What Happened in Day 3 of the Derek Chauvin Trial: Live Updates - The New York Times
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March 31, 2021, 7:20 p.m. ET
A still image of George Floyd, taken from body camera footage shown on Wednesday in the trial of Derek Chauvin.Still Image, via Court TV
On Wednesday afternoon, prosecutors played long segments of video from the body camera worn by one of the rookie police officers who first arrived on the scene at Cup Foods last May — and in many ways, it was a more devastating portrayal of the circumstances of George Floyd’s death than even the widely viewed bystander videos that were shown in the first two days of the trial.
The officer, Thomas Lane, approached Mr. Floyd, who was sitting in the driver’s seat of a Mercedes SUV outside Cup Foods. Mr. Lane drew his weapon immediately, and Mr. Floyd, from the start, was agitated, crying and seemingly terrified.
During jury selection, Jerry W. Blackwell, a prosecutor, had said that this moment set the tone for what happened later. Explaining why Mr. Floyd had become so agitated, Mr. Blackwell said he had been worried that he was at risk of “having his head blown off over a fake $20 bill.”
On Wednesday, as the video played on and on — through the struggle to get Mr. Floyd in the back of the squad car, as he screamed that he was claustrophobic, to the point when the police got him on the ground — the officers seemed determined at every turn to control Mr. Floyd’s body, even though he was handcuffed and had been searched for weapons.
Sitting in one corner of the courtroom and having to endure it all was Rodney Floyd, Mr. Floyd’s youngest brother, who had flown in from Houston to attend the afternoon’s testimony.
Throughout, he sat — not far from Derek Chauvin, the man accused of murdering his brother — with his hands in his lap, hugging his midsection and swiveling slightly in his chair. At times he shook his head back and forth, and at other times he looked down. Occasionally, he watched the scenes unfold on a small monitor on one of the prosecutors’ tables.
As other footage was played earlier in the afternoon, Charles McMillian, a bystander, broke down crying on the stand, and his cries and gasps were loud through his microphone.
After the judge called for a break, Mr. McMillian huddled in the hallway with prosecutors, who tried to console him and help him regain his composure.
Rodney Floyd sat on a bench, with tears in his eyes, waiting for the trial to resume.
March 31, 2021, 7:04 p.m. ET
On Day 3 of the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer accused of murder in the death of George Floyd, people across Minneapolis kept track of the proceedings on television and on their phones. The trial drew protesters outside the courthouse on Wednesday.
Aaron Nesheim for The New York Times
Joshua Rashaad McFadden for The New York Times
Kerem Yucel/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Kerem Yucel/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Kerem Yucel/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
March 31, 2021, 6:27 p.m. ET
An image from store video shows George Floyd, right, inside Cup Foods on May 25, 2020.Court TV still image, via Associated Press
The grief and guilt of witnesses have been center stage throughout the first three days of the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer accused of killing George Floyd. On Wednesday, the judge temporarily halted the proceedings after a 61-year-old witness broke down in sobs as he recounted his memory of Mr. Floyd’s arrest.
The witness, Charles McMillian, was among several who have spoken through tears on the witness stand. Jurors also heard on Wednesday from Christopher Martin, the 19-year-old Cup Foods employee who first confronted Mr. Floyd about the apparently fake $20 bill that he used to buy cigarettes. Here are Wednesday’s highlights.
If there were any doubts that witnesses of Mr. Floyd’s arrest have been traumatized by what they saw, those suspicions were dispelled on Wednesday. A major focal point of the trial so far has been the scars that the events of May 25 have left on those who were there. The prosecution has used their stories — and the raw emotion that has come with them — to underscore the case they are building against Mr. Chauvin through videos of Mr. Floyd’s arrest. Witnesses have repeatedly said that they believed that Mr. Floyd was in grave danger. And they have shared feelings of helplessness. It is almost always a crime to interfere with officers as they make an arrest, and several witnesses testified that they have struggled with being stuck just feet away from a man who they knew was dying, with no way to help.
The testimony of Mr. Martin, the Cup Foods cashier, gave jurors, for the first time, a clearer understanding of what happened in the store before Mr. Floyd’s arrest. Video footage from the store showed Mr. Floyd walking around and chatting with other shoppers before buying cigarettes. Mr. Martin said he quickly recognized that Mr. Floyd’s $20 bill appeared to be fake. At the urging of his boss, Mr. Martin went outside and asked Mr. Floyd to pay or to come in and talk to the manager. Mr. Floyd refused, and eventually a manager asked another employee to call the police.
