Defense expected to begin presentation Tuesday as prosecution appears to near conclusion

Frame by frame, Stoughton reviewed footage from the scene, testifying that when Floyd said “thank you” to police after they stopped forcing him into the police car, use of force was not necessary. He said it was “not appropriate” to restrain someone on the ground if that person is cooperating with the police.

Once Chauvin’s knee was on Floyd’s neck, Floyd uttered “I can’t breathe” 27 times until he was no longer able to talk, Stoughton said. At no point, from when the use of force began until Chauvin took his knee off Floyd’s neck, was the use of force reasonable, he testified.

“Someone who is passing out obviously does not present a threat,” he said.

During the cross-examination, Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, asked about how reasonable officers could juggle distractions and other factors that are difficult to assess — alluding, as he had with other experts, to the fact that Stoughton was not in a dangerous situation when analyzing the body camera footage.

Nelson suggested that Chauvin had heightened concern about Floyd because other police officers had responded and they were “struggling.”

Stoughton said that was incorrect, pointing out that Floyd was in handcuffs when Chauvin responded to the scene.

George Floyd’s size, his history of drug use and concerned bystanders gathering at the scene did not present threats to police, according to Seth Stoughton, a nationally recognized use-of-force expert.

Expected to be the prosecution’s final witness, Stoughton, a former police officer, reiterated points made by previous witnesses about how Chauvin’s use of force against Floyd was unprovoked, analyzing what risks or threats a “reasonable officer” would react to based on body camera footage from the scene and the standard set by the Supreme Court decision Graham v. Connor. He concluded that “no reasonable officer would have believed that that was an appropriate, acceptable or reasonable use of force,” he testified.

While an officer might identify Floyd’s apparent drug use as a potential risk, Stoughton said, that is not the same as a threat of Floyd doing harm that justifies police use of force.

“There’s no specific and articulable facts that an officer, a reasonable officer in the defendant’s position, could use to conclude that he had the intention of causing physical harm to the officers or others,” Stoughton said.

Courteney Ross, George Floyd’s girlfriend, said she knew Daunte Wright, who was fatally shot by police Sunday.

According to Ross, Wright was a student while she was a dean at Edison High School and was “a silly boy, as goofy as can be,” who required extra attention because he “needed a lot of love.”

Ross said she discovered the connection after speaking at a memorial event for young men who had been killed by the police in St. Paul. As she began to head home, she was introduced to Amity Dimock, the mother of Kobe Dimock-Heisler, an autistic man who was killed by police. While they talked, her husband, John Garcia, checked a local crime app on his phone.

“It’s almost too much,” Ross said.

She said she was on the phone with her sister later that night, when her sister mentioned the victim of the shooting was named Daunte.

“No,” Ross said. “Is he light-skinned? Really skinny? I said, no, no, I couldn’t believe it.”

“Students like Daunte needed more resources but they never got more resources,” Ross said. “Our system doesn’t serve kids like Daunte. And now I’m seeing, more than ever, this system I once believed in, we’re done doing what we need to be doing to protect Black life.”

She said Wright was a gregarious young person that was well-known throughout the community. She was not particularly close to him, but said she last saw him being confronted by police on the corner in Brooklyn Center in the summer of 2019. She said she was walking with Floyd when she saw the incident.

“I’m full of sorrow,” Ross said. “We are constantly doing our disservice to our children. It’s so unfair.”

In brief but emotional testimony Monday, Philonise Floyd, the younger brother of George Floyd, described how devastated his eldest brother was when his mother died in 2018.

Shown a picture of his brother as a child on his mother’s lap, Philonise Floyd, 39, broke down, describing his brother as “a big mama’s boy” who was so distraught when she died that he refused to leave her coffin at her funeral. As Floyd was dying, he could be heard screaming “mama.”

“He showed us how to treat our mom, how to respect our mom,” Philonise Floyd testified. “He just loved her so dearly.”

After days of the prosecution’s presentation of its case underscored by gruesome body camera footage and technical testimony from forensic and police experts, Philonise Floyd’s testimony marked a different, personal tone. He was the prosecution’s “spark of life” witness, testimony that in Minnesota personifies the victim.

The defense opted not to cross-examine Floyd’s brother.

Although Philonise Floyd’s testimony was brief, the prosecution’s questions were deliberate. Previously, the judge warned against testimony about Floyd’s character that could open the door for the defense to bring up Floyd’s criminal record.

