Jury selection in the George Floyd murder case to continue for second day

Jury selection was due, to be continued for the second day on Wednesday in the trial of Derek Chauvin.

Judge Peter Cahill of the Hennepin County District Court has taken three weeks to screen jurors.

Three jurors were seated on Tuesday after saying they could put aside their apprehensions about Chauvin. The first one is a white man who is a chemist at an environmental testing lab; second, a woman who appeared to be of mixed race who said she was “super excited” to serve on a jury; and third one a white man who works as an auditor.

The trial on second-degree murder and manslaughter charges is seen as a landmark case on police violence against Black people in the United States. America is a country where police officers are rarely found to be criminally responsible for killing civilians.

Chauvin, 44, is white, and Floyd, who was being arrested on suspicion of using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes, was a 46-year-old Black man who grew up in Houston before moving to Minneapolis.

Prosecutors say Chauvin should face an additional charge of third-degree murder over the objections of Chauvin’s defense lawyers, a dispute that is being hashed out in appeals courts while the District Court presses ahead with jury selection.

Chauvin was released from jail on a $1 million bond last October and is being tried in a courtroom in the Hennepin County Government Center, a tower in downtown Minneapolis now ringed with barbed-wire fencing and concrete barricades. Protesters chanted anti-racism slogans and blocked traffic on Monday, but few appeared in the largely deserted downtown streets on Tuesday.

Derek is the former policeman who faced criminal charges for being involved in the death of George Floyd during an arrest that caused an outcry around the world.