Chauvin “had to know” he was murdering George Floyd: Prosecutor

Officer Derek Chauvin “had to know” he was pressing the life out of George Floyd as the Black man cried up and over that he couldn’t breathe and finally fell silent, a prosecutor at the trial end trial told the jury.

“Use your common sense. Consider your eyes. What you saw, you saw,” Steve Schleicher said, leading to the bystander video of Floyd closed to the pavement.

Chauvin attorney Eric Nelson countered by asking that Chauvin did what any “reasonable” police would have made after seeing himself in a “progressive” and “fluid” situation, including a large man fighting with three officers. What are the defence and prosecutions points?

The duelling discussions got underway, with Minneapolis on edge after Floyd's death last spring set off protests in the city and across the US that at times turned violent.

The defence disputes that Chauvin answered honestly but that the 46-year-old Floyd died of heart attack and illegal drug use, not Chauvin's actions.

Prosecutor Jerry Blackwell had the final word, offering to the state's rebuttal argument. The prosecutor said that the questions about the use of force and cause of death are “so simple that a child can understand it.”

“A child did not understand it, when the 9-year-old girl said, ‘Get off of him,’” Blackwell stated, referring to a young eyewitness who opposed to what she saw. "That’s how uncomplicated it was. `Get off of him.' Common sense.”

Under the law, police are given some freedom to use violence, and their actions are thought to be assessed according to what a “reasonable officer” in the same position would have done — a point the defence stressed repeatedly.

Attorneys and authors have used the terms "right" or "unreasonable" often at the trial.

Chauvin's defence attorney put the concept at the centre of his closing argument Monday - the last time spectators will hear from him before they begin deliberating.

This is no accident as the idea of reasonableness has been crucial at trials of police ever since the landmark Graham v. Connor ruling 32 years ago by the US Supreme Court. Chauvin's lawyer asked the jury to find Chauvin "not guilty of all counts."