The trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin began yesterday with opening statements from the prosecution and defense, as well as witness testimonies. GBH Morning Edition host Joe Mathieu spoke with Northeastern University law professor and GBH News legal analyst Daniel Medwed about what comes next. The transcript below has been edited for clarity.
Joe Mathieu: We talked about jury selection last week. Before we look too far ahead, I wanted to ask you what you found with the final composition here and whether this discussion over finding a fair and impartial jury was the right one to have.
Daniel Medwed: Well, it looks like the judge did a fairly good job managing the process and selecting 12 jurors plus three alternates. For one thing, it was an extensive multi-week vetting process, starting with a 16 page questionnaire and culminating in prolonged questioning of every prospective juror. The jury is quite diverse in terms of race, gender and age. Of those original 15 jurors — the 12 plus three alternates — there's one Black woman, three Black men, two women who identify as multiracial, three white men and six white women — though one of the white jurors has dropped out. Notably, seven of those 15 are under the age of 40. So at least on paper, the demographics look fairly good for the prosecution, given that, statistically, older white men tend to skew in favor of law enforcement and might, in theory, be more amenable to Chauvin's defense here. Appearances matter in cases like this, and having a diverse jury, I think, will go a long way to the perception of legitimacy.
Mathieu: So fair and impartial on paper at least. How about in practice, Daniel? Appearances can be deceiving.
Medwed: Oh, that's absolutely right. Individual personalities, of course, often play a greater role in jury dynamics than anything to do with demographics. We have no idea who the strongest personality in the room will be, who will lead the conversation, where that conversation will go. I often like to say that transparency is the coin of the realm in the American trial. We have these open and public trials and, in fact, this was all live streamed from Minneapolis yesterday. But transparency has no currency in the deliberation rooms. Those jury deliberations are shrouded in secrecy and I think for good reason. We want jurors to speak their minds [and] to vote their consciences without fear of too much oversight and monitoring.
Mathieu: A lot of people were talking about the way both sides played this, including the defense walking through some unexpected stages here. What was your reaction to what you heard?
Medwed: Well, I think opening statements are all about that old adage, "first impressions are lasting impressions," or what psychologists would say "priming." You want to prime the jury to be in your favor. And I think both sides tried with varying degrees of success to do that. I think the prosecution was quite successful, especially because it relied on the full bystander video — all nine minutes and 29 seconds of Chauvin putting his knee on the neck of George Floyd. It's often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. What are nine minutes and 29 seconds of abject horror worth in terms of searing this image into the minds of the jury? I think the defense inevitably has a tough row to hoe, as reflected in the opening statement. This isn't an innocence case; Chauvin is the guy who did this. It's also not a case that's likely to elicit sympathy. You can't really humanize him, so instead, all you have here is a reasonable doubt defense to poke holes at the prosecution case. That's what the opening statement alluded to. It looks like the defense is going to target cause of death and they're going to basically say that because of Floyd's underlying medical conditions and drug use, that's why he died, not Chauvin's behavior.
Mathieu: The prosecution had a chance to put on its first three witnesses, Daniel. Does that tell us anything about what comes next or what kind of tone that they will strike?
Medwed: I think the prosecution, like good prosecutors everywhere, are trying to tell a story and they're telling the story of that moment through the eyes of people who observed it. I thought the first witness, the dispatcher, was a little bit unusual as an opening gambit simply because she had watched the tape from a city surveillance camera. But I think it suggests that there will be more eyewitness testimony before the prosecution moves into the inevitable medical testimony.
