The defense is making closing arguments in former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin's murder trial in the death of George Floyd.
Chauvin is facing counts of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
Defense lawyer Eric Nelson began his closing arguments by discussing the presumption of innocence and the state's burden of proving Chauvin's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
"Compare the evidence against itself. Test it, challenge it," Nelson said. Start from the point of the presumption of innocence and see how far the state can get, he suggested to the jury — and he argued that the prosecution had failed to meet its burden.
If the state is "missing any one single element, it is a not guilty verdict," Nelson said.
Prosecutors have said that Chauvin's use of force was not reasonable and contrary to his police training. Nelson's arguments focused how "a reasonable police officer" would have handled the situation to make the case that Chauvin acted reasonably.
He pointed to the dispatch report, with its changes in codes and information over the course of a few minutes. It shows "how quickly a situation can change from second to second, minute to minute," Nelson said. "The situation is dynamic and it's fluid."
A reasonable officer would conclude that the amount of force being used by the two other officers was insufficient to overpower Floyd's resistance to get into the car, Nelson said, and decide that additional force was necessary.
Nelson showed different officers' bodycam footage to illustrate the officers' views of what was happening. Chauvin and two other officers struggled with Floyd for a little over a minute.
"A reasonable officer would understand this situation. That Mr. Floyd was able to overcome the efforts of three police officers while handcuffed, with his legs and his body strength," Nelson said.
Nelson showed footage from a city camera mounted on the corner that the 911 dispatcher could see, showing officers struggling to force Floyd into the squad car.
None of the use-of-force experts said anything that happened up to the moment that Floyd was put on the ground was contrary to policy training and tactics, or was unreasonable, Nelson said.
The defense attorney objected to the state's focus on the nine minutes and 29 seconds that Chauvin was on top of Floyd.
"It's not the proper analysis," Nelson said. "Because the nine minutes and 29 seconds ignores the previous 16 minutes and 59 seconds [of the police interaction with Floyd]. It completely disregards it. It says in that moment, at that point, nothing else that happened before should be taken into consideration by a reasonable police officer. It tries to reframe the issue of what a reasonable police officer would do.
"A reasonable police officer would in fact take into consideration the previous 16 minutes and 59 seconds," Nelson said.
This is when critical decision-making comes into play, Nelson said, with officers constantly reevaluating the situation.
He showed bodycam footage while Chauvin has Floyd restrained of officers discussing whether to use a different restraint technique and whether Floyd might be under the influence of drugs.
He also pointed to testimony from a police witness who said sometimes people feign medical problems when arrested because they don't want to go to jail. A reasonable police officer takes that experience into consideration, Nelson said.
The defense lawyer showed footage of other officers responding to Floyd's exclamations of "I can't breathe" with the reply, "You're talking." Nelson said the comments demonstrated the idea that "if you can talk, you can breathe," which he said is a common view among reasonable police officers.
Nelson showed a portion of the video where Floyd's leg suddenly bends. Pulmonologist Martin Tobin testified for the prosecution this was the point that Floyd had an anoxic seizure, suggesting low oxygen levels in his brain.
But Nelson said an officer does not have the same medical training or the time with lots of video of the event to know that. "Does a reasonable police officer even know what an anoxic seizure is? A reasonable police officer will interpret this as at least some form of minimal resistance," Nelson said.
"It's tragic," Nelson repeatedly admitted. "It's tragic. It is tragic."
But Nelson went on to argue that Floyd's death was not the natural result of the defendant's actions, adding that the state had failed to prove otherwise.
Despite testimony from six medical expert witnesses by the prosecution, who all said Floyd died of asphyxiation caused by Chauvin's knee on Floyd's neck, Nelson said that conclusion "flies in the absolute face of reason and common sense."
It is especially difficult to believe, he noted, when reviewing the autopsy report prepared by the Hennepin County medical examiner, Dr. Andrew Baker, one of the prosecution's witnesses. Baker has said he intentionally refrained from watching any of the videos capturing Floyd's arrest because he did not want it to "bias or influence his report," Nelson said.
In the final document, Nelson noted, "[Baker] specifically testified that there was no evidence of asphyxia." Neither was there any physical evidence of hemorrhaging, bruising or life-threatening injuries to Floyd's neck or back, and that when he did view the video, it didn't appear as if Chauvin's knee affected the structures of Floyd's neck because he was still able to move it around.
Nelson reminded jurors of what Baker did find in Floyd's body: an enlarged heart, narrow arteries and low levels of fentanyl and methamphetamine.
Chauvin's attorney conceded that, in the end, Baker ruled Floyd's death as a homicide but, he read aloud to the jury, the medical definition of a homicide classification "is a 'neutral' term and neither indicates nor implies criminal intent."
The prosecution has already laid out its closing arguments to the jury, saying that Chauvin directly caused the death of Floyd last Memorial Day after kneeling on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds.
Floyd was not in perfect health, and he was under stress, prosecutor Steve Schleicher told the court earlier Monday.
"But none of this caused George Floyd's heart to fail. It did not," the prosecutor said. "His heart failed because the defendant's use of force, the 9:29, that deprived Mr. Floyd of the oxygen that he needed, that humans need, to live."
NPR's Merrit Kennedy contributed to this report.
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