Nearly a year after a bystander’s video of George Floyd’s death sent shock waves across the world, prosecutors and defense attorneys face a seemingly insurmountable task in the trial of the officer charged with killing him: choosing an impartial jury.
Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday in the murder and manslaughter case against ex-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill’s 18th-floor courtroom. By the time the prospective jurors arrive for questioning, the state’s prosecutors and defense attorney Eric Nelson will have mined their 14-page questionnaires in search of anything that indicates overt bias.