For people around the world, the killing of George Floyd was about race.
Thursday — race was rarely mentioned, at least explicitly, and lawyers and judges told jurors not to consider it.at the trial of former officers J. Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao that he didn't know if he could be impartial “because of my color,” Magnuson responded: “There is absolutely nothing about the subject of religion, race or ethnicity that’s involved in this case.” The man was later dismissed from serving on the jury.
Chauvin was convicted last year of state murder and manslaughter charges and was sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison. In December, he pleaded guilty to a federal charge of violating Floyd's civil rights, including using unreasonable force, by kneeling on Floyd’s neck even though he was handcuffed and not resisting — a scene a bystander captured on cellphone video.
The trial, which focused mostly on what the men did and didn't do, varies from other high-profile civil rights cases that focus explicitly on race, such as the trial of the three men charged with killing Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia. Those men, who are white, wereTo support the hate crime charges, prosecutors presented text messages and social media posts in which two of the men used racist slurs and made derogatory comments about Black people.
Mark Osler, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, said many judges will try to keep “hot-button” topics from being discussed at trial in hopes of avoiding jury decisions that are based on emotion rather than the facts of a case, determining that race isn't relevant to the charges.He pointed to the federal trial of officers involved in the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles.
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