Last year made history with the most recent pandemic to ever happen, but we also experienced protests against police brutality and police racism. What caused this worldwide protest was the death of an innocent black man, named George Floyd, who had his neck pressed for 9 minutes and 29 seconds by officer Derek Chauvin. Many bystanders filmed this occurrence and urged the officer to get off of him, while Mr. Floyd was yelling for his mother and repeating “I can’t breathe,” which were also his last words.
This brutality occured on May 25, 2020. Eventually, Derek Chuavin and the other three officers were arrested. Chauvin was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter, and the other three officers were charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder.
Eric Nelson, Chauvin’s attorney, claims that the court violated Chauvin’s rights, because the trial venue changed and there was an abundance of pre-trial publicity, which made his trial “unfair”.
Chauvin and Nelson wanted the trial to be at a new venue. One reason for this was that Nelson claims that the court made many errors in the case and said that Chauvin was not given a fair trial. They also claimed that the court had failed to shield the jury from publicity affairs.
To be honest, the media certainly made bad claims about Chauvin. The first reason why is because he quite literally caused mass worldwide protests. If there were any people that opposed the trial on behalf of Chauvin, they would be considered racist.
Those who believe Chauvin should be free would also be deemed as racists and, most likely, as white supremacists. It is wrong to take an innocent man’s life and then make outrageous claims about him. How can you talk so violently about a man who’s just been killed by the people who are supposed to protect us?
At the end, the jury came back with a guilty verdict. Chauvin will spend up to 40 years in prison for the crime he committed. There were cheers about the guilty verdict at the corner of where George Floyd was brutally murdered. The people renamed that part of their town “Floyd Square”, which to be honest, made me cry happy tears.
George Floyd will always be remembered for the fights we had to go through, the yells for justice and the calls to end police brutality. We all contributed to this, and together we all used our voices.
