Did California Congresswoman Maxine Waters Tamper With The Jury In Derek Chauvin’s Trial?
Friday, April 23, 2021 | Sacramento, CA
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., talks on Capitol Hill in Washington on Tuesday, April 20, 2021, as she waits for the verdict to be read in the murder trial of former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd.
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
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An image shared more than 4,700 times on Facebook claimed that U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, could be “sentenced” for “jury tampering.”
Days before a jury convicted former police officer Derek Chauvin of murdering George Floyd, Waters told protesters in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, that if he wasn’t convicted, they should “get more confrontational.”
George Floyd was presented as a full person, not just a body beneath a police officer’s knee. Derek Chauvin, who was convicted in his murder, remained an aloof figure.
MINNEAPOLIS â âHis name,â the prosecutor said, âwas George Perry Floyd Jr.â
These seven words were the first the jury heard from Steve Schleicher, a prosecutor, in his closing argument in the trial of Derek Chauvin. With them Mr. Schleicher, standing in a bland Minneapolis courtroom, answered a call from the spirited streets 18 floors below, where protesters, for nearly a year, had been shouting a simple demand: Say His Name.
Over the course of the three-week trial that ended last week with a murder conviction for Mr. Chauvin, a white former police officer whose victim was Black, race was rarely an explicit topic of discussion. And yet the presence of the Black Lives Matter movement, which demands that all Black people be seen for their full humanity, was felt throughout the proceedings.
Updated 4:03 AM ET, Sat April 24, 2021 (CNN)Images and soundbites from the Derek Chauvin trial will linger in people s memories for years. But there is one heart-wrenching image that stands above the rest. It was the look of indifference in Chauvin s eyes on May 25, 2020, as he casually drained the life out of George Floyd. That was as chilling as his knee on Floyd s neck. And what it represents could pose the biggest challenge to broader police reforms ahead.
That look was freeze-framed in what the prosecution dryly called Exhibit 17. It shows Chauvin, the White Minneapolis police officer who was found guilty on all three counts in Floyd s death, glancing at a crowd of onlookers while bearing down on an unconscious Floyd, who is handcuffed and pinned face-first to the pavement.
It shouldnât have been an open question whether a police officer could kneel on a manâs neck for more than nine minutes, snuffing out his life, with complete or even partial impunity. We shouldnât have had to hold our collective breath from the moment it was announced there was a verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial to the moment that verdict was read. This shouldnât feel so much like a victory.
But it does. The jurors in Chauvinâs trial trusted their eyes and ears. They saw the video of George Floyd pinned to the hard pavement, they heard him plead again and again that he couldnât breathe, and they held Chauvin fully accountable.