The final three weeks of the Derek Chauvin trial supplied jurors with a complete understanding of George Floyd’s last moments, pieced collectively from hours of video and witness testimony. But there may be one a part of the case that legal professionals for either side have spent little time on: the $20 bill that brought the police to the scene in the first place.
Mr. Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer accused of killing Mr. Floyd on May 25, was one in all 4 officers who took half in the arrest, which started when a clerk for the Cup Foods comfort retailer referred to as 911 to report that Mr. Floyd had used a pretend $20 bill to purchase cigarettes.
In opening statements, a prosecutor confirmed jurors {a photograph} of two $20 payments that had the similar serial quantity, suggesting that they have been counterfeit. One of the payments was ripped in two, an indication that the different one might have been the bill that Mr. Floyd used to purchase cigarettes, although prosecutors didn’t focus on the {photograph} in additional element.
“The police officers could have written him a ticket, and let the courts sort it out,” Jerry W. Blackwell, the prosecutor, advised jurors throughout opening statements.
In his closing arguments for the prosecution, Steve Schleicher again brought up the reason for the arrest. “This was a call about a counterfeit $20 bill,” he said. “All that was required was some compassion.”
Mr. Chauvin’s lawyer, Eric J. Nelson, has spent little time discussing the bill, in what may very well be an indication that he believes it might be unproductive to hyperlink Mr. Chauvin’s response to Mr. Floyd’s supposed offense. Instead, he has targeted on Mr. Floyd’s actions after the police arrived.
The Minneapolis Police Department has additionally said little about the bill since its initial report in May, which famous that police officers had been responding to a “forgery in progress.” A spokesman for the division referred questions about the bill to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the state company that led the investigation into Mr. Floyd’s dying. Officials at the company declined to reply a number of questions about the bill, saying they might not focus on proof whereas a court docket case was ongoing and an investigation remained open.
Christopher Martin, the teenage clerk who accepted the $20 bill from Mr. Floyd, testified on the third day of the trial that he shortly acknowledged it as pretend as a result of it had an uncommon blue pigmentation.
Mr. Martin, 19, said a pal of Mr. Floyd’s had are available in earlier and in addition tried to use a pretend $20 bill however was rebuffed. Mr. Martin said he thought Mr. Floyd, in contrast to his pal, had not realized that the bill was pretend. “I thought I’d be doing him a favor” by accepting it, Mr. Martin said.
He testified that he advised a supervisor at the retailer about the pretend bill and that the supervisor advised him to ask Mr. Floyd to come again inside. When Mr. Floyd twice refused, the supervisor had one other worker name 911. Mr. Martin said he later felt “disbelief and guilt” that his actions had led to the police confrontation with Mr. Floyd.
Nearly a yr after Mr. Floyd’s dying, it stays unclear the place the bill got here from and whether or not Mr. Floyd dedicated the crime that brought police officers to the scene.
