Mr. Chauvin, the former police officer accused of killing George Floyd, invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to testify in his own defense.
As the third week of testimony in the Derek Chauvin trial nears an end, an expert witness for the defense testified that George Floyd died from cardiac arrhythmia, which was contributed to by heart disease, drug use and exposure to carbon monoxide from car exhaust. The testimony was part of the defense’s attempt to convince jurors that Mr. Floyd was not killed by Mr. Chauvin’s actions.
Here are some key moments from recent testimony and discussions in the court.
Derek Chauvin said he would not testify in his defense.
Mr. Chauvin on Thursday invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to testify in his own defense before the trial moves to closing arguments.
Mr. Chauvin’s lawyer, Eric J. Nelson, asked Mr. Chauvin whether he would like to testify in his own defense.
Mr. Nelson said he and Mr. Chauvin have had repeated conversations on the matter, including a “lengthy meeting” on Wednesday night. Mr. Chauvin, who removed his mask to answer Mr. Nelson’s questions, chose to waive his right to testify.
“I will invoke my Fifth Amendment privilege today,” he said.
Judge Peter A. Cahill also described to Mr. Chauvin the instructions that he would give the jury before they begin deliberations. The judge will instruct jurors that Mr. Chauvin has a right not to testify and they cannot hold Mr. Chauvin’s decision not to testify against him.
David Fowler, former chief medical examiner of Maryland, said he believed that George Floyd died from cardiac arrhythmia.
Dr. David Fowler, an expert witness called by Mr. Chauvin’s defense team, said on Wednesday that cardiac arrhythmia was the primary cause of Mr. Floyd’s death, building on the defense’s argument that Mr. Floyd’s death should not be blamed on the actions of the police officers.
Listing myriad factors involved — including Mr. Floyd’s enlarged heart, drug usage, carbon monoxide and the “stressful situation” in which he was restrained — Dr. Fowler, the former chief medical examiner of Maryland, said he would classify Mr. Floyd’s death as “undetermined” rather than a homicide.
“At some point the heart has exhausted its reserves of metabolic supply and went into an arrhythmia and stopped pumping blood,” he testified.
Dr. Fowler also argued that carbon monoxide exposure may have contributed to Mr. Floyd’s death as his face was angled toward the rear exhaust pipe of the police car while the officers pinned him down. This was the first mention of potential carbon monoxide poisoning in the trial.
Any carbon monoxide exposure would have taken away “additional oxygen carrying capacity,” he said. But Dr. Fowler acknowledged that there was no record of Mr. Floyd’s blood ever having been tested for carbon monoxide.
During cross-examination, Dr. Fowler said that he had not seen emissions data from the car or seen the car in person and that carbon monoxide poisoning was not mentioned in the autopsy.
Dr. Fowler said he eliminated asphyxia as a cause of death, contradicting the argument made by prosecutors. After citing numerous studies that found that the prone position is not usually dangerous, Dr. Fowler asserted that the positioning and weight of Mr. Chauvin’s knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck did not injure him. The prosecution later raised questions about the reliability of the study’s findings.
The absence of injuries on the back of his body indicate that “the amount of force applied to Mr. Floyd was less than enough to bruise him,” he said.
During cross-examination, Dr. Fowler acknowledged that the studies did not replicate the situation of Mr. Floyd and that none of the tests were run for more than nine minutes, the amount of time that Mr. Floyd was pinned to the ground.
The defense showed Dr. Fowler a still photo from a police body camera, in which Dr. Fowler said it appeared that there was a white object in Mr. Floyd’s mouth. Mr. Nelson inferred that the white substance may have been the partial pills found in the car.
But during cross-examination, Jerry Blackwell, a lawyer for the prosecution, showed footage from inside Cup Foods, which appeared to show Mr. Floyd chewing a similar looking white object. Dr. Fowler agreed that it looked similar and acknowledged he could not say that the white object was a pill.
Mr. Blackwell asked Dr. Fowler if he believed Mr. Floyd should have been given life-saving measures.