Mr. Martin told the court that he felt “disbelief and guilt” when he saw Mr. Chauvin kneeling on Mr. Floyd. He had initially planned to replace the fake $20 bill with a real one of his own, but then changed his mind and told the manager what happened. Had he not taken the bill from Mr. Floyd in the first place, “this could have been avoided,” he said.
Jurors also watched the arrest from the perspective of the police officers’ body cameras. The footage showed officers confronting Mr. Floyd with their weapons drawn as he sat in a car. “Please don’t shoot me,” Mr. Floyd said, crying. Later, officers struggled to put a distressed Mr. Floyd in the back of a police vehicle. Mr. Floyd told them repeatedly that he was claustrophobic and scared, and officers continued to try to force him into the cruiser. Though Mr. Floyd was clearly distraught, he never appeared to pose a threat to the officers. As they pinned him to the ground next to the vehicle, the body cameras captured the words that reverberated around the world last summer: “I can’t breathe.” After a few minutes, Mr. Floyd went silent. “I think he’s passed out,” one officer said. When another officer told Mr. Chauvin that he couldn’t find Mr. Floyd’s pulse, Mr. Chauvin appeared unmoved.
With the body camera footage, the jurors are seeing the arrest of Mr. Floyd from every possible angle. Videos from the viewpoint of the officers are particularly jarring. From the beginning of the interaction, Mr. Floyd appeared not as a threat, but as someone who was scared and helpless. It also shows that officers took no action to address Mr. Floyd’s medical condition as he went limp.
March 31, 2021, 5:56 p.m. ET
Reporting from New York
March 31, 2021, 5:36 p.m. ET
Reporting from New York
Prosecutors just played more footage from Derek Chauvin’s body camera, which showed him arriving at the scene where two other officers were engaged with George Floyd. Floyd is shouting and trying to get out of their squad car. Afer Chauvin grabs the back of Floyd's neck, the officer's body camera appears to get knocked off of his uniform and ends up under the vehicle, blocking the picture.
March 31, 2021, 4:58 p.m. ET
Reporting from New York
The videos from the responding officers’ body cameras, which are now being shown at the trial, were initially released in July and were supposed to be viewable only in person by appointment. But The Daily Mail published them in full in August and other news outlets, including The New York Times, obtained the full copies and reported on details from them. They offer a devastating picture of how the officers were more focused on controlling George Floyd than providing care as he said repeatedly that he couldn't breathe.
March 31, 2021, 5:11 p.m. ET
Reporting from New York
Earlier today was the first time we saw any video from Derek Chauvin’s body camera, when prosecutors played a snippet of him speaking with a bystander after George Floyd had been put in an ambulance. His body camera fell off as he knelt on Floyd, so there is no footage from it during that part of the incident. It was later returned to him.
March 31, 2021, 4:41 p.m. ET
Flowers and written memorials in front of Cup Foods in Minneapolis on Wednesday.Aaron Nesheim for The New York Times
Billy Abumayyaleh’s teenage son used to work at Cup Foods, the family business, but he hasn’t returned since last spring.
“He’s Little Billy,” Mr. Abumayyaleh said. “He’s 15 now. He was 14 then. He used to work here. I haven’t had him back here since George Floyd died. He’s at home watching now. He’s traumatized. We all are. Nobody deserves that.”
As he spoke, the trial of Derek Chauvin, who is accused of murder in Mr. Floyd’s death, played on the shop’s flat screen television behind him.
Mr. Abumayyaleh said his brothers and their father, Steve, who passed away in 2014, started the 24-hour business with very little in September 1988.
The work, he said, was difficult even before Mr. Floyd’s death. He said they called the police regularly for help when gang members were trespassing on their property. “It was getting better, but now it’s worse,” he said.
“We just want to stay in business,” Mr. Abumayyaleh added. “I don’t know what’s normal anymore. It’s just so confusing.”
March 31, 2021, 4:38 p.m. ET
A frame from police body camera footage shown Wednesday in the Derek Chauvin trial.Still image, via Court TV
Prosecutors showed chilling video from police body cameras as Derek Chauvin and other Minneapolis police officers confronted and tried to arrest George Floyd outside the Cup Foods in Minneapolis on May 25.
