The jury took only 10 hours to deliberate. They asked no questions of the court. They ultimately found police officer Derek Michael Chauvin guilty of unintentional second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for killing George Floyd on May 25, 2020.
The verdicts were not surprising. After all, despite Chauvin’s lawyers’ attempts to convince the jury and world that our eyes lied to us, we all witnessed Chauvin rest his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes as the poor man cried out that he couldn’t breathe, begged for his life and called for his dead mother.
Understandably, civil rights luminaries, Black people and their allies celebrated the result of Chauvin’s trial all over the country because they’ve seen so many police officers kill Black people and walk away unscathed. Chauvin being cuffed and marched out of the courtroom was righteous, but let us not overreact.