The trial of ex-policeman Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd is cinematic. As soon as it opened on Monday March 29 in Minneapolis, one of the prosecutors presented in its entirety the video, filmed by a young passerby, of the agony of more than nine minutes of the 46-year-old African-American, under the knee of the white policeman, on May 25 in Minneapolis. The cornerstone of the prosecution, the video was then replayed extract by extract to accompany the interrogations. The very one where we hear him repeat “I can not breathe”before losing consciousness.
Having gone viral, these images had sparked a historic wave of protests across the country, helping to make Floyd’s death a symbol of police brutality against black people in the United States. “You can believe your eyes: it’s a homicide, it’s a murder”, insisted prosecutor Jerry Blackwell in his opening statement.
No less than seven other videos of the scene, filmed by other witnesses, were also introduced as evidence by the prosecution. During this first week of the trial, the prosecutors also showed the jurors CCTV images, in the street or inside the Cup Foods convenience store, where we see Floyd chatting with customers and buying cigarettes before leave without incident, a few minutes before his fatal arrest. This is where he allegedly passed out a counterfeit $20 bill, leading one of the employees to contact the police.
“Do not pull !”
Finally, the videos from the “bodycams” of the police, these cameras fixed on the uniform of the agents at the level of the torso, including that of Derek Chauvin, were also broadcast. We see the police approaching Floyd, seated at the wheel of his car. “Do not pull !”, he begs in tears, while one of them aims at him with his weapon, without having explained the reason for his arrest. Floyd appears confused, panicked. He is handcuffed and resists entering the police vehicle, repeating that he is claustrophobic.
Again the same scene, this time from the point of view of the police: he is pinned to the ground, the officers sitting on him to immobilize him. Out of breath, after having invoked his mother, George Floyd is silent and then freezes. “I think he lost consciousness,” said one of the policemen. When another affirms that he does not perceive any pulse, Derek Chauvin, indifferent, maintains his position. One of the prosecution witnesses, a 61-year-old bystander, broke down in tears on Wednesday at the footage. He is not the only one: during the first week of the trial and in particular in front of these striking videos, many witnesses sobbed. A member of the jury became unwell and had to leave for a while, putting the proceedings on hold.
Taken end to end, these images show, from all angles, on either side of the police vehicle, very close to Floyd’s body or from the sidewalk, the minutes leading up to his arrest, until his loss of consciousness and the arrival of help. Like shot-reverse shots, these videos present an extremely effective reconstitution of the scene. Every actor and spectator of which found themselves, at some point this week, in the courtroom of Minneapolis.
mise en abyme
Reinforcing the visual abyss, the hearings of the Chauvin trial are broadcast live on television, a first for a trial in Minnesota, due to the coronavirus pandemic. The public can therefore attend the interrogations remotely, but also has access to the same images as the jurors: they are directly embedded in the video stream of the court. The prosecutors use effects on the videos – zooms out or in, shot by shot, possibility for witnesses to underline certain details via a touch screen…
“Ten years ago, it was rare for a court case to present video evidence, beyond a statement by the accused, recalled in 2016 the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), a public agency of the United States Department of Justice. Today, with the increased use of security cameras by businesses or homeowners, cameras on board patrol cars or [fixées sur les uniformes] security forces, and those filmed by the public’s smartphones, it becomes unusual to see a trial that does not include video evidence”, present according to the estimates “in at least 80%” criminal cases in the United States. The BJA insists on the potential “extremely powerful” of this video evidence.
In recent decades, US courts’ use of such video evidence has grown exponentially. “Imagine the number of videos that will be presented as evidence during the trials of the participants in the assault on the Capitol”, notes Neal Feigenson, a law professor at Quinnipiac University. “They have become very prominent in many court cases, including those involving excessive use of force by police against black men,” according to the academic, whose research focuses on the use of visual and multimedia evidence in courts and their impact on court decisions.
Précédent Rodney King
The first such case, with video at the heart of a police brutality case, dates back to 1991 and the beating of Rodney King by LAPD officers. The scene had been filmed with a camcorder by a neighbor, alerted by the noise. “Cameras of all kinds have since proliferated, meaning it’s more than likely that there are not one, but many videos of such scenes”explains Neal Feigenson.
Examples have not been lacking in recent years. The death of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old African American killed by a police officer on a subway platform in Oakland in 2009, was filmed by several cell phones, including passengers. That of Philando Castile, a 32-year-old African-American killed in 2016 during a traffic stop in Minnesota, was captured by the on-board camera of the vehicle of the policeman who shot him, and the scene, filmed by the companion de Castile, alongside him in the car, and posted on Facebook. That same year, the death of Terence Crutcher, a 40-year-old African American in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was captured from an overhead police helicopter and from the on-board cameras of three police cruisers.
Boston University law professor Jessica Silbey calls “truth evidence” (truth evidence) these video elements and their use in US courts, which have “tendency to trump all other forms of evidence, testimony or documents”she wrote in a 2010 article. It’s a double-edged sword for verdicts that must be obtained unanimously from the popular jury.
Reinterpretation of facts
“What different people see in the same video depends on their prior beliefs and attitudes, note Feigenson. And the video itself may be subject to reinterpretation by the opposing party.. During the trial of the LAPD officers in the Rodney King case in 1992, a defense expert replayed the video of the beating shot by shot. Justifying each blow of the stick, kick or punch of the police, as being the appropriate response, and in accordance with the rules of the forces of order, the gestures “threatening” the King.
“What different people see in the same video depends on their prior beliefs and attitudes. And the video itself may be subject to reinterpretation by the opposing party.”
— Neal Feigenson, law professor at Quinnipiac University
“The proliferation of this video evidence has changed criminal prosecutions, generally in a very positive way, continues Neal Feigenson. Starting with the fact that these cases, which would not have existed in the absence of video evidence, are now taken seriously, to the point of being the subject of more thorough investigations, sometimes leading to indictments, therefore to trials and, sometimes, convictions.” The very existence of these documents acts outside the courts, generating a certain political pressure on prosecutors to investigate, indict and bring to justice. “But they can also aggravate the disconnect between the general public and the verdict that the justice system renders in the end,” acknowledges Feigenson.
Videos or not, convictions of police officers are extremely rare in the United States. The officers who beat King were acquitted. “The juxtaposition between the horrific scene captured by a camcorder and the acquittal, by jurors, of the police officers, was a catalyst for the Los Angeles riots in 1992”, recalls historian Felicia Angeja Viator, a professor at San Francisco State University, in a column published in early March by the Washington Post.
Acquittal
These videos made it possible to “gather an unprecedented level of care and compassion for the victims of police brutality, she writes. But it wasn’t enough to guarantee meaningful change.” in the American justice system. Three decades later, “deaths at the hands of the police are frequently filmed”most “the existence of video evidence has ceased to inspire high hopes for police accountability”, she regrets. The cop who strangled Eric Garner, who died minutes later in 2014 in New York City, hasn’t even been charged. He was only fired from the police, five years after the fact. The man who shot Philando Castile was charged with manslaughter and later acquitted. The videos of these brutalities, as precise, multiple and overwhelming as they are in the eyes of the general public, are in no way a guarantee of condemnation.
Derek Chauvin’s trial will even be entitled to a flashback. On the eve of the opening of the hearings, the defense obtained from the judge that he authorize it to discuss a 2019 confrontation between George Floyd and the Minneapolis police. A victory for Chauvin’s lawyers, who want to convince the jurors that Floyd died of an overdose of opiates and not asphyxiated by the police officer. To show the African American’s attitude and physical condition, they are expected to feature a two-minute video clip of his arrest at the time in the coming days, captured by police bodycams.