At least some of the footage from Mr. Chauvin and the three officers who were with him — Thomas Lane, Alex Kueng and Tou Thao — was made available for limited viewing in July, but it was likely to be new to most of the people watching the trial on Wednesday, including jurors.
It shows Mr. Floyd, sitting in the driver’s seat of a car, becoming visibly distraught as soon as officers approach him with weapons drawn, and repeatedly begging the officers not to shoot him. He sobs and screams in terror throughout much of the footage, and at no point does he appear to pose any threat to the officers.
At the beginning of the footage, while Mr. Floyd is still in the driver’s seat, one officer curses at him while ordering him to keep his hands in sight — showing the immediate aggressiveness with which the police acted. As the officers order him to get out of the car, he appears to be scared that they will kill him if he moves; it is at this point that he starts saying, “Don’t shoot me.”
He also says tearfully, “I didn’t know, man,” possibly referring to the accusation that the $20 bill he had used was counterfeit.
As the officers try to push Mr. Floyd into the back seat of a police vehicle, the footage shows him screaming and saying repeatedly that he is claustrophobic and scared.
It also underscores the nonchalance with which Mr. Chauvin responded to Mr. Floyd’s obvious distress. As Mr. Floyd begs for his life and says he can’t breathe, the officer says, “Takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to say that.” When another officer says he can’t find Mr. Floyd’s pulse, Mr. Chauvin says simply, “Uh-huh.”
The videos — introduced during testimony by Lt. Jeff Rugel, a body camera expert, who explained how the Minneapolis Police Department’s body cameras worked and verified the legitimacy of the footage — provide additional, horrifying perspectives on events that the public has previously seen from one or two angles.
In all of them, one of the things that stands out most is the depth of Mr. Floyd’s terror as he begs for his life, again and again, for minute after agonizing minute.
“Please! Please! Please!” he screams between sobs. “Mama! Mama! Mama!”
“Mom, I love you,” he says at one point, and then: “Please. I can’t breathe.”
His voice becomes quieter and quieter as he loses consciousness.
March 31, 2021, 3:58 p.m. ET
Reporting from Minneapolis
The witness on the stand now, Lt. Jeff Rugel of the Minneapolis Police Department, is here to authenticate the officers’ body camera video and other video evidence from the scene. He didn't have a direct role in what happened on May 25, when George Floyd died.
March 31, 2021, 3:48 p.m. ET
Charles McMillian, 61, testified on Wednesday that he was driving by Cup Foods on May 25 when he noticed the police next to George Floyd’s car and stopped to see what was going on. He said he was just being “nosy” and didn’t know Mr. Floyd, but he got out of his car and watched as officers struggled to push Mr. Floyd into the back seat of their patrol car.
Mr. McMillian came closer and advised Mr. Floyd to get into the car because he “couldn’t win,” he said. Prosecutors then played the video of the officers kneeling on Mr. Floyd as he called out repeatedly for his mother. Watching the video, Mr. McMillian shook his head, trying to hold back tears, and then collapsed onto the podium, sobbing. He said:
I couldn’t help but feel helpless. I don’t have a mama either, but I understand him. My mom died June 25.
The court adjourned to give Mr. McMillian time to compose himself, then returned to have him describe how Mr. Floyd reacted to Officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on his neck. Mr. McMillian said he became concerned because he believed Mr. Floyd was foaming at the mouth and struggling for air:
“I’m trying to tell him, just cooperate with them. Get up, get in the car. Go where you can win.”
Later, he said, he confronted Mr. Chauvin, recalling a friendly exchange the two had a few days earlier in the neighborhood:
I think I said to him, ‘Five days ago, I told you the other day to go home to your family safe and let the next person go home to their family safe. But today I gotta look at you as a maggot.’
Asked why he confronted Mr. Chauvin, he told the prosecution:
Because what I watched was wrong.
March 31, 2021, 3:42 p.m. ET
Reporting from Minneapolis
This phase of the trial is really turning out to be the People vs. Derek Chauvin, in the sense that it is a record of the harm done to a whole community. Prosecutors are supposed to work on behalf of society, not the individual victim, but it’s not often you see that play out so literally.
March 31, 2021, 3:19 p.m. ET
On Wednesday, Charles McMillian, who was driving by Cup Foods at the time of George Floyd’s arrest and stopped to see what was happening, grew emotional in the courtroom when describing what he saw.
