Minneapolis jury knew exactly what Derek Chauvin did to George Floyd | Editorial

Murdered.

We can finally use that word. Justifiably. Unequivocally.

Derek Chauvin didn’t snuff the life out of George Floyd that day in Minneapolis. He didn’t kneel on Floyd’s neck until the man stopped breathing. He didn’t simply “kill” Floyd.

No, Chauvin murdered George Floyd. Tuesday, a jury of his peers convicted the former police officer of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in Floyd’s death last Memorial Day.

From the start, it wasn’t one of America’s usual white-cop-murders-unarmed-Black-man scenarios. Actually, they’re all unique, except that, in all of them, a Black person ends up dead. Floyd’s long, agonizing death was videotaped — though that’s never a guarantee that an officer accused of excessive force will be convicted.

Caught on video, too, was Chauvin’s inhuman expression of indifference as he knelt on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes — as the surrounding crowd begged him to stop, begged his partners to intervene. They did not.

Protests and demonstrations erupted in cities, big and small, across the country — and around the world. Corporate America issued mea culpas for its racial negligence. Sports team owners took another look at what Colin Kaepernick, whom they had spurned and ostracized, had been saying all along. Media outlets apologized for ignoring black communities in their news pages. Even police departments — some — were forced to look inward.

A week or two after Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, Waynel Sexton was interviewed by CNN. Sexton was Floyd’s second-grade teacher. She had kept the essay he’d written when she had asked the class to consider how they might change the world some day.

Eight-year-old George wrote that he wanted to one day be a member of the Supreme Court, already displaying a keen sense of justice.

And in a country that too often has been unwilling to convict police officers no matter how brutal their acts, a Minneapolis jury, too, showed a keen understanding of what justice looks like.

George Floyd, most definitely, changed the world.

The question remains, however: Did he change it enough?

This story was originally published April 20, 2021 at 7:35 PM.