“As a physician, I would agree,” Dr. Fowler said.
Morries Hall, who was with Mr. Floyd before his arrest, will not be compelled to take the stand.
Morries Lester Hall, who was in a car with George Floyd outside of Cup Foods in Minneapolis moments before the police pulled Mr. Floyd out of the car and later pinned him to the ground for more than nine minutes, invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when he was called to testify on Wednesday.
Mr. Hall’s lawyer, Adrienne Cousins, said testifying about his actions, or even about being in the vehicle with Mr. Floyd on May 25, could potentially incriminate him.
“If he puts himself in that car, he exposes himself to possession charges,” Ms. Cousins said Wednesday, noting that drugs were found in the car in two searches.
Judge Peter A. Cahill granted Mr. Hall’s invocation of his Fifth Amendment rights, calling his reasoning valid.
Judge Cahill had ordered Derek Chauvin’s lawyer to draft a narrow list of questions that Mr. Hall might be able to answer without incriminating himself. Like Tuesday’s questioning of Shawanda Hill, who was also in the car with Mr. Floyd when he was arrested, the defense had hoped to ask about Mr. Floyd’s demeanor and behavior right before the arrest to bolster its argument that a drug overdose caused his death.
But Ms. Cousins said even answering those questions had the potential to incriminate him, and Judge Cahill agreed.
In her testimony, Mr. Floyd’s former girlfriend, Courteney Ross, said she and Mr. Floyd had purchased drugs from Mr. Hall in the past.
Mr. Hall has appeared in body camera footage throughout the trial, and on Tuesday, newly released footage showed him standing alongside Ms. Hill after Mr. Floyd had been taken away by officers.
According to a Minnesota official, Mr. Hall provided a false name to officers at the scene of Mr. Floyd’s arrest. At the time, he had outstanding warrants for his arrest on felony possession of a firearm, felony domestic assault and felony drug possession.
Mr. Hall was a longtime friend of Mr. Floyd’s. Both Houston natives, they had connected in Minneapolis through a pastor and had been in touch every day since 2016, Mr. Hall said in an interview with The Times last year. Mr. Hall said that he considered Mr. Floyd a confidant and a mentor, like many in the community.
A use-of-force expert said Mr. Chauvin’s actions were justified.
On Tuesday, Barry Brodd, a former police officer and use-of-force expert, testified for the defense that Mr. Chauvin’s use of force against Mr. Floyd was justified — countering two weeks of prosecution witnesses who argued the opposite.
“I felt that Derek Chauvin was justified, and was acting with objective reasonableness, following Minneapolis Police Department policy and current standards of law enforcement, in his interactions with Mr. Floyd,” he said.
Mr. Brodd, who has nearly 30 years of law enforcement experience and specializes in police and civilian defense cases, referred to Graham v. Connor, a 1989 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled that an officer’s use of force must be “objectively reasonable,” but that “police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments — in circumstances that are tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving — about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation.”
Officers must respond to imminent threats, Mr. Brodd said, which require a police officer to have a “reasonable fear that somebody is going to strike you, stab you, shoot you.”
To judge use-of-force cases, Mr. Brodd said he considered whether an officer had justification to detain a person, how the person responded to the officer — with compliance or varying degrees of resistance — and whether the officer’s use of force correlated with the level of resistance.
Mr. Brodd said that Mr. Chauvin’s use of force was appropriate for the level of resistance from Mr. Floyd, and that the officers would have been justified in using even more force.
“Police officers don’t have to fight fair,” he said. “They’re allowed to overcome your resistance by going up a level.”
Mr. Brodd said that officers had used force when they pulled Mr. Floyd from the police car and onto the ground, but that he did not consider keeping Mr. Floyd in a prone position, with his wrists handcuffed behind his back, to be a use of force. When questioned later by the prosecution, he amended this claim, saying the position and the officers on top of Mr. Floyd could have caused him pain and therefore qualified as use of force.
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