Charles McMillian, 61, who saw the police trying to get George Floyd into the police car and begged him to cooperate, broke down in sobs as he watched video in court of Mr. Floyd calling for his mother. Mr. McMillian had to stop testifying, take off his glasses and wipe his eyes. “I couldn’t help but feel helpless,” he said.
Nearly every witness so far has cried at some point in their testimony, and not just because of the trauma of what they saw. Several have said they felt powerless to intervene as they watched a man die. In almost all cases, interfering with officers is itself a crime.
On Wednesday, that same stress started to impact the jury. The prosecution has shown the jury parts of the video multiple times every day of the trial. One juror interrupted the proceedings an hour into Wednesday’s session, motioning to the judge that she felt ill. The judge paused the trial citing the woman’s “stress-related reaction.” The 50-year-old woman told the judge that she was feeling shaky, but better, and that she had been having trouble sleeping.
March 31, 2021, 2:51 p.m. ET
Kerem Yucel/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Nicholas Pfosi/Reuters
Joshua Rashaad McFadden for The New York Times
Aaron Nesheim for The New York Times
On the third day of the trial of Derek Chauvin, Ben Crump, the lawyer for George Floyd’s family, arrived at the courthouse. Genevieve Hansen, a firefighter and emergency medical technician who witnessed the arrest and said she pleaded with the police to let her help, left the courthouse after completing her testimony on Wednesday. And people gathered outside the courthouse and in George Floyd Square, where Mr. Floyd died last May.
March 31, 2021, 2:48 p.m. ET
Reporting from New York
The judge has called for a 10-minute break. Nearly every witness so far has cried at some point during their testimony. The trauma of having seen the arrest of George Floyd in person is clearly painful to them.
March 31, 2021, 2:44 p.m. ET
Reporting from New York
Charles McMillian, 61, sobs on the witness stand as prosecutors play a video of George Floyd calling for his mother. Mr. McMillian had yelled, “You can’t win!” at Floyd as he was being arrested in an attempt to get him to relax as officers tried to put him in the back of a squad car.
March 31, 2021, 2:45 p.m. ET
Reporting from Minneapolis
McMillian has to take off his glasses and wipe his eyes. “I feel helpless,” he said. This is hard to watch.
March 31, 2021, 2:24 p.m. ET
Reporting from New York
Court is back in session, and prosecutors are now questioning Charles McMillian, 61, who was driving near Cup Foods on May 25 when he came upon the arrest of George Floyd.
March 31, 2021, 1:29 p.m. ET
Christopher Martin testified today.Court TV still image, via Associated Press
The teenage store clerk who first confronted George Floyd about his use of a fake $20 bill said in court on Wednesday that he felt “disbelief and guilt” when he saw Derek Chauvin kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s neck in front of the store after a co-worker called 911.
The clerk, Christopher Martin, 19, said he had quickly recognized that the $20 bill that Mr. Floyd used to buy cigarettes at the Cup Foods convenience store on May 25 appeared to be fake. At the urging of a manager, Mr. Martin twice went outside to Mr. Floyd’s car and asked him to come inside the store to pay for the cigarettes or talk with the manager.
Mr. Martin said he thought Mr. Floyd, unlike a friend of Mr. Floyd’s who had tried to use a fake bill earlier that day, had not realized that the bill was fake. “I thought I’d be doing him a favor” by accepting it, Mr. Martin said.
He said the store’s policy at the time was that clerks who accepted a fake bill had to pay to replace it themselves. Mr. Martin said that after Mr. Floyd and a passenger in his car refused to come back into the store, he offered to pay the store for it himself, but his manager later asked another worker to call the police.
Minutes later, Mr. Floyd was handcuffed on the ground under several Minneapolis police officers, and Mr. Martin could be seen on surveillance video with his hands raised over his head.
“If I would’ve just not taken the bill, this could’ve been avoided,” Mr. Martin testified.
During his testimony, prosecutors played surveillance footage from inside Cup Foods for the first time, showing Mr. Floyd chatting and laughing with shoppers and employees as he moved around the store. At one point, he purchased a banana, and at another point he was holding what appeared to be cash.
Mr. Martin said that Mr. Floyd had been friendly when he walked into the store and that the two had briefly discussed sports, but that Mr. Floyd had struggled to finish his sentences and appeared to be high on a drug.