In his short testimony, Philonise Floyd talked about their childhood in a low-income development in the Third Ward in Houston, playing Nintendo video games and basketball, which Floyd called “hooping.” Excelling in football and basketball, Floyd earned a scholarship to attend college in Florida before transferring, his brother said.

“He would say, ‘Hey man, let’s go hooping,’ and we would always say, ‘C’mon, let’s go,’ ” Philonise Floyd said.

On the day of his death, Floyd told officers that he had been “hooping,” which the defense said was slang related to drugs.

Floyd “was so much of a leader in the household,” his brother said, describing a big brother who cared for his younger siblings. He made snacks, like banana mayonnaise and syrup sandwiches, even though he “couldn’t cook, couldn’t boil water.”

Holly Bailey contributed to this report.

The suburban Minneapolis police officer who fatally shot a 20-year-old unarmed Black man during a traffic stop Sunday — a day before the unrelated Chauvin trial was set to resume nearby — apparently meant to fire a Taser but instead made an “accidental discharge” from her gun, the Brooklyn Center police chief said Monday.

Less than 24 hours after an officer with the Brooklyn Center Police Department fatally shot Daunte Wright, Police Chief Tim Gannon played an unedited clip of police body-camera video showing the incident.

The video, which was played at a news conference, shows two officers approach the vehicle — one on each side. The third officer approaches later as the two attempt to handcuff Wright and he struggles. The third officer threatens to use a Taser on Wright before firing.

Immediately thereafter she is heard saying, “Holy s---, I shot him,” apparently realizing that she had fired her service weapon instead of her Taser.

Cardiologist Jonathan Rich and Nelson went back-and-forth during Monday afternoon’s testimony about whether Floyd would still be alive if he hadn’t encountered Chauvin that day.

Rich was answering a line of questions surrounding whether Chauvin’s acts were the main cause of Floyd’s death or whether Floyd could have had preexisting health factors that contributed.

“And if Mr. Floyd had simply gotten in the back seat of the squad car, do you think that he would have survived?” asked Nelson, Chauvin’s attorney, attempting to establish that Floyd’s noncompliance was to blame, rather than the ex-officer’s use of force.

“So had he not been restrained in the way in which he was, I think he would have survived that day,” Rich answered. “I think he would have gone home or wherever he was going to go had he not been subjected to the prone and positional restraint that he was.”

“So, in other words, if he had gotten in the squad car, he’d be alive,” Nelson asked.

“I think my answer remains the same,” Rich replied. “Anything other than that scenario that he was subjected to, I have no reason to think, from a medical perspective, that he would not have survived.”

Cardiologist Jonathan Rich told the court Monday that he was confident that Floyd did not die from a sudden heart attack or from a drug overdose.

“After reviewing all of the facts and evidence of the case, I can state with a high degree of medical certainty that George Floyd did not die from a primary cardiac event, and he did not die from a drug overdose,” Rich told the court.

Elaborating on his conclusion about drugs, Rich said even though a toxicology report showed the presence of the opiate fentanyl in Floyd’s blood, there was simply no evidence to suggest an overdose caused his death.

“Number one, it appeared to me that Mr. Floyd, who was an acknowledged frequent chronic user of substances, particularly opiates, likely developed a high degree of tolerance,” he said.

“But the second and just as important, maybe more important, was I didn’t see any of the signs of an opiate overdose when I reviewed the videos,” Rich added.

When hospitals receive patients who have overdosed on opiates, “they are usually extremely lethargic, oftentimes nearly unarousable,” Rich said. When medical workers wake them up, he said, they often fall right back to sleep. When they are conscious, their speech is often slurred or they’re not talking; they feel dizzy; and they would have difficulty standing, Rich said.

“I kind of saw the opposite with Mr. Floyd,” Rich said. “I saw that he was alert, he was awake, he was conversant. He was walking.”

Rich told the court that even after Floyd lost consciousness beneath Chauvin’s knee, officers had the opportunity to take actions Rich believes “very likely” would have saved his life.

“There was one moment in the video where I heard one of the officers saying, ‘I think he’s passing out,’ ” Rich said on the witness stand Monday, describing the video of Floyd’s arrest and restraint on the pavement. “That would have been an opportunity to quickly relieve him from that position of not getting enough oxygen, perhaps turn him into a recovery position and allow him to start to expand his lungs again.”

“When there were signs he was worsening, repositioning him, I think, very likely would have also saved his life,” Rich added.

Asked whether Floyd would have lived had it not been for Chauvin’s restraint, which Rich and other experts have testified deprived Floyd of the oxygen he needed to survive, Rich said: “I believe he would have lived.”