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Protesters with a picture of George Floyd
Photo: Ocatvio Jones / REUTERS
The hearing, which will take weeks, was not even an hour old when the prosecutor had the infamous and barely tolerable video shown in the courtroom.
It's quiet in the hall, while the screen shows how the policeman Derek Chauvin, almost contentedly, bobs his knee on the neck of a person who is handcuffed on the asphalt and ignores their pleading and pleading, until George Floyd is dead in nine minutes and 29 seconds.
Derek Chauvin is sitting here in the courtroom on the 18th floor of a government building in Minneapolis, maybe ten feet from the screen.
The jury looks back and forth between the Derek Chauvin on canvas, who is apparently just killing a person, and the person in the room, wearing a blue surgical mask, a light blue shirt and a dark blue tie: What does someone like that do in the face of his own horror ?
He has put a pad of yellow paper in front of him and made notes.
He writes without a break with a motionless face.
What does he discover in the recordings that he finds so captivating?
Does he write down what he did wrong in the clip, technically or morally?
Does he write you shouldn't kill?
Even on later days of the trial, as soon as video material of Floyd's arrest is shown and witnesses regularly and emotionally break down completely, Chauvin writes in his pad as if he had to quickly finish an exam.
When you can see how George Floyd stops moving and breathing, when he suddenly falls silent and the paramedics who have been called can no longer find a pulse, heave his lifeless body onto a bar - writes Derek Chauvin, 45 years old, former city police officer Minneapolis, still.
This man does not seem to have any empathy, now he is charged with murder and bailed out for a million dollars.
At the end of this trial, Derek Chauvin could be sentenced to decades in prison.
This video can't lie
Of course, the video is the main evidence of the prosecution.
Actually, one thinks, it doesn't take much more for a conviction.
This video can't lie.
What you see in it is so clearly evil and inhuman that it should be difficult to discuss it away.
On the other hand, completely different things have already been discussed away in American courts, and they always had to do with skin color: the beating orgy against Rodney King in 1992, acquittal for four police officers in Los Angeles, there was also a clear video there.
Or, of course, the acquittal of OJ Simpson, the football star who allegedly killed his wife.
The trial was broadcast live on television at the time and showed how manipulable American jury trials can be.
America has now passed the first week of this difficult criminal trial.
It's been a tough week.
Depending on the outcome, the process could become a milestone for the peace of mind of a broken nation, comparable to the civil rights trials of the 1960s.
But the trial has to take place under difficult conditions, in a city where the trauma of May 25th of last year can still be felt and seen every day.
Difficult processes thrive on transparency and traceability so that people can see that there is no cheating.
However, the Covid regulations require that very few people can watch in the courtroom.
A judge, the defendant, two defense attorneys, three prosecutors, a minimum of court clerks, the Minnesota attorney general, a survivor of George Floyd.
There is also a chair for a family member of Derek Chauvin, but no one has come so far.
And finally, exactly two journalists are allowed in the courtroom at the same time, one for radio and television and one for print and online.
We at print and online are a total of eleven journalists - from the »New York, Times« to the news agencies Reuters and AP to local websites and daily newspapers and SPIEGEL as the only German representative.
One of the eleven of us is always in the courtroom, taking notes for everyone else, while the rest of us sit in a government building across the street and follow what is going on in the courtroom on four screens.
Every day there is a change.
Judge Peter Cahill had made a spectacular decision under these circumstances before the trial.
Video recordings from the trial may be shown publicly, as at the trial against OJ Simpson, which became a media tribunal in 1995 for this reason.
And even these days America sits in front of the news broadcasts in the evening, but even in the morning the images of Floyd's death flicker through the living room and even the bars that are open here from different angles from different videos.
The nation watches witnesses lose their temper almost every day when they testify.
Perhaps this confrontation brings catharsis, but it also seems a dangerous course.
American cities were on fire after the video of George Floyd's murder last summer went around the world.
The tracks can still be seen here in Minneapolis, where it all happened outside the Cup Foods general store.
At the end of May, the video sparked the largest anti-racism protests the US had seen since the civil rights movement in the 1960s: a white policeman killing a black man with bare hands for no apparent reason.
“I can't breathe”, Floyd's last words, heard on the video, have already been the slogan of a whole generation.
If Derek Chauvin were acquitted here, what would happen would be unpredictable.
The people of Minneapolis seem to be scared of it, and so do the authorities.
The entire Hennepin County Government Center in downtown Minneapolis, where a courtroom was built on the 18th floor especially for this trial, is fenced in with NATO wire.
Armored vehicles of the military are positioned in front of the entrances, soldiers with face masks and rifles stand by.