An autopsy determined that Mr. Floyd was intoxicated with fentanyl and had recently used methamphetamines, but prosecutors have argued that the amount of drugs would not have been fatal for him because he had built up a tolerance over years of addiction. Medical experts and discussion of the autopsy are expected to be a major focus of the trial in the coming weeks.
About 30 minutes after the clerk called 911, Mr. Floyd was taken away on a stretcher. Not long after, he was pronounced dead at a hospital.
March 31, 2021, 1:21 p.m. ET
The Derek Chauvin trial was briefly halted after less than an hour of testimony on Wednesday morning when a juror stopped the proceedings. The juror stood up during testimony and waved to get the judge’s attention, indicating through a hand gesture to her stomach that she felt ill.
The proceedings stopped and she quickly left the room. After a 20-minute break, the juror took the stand to explain for the record that she had suffered what the judge called a “stress-related reaction.”
She was questioned with the audio and video feed turned off and the rest of the jury out of the room. “I’m shaky, but better,” she said, explaining that she had been having trouble sleeping and had been awake since 2 a.m.
The juror, a white woman in her 50s, was identified during jury selection as a health care nonprofit executive and a single mother of two. When asked if the police treated Black people and white people equally, she said no and added of George Floyd, “He didn’t deserve to die.”
When testimony resumed on Wednesday, she took notes and watched attentively as video was shown.
The jurors in this case are subject to numerous stressors, including fears for their privacy and safety and exposure to graphic evidence.
Though this is only the third day of the trial, they have already been shown multiple videos of officers kneeling on Mr. Floyd. On Tuesday, they heard emotional testimony from five eyewitnesses, including a 9-year-old girl and a rookie firefighter who tried to intervene to give Mr. Floyd medical attention.
The jurors are anonymous but face the prospect of their names being released at some point after the trial.
March 31, 2021, 1:11 p.m. ET
Reporting from New York
The court is on a break for lunch until about 1:15 p.m. Central, when the next witness will take the stand.
March 31, 2021, 12:58 p.m. ET
A TV inside Cup Foods shows Christopher Martin, who was working at the store as a clerk on the day that George Floyd died, testifying in the trial of Derek Chauvin.Aaron Nesheim for The New York Times
Customers inside Cup Foods put their shopping on pause on Wednesday morning to watch the Derek Chauvin trial on a television mounted above an A.T.M. The coverage again thrust the store into the spotlight as a former employee took the stand and previously unseen surveillance video from inside the store on the day George Floyd died was shown for the first time.
“This is the first time I’ve seen this footage — it was seized the morning after,” said Mike Abumayyaleh, who owns Cup Foods along with his brothers.
He said he and his employees were paying close attention to the trial. “We’d like to know the outcome,” he said, adding that the phone kept ringing because family and friends wanted to know if he was watching.
But he said he couldn’t say much because the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension “asked us not to comment until after the trial is over.”
A refrigerator display at the front door has fresh vegetables, and wire shelves of snacks — many with 2/$1 stickers on them — line the aisles. Prepared coffee is on offer at a counter with low spinning stools that looks out at what is now known as George Floyd Square. To the right, in the street, is where Mr. Chauvin pinned Mr. Floyd under his knee. The store is a welcome escape from the weather and sometimes the action outside.
“We’ve been able to stay open because of the support of the community,” Mr. Abumayyaleh said between watching the footage and helping customers on the floor and behind the counter, sometimes speaking in Arabic or Spanish.
Across from the television, the deli counter with metal tables and swivel seats was quiet. The offerings include steak and eggs, omelets, gyros and wings. There are coolers with soft drinks and coconut water. A glassed-in corner close to the entrance has tobacco products.
Across the street, activists and volunteers again gathered for a morning meeting under the portico of the former Speedway gas station. It’s a daily routine to gather by a fire ring that is kept burning by volunteers. On Wednesday morning, more than a dozen people gathered to talk and listen. There are regulars and first-timers most mornings.
As the trial got underway Wednesday, the group scattered to find warmth at the nearby Baha’i temple, to run errands or to head to work.
Some said they would keep an eye on the trial on television or on their phone. Others said they hadn’t been tuning in — it was too draining. They would instead listen to recaps or highlights of the day later on.
March 31, 2021, 12:47 p.m. ET
Reporting from Minneapolis
This new witness, Christopher Belfrey, was sitting in a parked car outside of Cup Foods, behind the car that George Floyd got into after leaving the store. This is another witness for the prosecution to help paint the picture of what happened before, and just as, police officers arrived to confront Floyd about buying cigarettes with a fake $20 bill.
