Wilmington — US prosecutors will rest their case this week against former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd, bolstered by police testimony and emotional eyewitness descriptions of Floyd dying under Chauvin's knee.
“The fact they broke the ‘thin blue line’ — that officers are trying to distance themselves from Chauvin — that's really remarkable,” Levinson said. Since 2005, about 140 nonfederal police officers in the US have been charged with murder or manslaughter resulting from an on-duty shooting, according to data compiled by Philip Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green State University. The conviction rate in those cases is about 46%, though some of those convictions were for lesser offenses.
“The prosecution can say: 'You don't have to take my word for it. You can trust yourself. You can trust your eyes,'" said Levinson.Tearful witnesses reliving the trauma of watching Floyd die while being detained reduced the risk that jurors would become numb to repeated viewing of the video that is central to the case.
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