"America is on trial" - the whole country is on trial - the Reverend Al Sharpton had shouted into the cold air in front of the court an hour before the trial began.
He has been one of the best-known and most colorful black civil rights activists for 50 years and came specially from New York to stand in front of this government building and warn America.
Everything would be at stake if in a few weeks Derek Chauvin left these buildings a free man.
But America, he said, doesn't like convicting cops.
"America is on trial"
"Believe your eyes" - just believe your eyes - was what Jerry Blackwell said to the jury in the prosecution's opening statement.
Blackwell is a well-known corporate lawyer who typically represents large corporations against claims for damages.
Here he works pro bono for the prosecutor, side by side with prosecutor Matthew Frank.
As an African American, Blackwell said it was important not to let someone like Chauvin get away with it.
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Upside down US flag with the names of those killed by police violence in front of the courthouse
Photo: imageSPACE / action press
Eric Nelson sits on the other side for defense.
He is one of a dozen Minneapolis criminal defense attorneys who specialize in defending police officers.
He's not a star lawyer from the East Coast or Los Angeles as they tend to appear in high-profile litigation like this.
They might have told Chauvin that the most important thing in a jury trial is to somehow come across as human in front of the twelve jurors instead of fully describing a yellow block like a sociopath.
The prosecution and defense had struggled for almost three weeks to select the right jurors.
The prosecution needed African-American or progressive jurors, the perfect juror for the defense was white and conservative.
Defense attorney Nelson must somehow manage to divert the jury's attention from this video.
Instead, he would like to point out the history of the recordings and details that are not to be seen in them but are important: on the imperfect biography of George Floyd, for example, on the fact that he had already been arrested and on the fact that fentanyl and methamphetamine were found in his blood at autopsy.
On his erratic, almost psychotic behavior before the arrest, that he was high, a wild, strong man, almost six feet tall, extremely muscular.
And above all, Nelson wants to show that while the video may look very violent, it doesn't reveal the cause of death.
Floyd's heart stopped beating because his arteries were blocked and he consumed a significant amount of crystal meth and fentanyl, an opioid and anesthetic for elephants.
On the first four days of the negotiations, Nelson does not seem to get very far with this interpretation.
The prosecution first presents the direct eyewitnesses of the crime to the jury.
It is that group of almost ten passers-by who stood around Chauvin and were seized by increasing horror.
Some filmed, others tried to influence the four police officers to let go of Floyd.
They are young and old, men and women, black and white, and the totality of their amazingly consistent descriptions can be used to measure the trauma that is felt every moment when you leave the courthouse here, where you are right outside at the NATO wire fence Chained a woman in protest of police violence.
The eyewitnesses
Among the strongest eyewitnesses is a firefighter who happened to drop by off duty and kept telling Chauvin and the three other cops (who will get their own trial in August) to take Floyd's pulse.
As a trained paramedic, she pleaded to be allowed to provide first aid and was turned away.
A former professional mixed martial arts fighter also came by who messed with the police, insulted them and, as an expert on grab bars, repeatedly pointed out to Chauvin how dangerous it was to kneel on someone's neck.
In his desperation, the man called the police himself at some point.
There is the operator at the emergency call center who followed the scene through a surveillance camera and wondered if her screen was frozen when, minutes later, Chauvin was still kneeling on the man.
At some point she called a supervisor.
She didn't want to be a "snitch," but something was wrong with what the cops were doing.
And finally, Darnelle Frazier, now 18: Without her, Derek Chauvin would probably not be in this courtroom today.
She filmed the video on her cell phone that went around the world.
When it was being played again in court, and Chauvin was again making manic notes, she began to cry.
And then she said something that perfectly summed up the extent of the process: “When I look at George Floyd, I see my father.
I see my brothers.
I see my cousins, my uncles, because they are all black.
And I watch that (video) and I see how one of them could have been. "
"When I look at George Floyd, I see my father."
Darnelle Frazier, eyewitness
So far, Derek Chauvin has remained silent in the courtroom, his voice has not been heard once.
On Wednesday he was heard for the first time speaking on video from his body camera in the courtroom.
The scene takes place minutes after George Floyd died under his knee.
An eyewitness, a 61-year-old African American who had lived in the neighborhood all his life, confronts him with what just happened.
Chauvin has a surprisingly bright voice and actually replies, “We had to get this guy under control.
He's a huge guy.
Looked like he was up to something. "
And Rodney Floyd, George's brother, sits outside in the court hall on the 18th floor during a break.
He's in the courtroom for the Floyd family this Wednesday.
His face is tearful.
He said through his tears that he couldn't see much of what was shown in court that day.