March 31, 2021, 12:43 p.m. ET
Christopher Martin, 19, lived above Cup Foods at the time of George Floyd’s arrest and was working at the store on May 25 when Mr. Floyd came in to buy cigarettes. He was the cashier who took Mr. Floyd’s suspected counterfeit bill and notified his manager. The store eventually called the police, even though Mr. Martin said he had offered to reimburse the $20. Mr. Martin told the court he couldn’t believe what happened after police arrived and immediately regretted accepting the $20 bill, because “this could have been avoided.”
I was standing there on the curb, and I was just like: ‘They’re not going to help him. This is what we have to deal with.’
He videotaped part of Mr. Floyd’s arrest, he testified, but said he didn’t keep the footage:
Later on that night, I deleted it because when they picked George up off of the ground, the ambulance went straight onto 38th instead of going straight on Chicago. And if you live in south Minneapolis, the easiest way to get to the hospital would have been straight down Chicago. So that, to me, kind of made it like clear that he was no longer with us. Prosecutor: So you thought he had died? Correct. Prosecutor: Not quite sure why that would, you know, make you delete the video? Oh, I just didn’t want to have to show it to anyone and be questioned.
Mr. Martin said he quit his job at Cup Foods after Mr. Floyd’s death because he didn’t feel safe.
March 31, 2021, 12:16 p.m. ET
Reporting from Minneapolis
We talk a lot about collective trauma and grief in cases like these, and it really is front and center here in the testimony we’ve seen the past two days. Christopher Martin, the first Cup Foods employee to confront George Floyd about the fake $20 bill he used to pay for cigarettes, described standing outside and watching in disbelief as Derek Chauvin restrained him.
March 31, 2021, 12:20 p.m. ET
Reporting from Minneapolis
“Disbelief and guilt,” Martin said, describing a moment in the video when he had his hands on his head as Floyd was pinned to the ground. “If I would have just not taken the bill, this could have been avoided.”
March 31, 2021, 12:07 p.m. ET
Reporting from Minneapolis
You can sense Christopher Martin, the 19-year-old Cup Foods employee on the stand, getting a little emotional as he recalls seeing George Floyd under Derek Chauvin’s knee on the pavement. “George was motionless, limp, and Chauvin seemed very — he was in a resting state, meaning like he just rested his knee on his neck.” Martin actually took a video, he said, but deleted it because he believed Floyd was dead and didn’t want to be questioned about it.
March 31, 2021, 12:08 p.m. ET
Reporting from New York
He also describes calling his mother, who lived next door to Cup Foods, and telling her not to come outside because he didn’t want her to walk into the scene of the arrest.
March 31, 2021, 11:51 a.m. ET
Reporting from Minneapolis
The Cup Foods clerk on the stand right now, Christopher Martin, is going into detail about approaching George Floyd outside the store to confront him about the fake $20 bill he used to pay for cigarettes. It's interesting to see in the video that when the clerk goes to get some co-workers to come out with him, it was a young woman who led the charge. It raises questions about how the police would later approach Floyd, with guns drawn and seemingly worried.
March 31, 2021, 11:32 a.m. ET
Speaking before the jury entered the courtroom on Wednesday morning, Shareeduh Tate, a cousin of George Floyd who occupied the single seat allocated to a family member each day, said she was “pessimistically optimistic” so far.
On Tuesday, the court presented six bystander witnesses, who spoke of their attempts to intervene with the police officers arresting Mr. Floyd as they saw that he was in serious physical distress, and of the trauma of watching him become unresponsive.
Derek Chauvin’s lawyer, Eric J. Nelson, tried several times on Tuesday to portray the crowd as interfering or threatening, but Ms. Tate said the defense was grasping. “I think they had to find something — when you can’t use the facts, you have to do something different,” she said.
Ms. Tate said she closely identified with the witnesses on Tuesday, saying that the 9-year-old girl who spoke off camera was particularly compelling. “I could almost feel like I was living in that moment with them,” she said. “Countless times, I myself have wished I had been able to intervene.”
March 31, 2021, 11:30 a.m. ET
Because of the pandemic, a limited audience has been allowed to watch the trial of Derek Chauvin from inside the courtroom. Among those allowed inside are the judge, the jurors, the witnesses, the court staff, the lawyers and Mr. Chauvin himself. One seat has been set aside for a member of George Floyd’s family and one for Mr. Chauvin’s.
