We saw George Floyd die on screen. We need to see this too.
The trial of Derek Chauvin wasn’t going to be broadcast. Minnesota trials never are. It took a pandemic and a decision by Judge Peter Cahill to change that over the objections of the prosecution. Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office argued that televising the hearings live might intimidate the witnesses, making them hesitant to testify. A coalition of news outlets, the defense, and, ultimately, Cahill disagreed. Members of the public usually have the right to observe courtroom proceedings. It’s typically also safe for a crowd to gather peacefully in a courtroom, or in an overflow room with closed-circuit TVs. But we’re not living in normal times, and this is not a normal trial. In requesting the change to the Minnesota court system’s standard procedures, news outlets argued that “given the enormous public interest in this trial, the limitations imposed by the pandemic, and the options created by modern technology, meaningful access equates to remote access.” Essentially, they said Chauvin’s trial is not just about what happened in Minnesota. It’s about what is happening across America. Chauvin, a former officer in the Minnesota Police Department, is charged with second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter in the May 25,2020, death of George Floyd. Floyd’s death ignited months of protests and unrest across the country and around the world, and for some, it marked the first time they were moved to take to the streets. The footage that emerged was damning. It was devastating. And it evoked an emotional response in a way that news reports, no matter how hard-hitting or well-edited, sometimes can’t: Chauvin held his knee on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes,29 seconds. We know because we saw it happen. We saw the video. Or did we? The footage we saw showed Chauvin pinning down Floyd for eight minutes,46 seconds. That precise span of time, established by a widely circulated video a bystander shot with their phone, has become such a symbol — of the horrors of police brutality in general and of Floyd’s death in particular — that it has its own Wikipedia page filled with examples of politicians, corporations, activists, and entire cities using the number to commemorate Floyd and raise the alarm. The New York Stock Exchange paused trading for eight minutes,46 seconds. Google held an eight-minute-and-46-second-long “moment” of silence for its employees. Music streaming services paused special programming. Legislators took a knee. Long stretches of silence are uncomfortable; they spur people into a contemplative state. And while eight minutes,46 seconds can be a short time, it’s an eternity if you’re staring mortality and brutality in the face. But it turns out Chauvin forcibly restrained Floyd even longer than most people thought. Prosecutors revealed the full extent of their encounter during the first week of the trial — nine minutes,29 seconds of Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck — and the revelation was shocking. Reality was worse than the footage. It is a succinct embodiment of this moment in history that a number drawn from a video — shot on a phone, uploaded to the internet, and seen all over the world by viewers frozen in place by a virus — became such a profound symbol. Before Cahill’s decision allowed TV cameras into the courtroom for Chauvin’s trial, the situation was already mediated to us through phone cameras and Twitter, through videos of protests and unrest, each one putting a frame around Floyd’s death and the events that followed, each one with a narrative in mind.
