is that if former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is acquitted of the murder of George Floyd, it will be a clear injustice.
As they told it for all of 2020, Chauvin, a white man, is responsible for the racially motivated killing of innocent, unarmed black man Floyd.
So is it possible for Chauvin to receive a fair trial?
Jurors are being vetted this week, so we don’t know yet. But based on public evidence of the case, we’re looking at the possibility of O.J. Simpson all over again, with a twist.
In the trial of Simpson, the defense team successfully argued that Simpson was a victim of a racially biased Los Angeles police force, a narrative that was widely believed among minorities in L.A. Jurors voted to acquit Simpson of murder charges, despite overwhelming evidence that he was involved in two murders, because they believed that the police department was a racist institution.
If Chauvin is convicted, it won’t be because jurors were convinced that he killed Floyd by placing his knee on his neck. According to the county medical examiner’s report, Floyd did not die from asphyxiation, nor was there a trace of injury to his neck or trachea. Floyd died of a heart attack. He was in very poor heart health when the incident occurred, as the medical examiner’s report makes clear.
True, Floyd said he couldn’t breathe while he was held to the ground by Chauvin and two other officers. But he is seen on video saying that over and over again long before he was on the ground — both while he was standing up and while the police were trying to get him to sit down in the squad car.
Those are the facts, but it’s also a fact that Chauvin is white, and the media spent an entire summer telling the public that his whiteness created a problem, potentially a criminal one.
If Chauvin is convicted, it may well be just because jurors believe there is something rotten about him and, more broadly, the Minneapolis police force.
The people selected to sit on the jury will certainly have heard the media narrative all summer. Will they still be capable of being fair?
