KEITH ELLISON
Keith Ellison (D-MN) is a pretty smooth dude, a well-spoken and understated 57-year-old former US representative from Minnesota’s 5th congressional district (2002–2019).
He spent sixteen years as a criminal defense lawyer and became the 30th Attorney General of the Land of 10,000 Lakes in 2019.
Governor Tim Walz appointed Ellison the lead prosecutor in the Derek Chauvin case, eschewing local county attorneys in his favor.
The idea was to give the prosecution the widest swath of independence possible.
Ellison assembled a team of fourteen attorneys who worked feverishly for eleven months, in an effort to compellingly explain 9 minutes and 29 seconds.
Derek Chauvin was convicted on April 20, 2021 of second-degree murder; third-degree murder; and second-degree manslaughter in the May 25, 2020 George Floyd Minneapolis police custody death.
The 12-member jury found Chauvin, 45, guilty, after deliberating for 10 hours.
The conviction triggered waves of relief and reflection, not only in Minneapolis, but throughout the country and around the world, marking a milestone in the fraught racial history of the United States and offering a strong rebuke of law enforcement’s treatment of Black Americans.
In a confrontation captured on video, Chauvin, a veteran white police officer, pushed his knee into the neck of Floyd, a 46-year-old handcuffed Black man, for more than nine minutes.
Chauvin and 3 fellow officers were attempting to arrest Floyd, who was accused of using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes at a neighborhood grocery store.
In the video, Floyd can be heard crying out for his mother and saying repeatedly that he could not breathe.
“It was a murder in the full light of day and it ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism,” President Joe Biden asserted in televised remarks.
“This can be a giant step forward in the march toward justice in America,” he said.
The presiding judge, Peter Cahill, who has cited “aggravating factors,” and is known in legal circles as one who “tries very hard to do the right thing,” is charged with imposing the sentence on Friday (June 25).
Chauvin faces the maximum of 40 years in prison.
Ellison told reporters that the verdict was a “first step towards justice,” and should serve as a launching pad for police reform.
“We need to use this verdict as an inflection point,” he contended.
In an in-depth interview with Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes, which aired on June 20th, Ellison had plenty more to say.
Much of it was infused with doses of compassion for both Floyd and Chauvin.
Compassion for Chauvin?
“I’m not in any way wavering on my responsibility…but he’s a human being…George Floyd was a human being…people who are defendants in our criminal system…they’re human beings…I’m not going to ever forget that everybody in this process is a person…
People are human beings.”
While convinced that Chauvin deserved to be convicted, Ellison felt “a little bad for the defendant.”
But he was quick to point out that the guilty verdict was what “we were aiming for the whole time.”
He conceded that the “State never wanted revenge against Chauvin…just accountability.”
Referencing the horrific Rodney King incident of the early-’90s — also filmed, interestingly, this time from a balcony across the street — Ellison reflected.
“I remember what happened in the Rodney King case when I was a pretty young man, young lawyer.
And I remember how devastated I felt when I heard that the jury acquitted those officers…
Whenever an officer is charged with an offense, particularly when the victim is a person of color, it’s just rare that there’s accountability.”
And then he expounded lamentably, with a nod toward history, sociology and psychology.
“In our society there is a social norm that killing certain kinds of people is more tolerable than killing other kinds of people…Black people end up enduring harsh treatment from law enforcement, and other folks doing the exact same thing, just don’t.”
When asked by Pelley if he would characterize this as a hate crime, Ellison thoughtfully demurred.
Hate crimes, he explained, present an explicit motive and a bias, and the prosecution had no evidence that Chauvin factored in George Floyd’s race, as he did what he did.
Ellison and his team would have needed a witness to testify under oath that racist vitriol was heard, spewing from Chauvin during the incident, and they just did not have that.
What they did have was recorded evidence of Chauvin’s demeanor and body language.
As the building and increasingly uneasy crowd was demanding that Chauvin release Floyd, he stared back defiantly, as if to say, “You don’t tell me what to do…I do what I want to do…You people have no control over me…I’m going to show you…”
And he showed 13 video cameras and the universe.
Ellison’s prosecutorial strategy in general was sound and rooted in the notion that he “was never convinced that we were going to win this case, until we heard the verdicts of guilty.”
His grasp of history copiously informed his position.
No police officer had ever been convicted of second-degree murder in the history of the state of Minnesota.
He insisted, if not demanded, that the team proceed with the case, as if no video evidence existed.
“We never thought we could play the video and sit down…we made sure the witnesses could carry it…”
And they put on a full case, calling 45 witnesses over three weeks, including Minneapolis Chief of Police Medaria Arradondo, and expert witness Dr. Martin J. Tobin, a renowned pulmonologist and leading authority on the complexities of the simple breath.
According to Ellison though, it was witness Charles McMillian who sealed the case for the prosecution.
The 61-year-old McMillian did not know George Floyd.
But after being sworn in, he was seated and he cried on the witness stand.
Removing his glasses, he wiped his eyes with a fistful of tissues, and cried some more, until he was finished.
The jury was seeing the humanity that never seemed to register in the vacant eyes of Chauvin.
There was empathy in the faces of the jurors; they could feel the anguish and the pain the witnesses felt.
They saw the tears.
Several jurors had advanced degrees.
One was a registered nurse.
In a unique twist, they were overwhelmingly under the age of 40.
Composed equally of whites and people of color, each faction was diverse in its own way.
The white jurors were both working-class and highly educated.
Two African-Americans, two African immigrants and two people of mixed race (African-American and white) represented the jurors of color.
Their identities were protected.
That, along with the motive for the murder, remain two mysteries of the trial.
But there was another.
Why would Derek Chauvin commit murder, or even assault, if he knew he was being recorded?
Ellison’s answer once again cites history.
Police are not held accountable.
History was on Chauvin’s side, and he knew it.
Ultimately, if he was thinking at all, he thought he would skate.
To Ellison, George Floyd bore no responsibility — zero — for what happened to him that day.
He was unarmed; he never threatened a soul; and he didn’t lash out at anyone in a physical manner.
He was claustrophobic and anxiety-ridden; he could not bring himself to get into that cruiser.
It is Ellison’s simple contention, that police can not be allowed to use deadly force on people just having “a bad day.”
It creates “a lethal situation.”
And how could Chauvin justify being on him 3 minutes after he had no pulse; not rendering CPR; or ignoring Floyd’s pleas for his life, the victim saying no fewer than 27 times during the ordeal, that he could not breathe?
The official police department statement in the immediate aftermath of the tragic Floyd incident, pegged the cause of death as a “medical emergency.”
Would we have ever known the truth without these videos?
Ellison himself has real doubts about that; the videos were indispensable pieces of the case, but they had to be used judiciously and in concert with credible witness testimony.
Which they were.
Hearing the word, “guilty” evoked in Ellison “gratitude,” “humility,” “followed by, I’ll say, a certain sense of satisfaction…”
But reality pervades.
It’s just a step.
What does this verdict change?
Does it change anything?
We don’t know…we’re in the middle of history right now…
There are no inevitabilities in it.
It’s up to the world.
Progress rolls like a brick — it must be flipped over and over.
It takes time.
We must make a consistent effort every day to protect the vulnerable and to reform ourselves.
Each person must work to make the change.
We all know that in our hearts.
Will we do it?
Keith Ellison thinks it’s important for the court to not go light or heavy.
The sentence should be tailored to the circumstances of the case and not necessarily designed to send a message.
But were a message to be sent, perhaps it would read like this:
No revenge against Derek Chauvin, just accountability.
[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in June 2021.]