Two more seats in the courtroom have been reserved for reporters and various journalists, including from The New York Times, who take on the role of pool reporter. The journalists who fill these seats will rotate throughout the trial (Shaila Dewan of The Times is on duty Wednesday morning) and are expected to send dispatches to other members of the media around the country to ensure everyone has a look inside the courtroom.
The pool reports from Mr. Chauvin’s trial have included descriptions of masks the jurors are wearing, the demeanor of the jurors and the appearance of younger witnesses who are allowed to testify off-camera.
Pool reporting is commonly used in Washington media circles. When traveling, the president is usually accompanied by a few print and television journalists who represent the entirety of their disciplines and send out a series of short reports throughout the trip to those not on it.
The court took an abrupt break after a juror stood up and waved her hands, seeming flushed and possibly ill.
March 31, 2021, 11:13 a.m. ET
Reporting from Minneapolis
As the court is on a brief break, I just want to reflect on how these images from surveillance video inside Cup Foods are really indicative of what you typically see in urban corner stores. People hanging out and chatting more than actual shopping. Everyone seems to know everyone. And an assortment of a little bit of everything you need — snacks, cellphone equipment, drinks. May 25, 2020, at Cup Foods is really coming to life now, beyond the video of George Floyd's arrest that is all most people know.
March 31, 2021, 11:16 a.m. ET
Reporting from Minneapolis
In showing the footage of George Floyd allegedly buying cigarettes with a fake $20 bill, the prosecution is trying to show how casual, non-violent and minor the crime he's accused of committing was. When police use force in the course of an arrest, it is supposed to be relative to the severity of the what the suspect is accused of doing.
March 31, 2021, 11:10 a.m. ET
Christopher Martin, a teenage store clerk, testified on Wednesday about his encounter with George Floyd using a fake $20 bill at the Cup Foods convenience store on May 25. The witness’s testimony introduced new surveillance footage of the scene and the events leading up to Mr. Floyd’s death.Still image via Court TV
Prosecutors on Wednesday showed surveillance footage of George Floyd laughing and chatting in the Cup Foods convenience store moments before his death in May, providing a glimpse of his actions inside the store for the first time.
The footage was played as Christopher Martin, 19, a clerk at Cup Foods, testified about discovering the fake $20 bill that he said Mr. Floyd used to buy cigarettes inside the store. It was a clerk’s call to 911 over the bill that brought several police officers to the area, where they handcuffed Mr. Floyd and pinned him to the ground outside, and where Derek Chauvin, who is now on trial for murder in Mr. Floyd’s death, was recorded kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s neck.
In the surveillance footage, Mr. Floyd can be seen laughing with employees and shoppers as he moves around the store, at one point holding a banana and at another point pulling out what appears to be some cash. The video was taken about an hour before he was taken away on a stretcher and about two hours before he was pronounced dead at a hospital.
Mr. Martin testified on Wednesday that he had spoken briefly about sports with Mr. Floyd when he entered the store and that Mr. Floyd had appeared to be on a drug of some kind.
“It kind of took him a little long to get to what he was trying to say, so it would appear that he was high,” Mr. Martin said.
After selling Mr. Floyd some cigarettes, Mr. Martin said he realized that Mr. Floyd had given him a bill with some “blue pigment” on it that made him think it was counterfeit. At the time, Mr. Martin said, the store had a policy that clerks who accepted a fake bill had to pay to replace it themselves. He asked a manager what to do and a manager told him to go to Mr. Floyd, who was sitting outside in a car, and ask him to come inside, which Mr. Martin said he tried to do twice.
In the wake of Mr. Floyd’s death, Cup Foods’s owners temporarily closed the store and said they had changed their policies about when employees should call the police. They also received plenty of criticism.
“People were saying we were responsible for his death, that we had blood on our hands, that we’re the reason he died,” Mahmoud Abumayyaleh, an owner of the market, said last summer.
For more than 30 years, Cup Foods had been a neighborhood mainstay but also a source of complaints at the corner of Chicago Avenue and 38th Street. Customers could buy cigarettes, fresh produce and minutes for their cellphones, but some residents also complained about drug deals and violence nearby. Even as the neighborhood began to gentrify and barbershops and clothing stores closed as a cafe and art spaces moved in, Cup Foods — the name originally stood for “Chicago Unbeatable Prices” — did not budge.
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