Chauvin’s trial Day 4- Chauvin used force against suspects before George Floyd, the jury will not hear 6 of them

The third day of the Derek Chauvin trial saw seventeen complaints filed with Minneapolis police about Derek Chauvin. Six times wherein prosecutors say Chauvin used force against arrestees. George Floyd‘s 2007 arrest for aggravated robbery.

The jury, whose verdict may be influenced by what they don’t do as much as what they do, does not plan on hearing any of them while considering murder and manslaughter charges against Chauvin.

Chauvin, a white former Minneapolis police officer, is accused of killing Floyd, a Black man, by pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck as he lay handcuffed on the ground. Chauvin has a record of 18 complaints filed against him over the course of his 19-year career with Minneapolis police, just one of which will be introduced at trial.

In the run-up to the trial, both sides sought to introduce evidence about Chauvin and Floyd’s past actions. Prosecutors wanted to introduce eight incidents in which Chauvin used force while on duty or was involved in an incident in which another officer did.

The defense wanted to bring up two arrests of Floyd, including one in Harris County, Texas in 2007 that resulted in a conviction for aggravated robbery.

In criminal prosecutions, wrongful acts generally aren’t admissible unless prosecutors can demonstrate that they implicate the defendant, the incidents are important to the case, and they won’t unfairly prejudice the jury against the defendant. So it is common for judges to make such as the court wants to ensure the jury doesn’t punish a defendant for prior “bad acts”. Jurors must evaluate whether Chauvin is guilty of what he is charged with: third- and second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

Six of the eight incidents were deemed inadmissible by Cahill, who wrote that prosecutors were improperly trying to show Chauvin’s propensity to resort to unreasonable force.

All the incidents involved “resistance from or a struggle with a suspect; some involved Mr. Chauvin using his body weight to control an arrestee; some involved a neck restraint,” Prosecutor Nelson argued. “This is simply insufficient to show a marked similarity between the proffered incidents and the charged offenses.”