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George Floyd's brother says case against Derek Chauvin is 'slam dunk'

Elisha Fieldstadt
·3 min read
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Hours before the murder trial was set to begin for the former Minneapolis police officer who kneeled on George Floyd's neck for about nine minutes, Floyd's brother said the case is a "slam dunk," and he and his family are hoping for a second-degree murder conviction.

"We’re feeling good," Philonise Floyd said on NBC's "Today" Monday morning. "We know that this case, to us, is a slam dunk because we know the video is the proof, that's all you need. The guy was kneeling on my brother's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, a guy who was sworn in to protect. He killed my brother in broad daylight."

"That was a modern day lynching," Floyd added.

Floyd, who was Black, died on May 25 after Derek Chauvin, who is white, kneeled on Floyd’s neck while Floyd repeatedly exclaimed he couldn't breathe.

Video of the arrest sparked outrage and prompted global protests for racial justice and against police brutality.

Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter.

Floyd said a second-degree murder conviction would "clearly show that he killed my brother."

"My brother was standing up just fine until [Chauvin] put him on the ground with his hands behind his back in the prone position face down and he decided to kill my brother along with the other officers because nobody tried to render aid."

The three other officers involved — Tou Thao, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng — are charged with aiding and abetting both second-degree murder and manslaughter. They are expected to go to trial in August. All four officers were fired the day after Floyd's death.

Related: George Floyd's family filed a federal lawsuit in July against the city and the four officers accused in his death.

Chauvin's defense is expected to claim drug use could have caused Floyd’s death, arguing his body contained a “lethal dose of fentanyl,” as well as methamphetamine at the time of his arrest.

Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump on Monday said the strategy relied on "the same old playbook."

"They’re going to try to assassinate his character — the fact that they found trace amount of drugs in his system is just a distraction," Crump said. "The thing that killed George Floyd was an overdose of excessive force."

Everybody keeps trying to say, 'this is a hard, difficult case. If George Floyd was a white American citizen, nobody would say this is a hard case," Crump added. "What killed George was a knee on his neck when he said I can’t breathe 28 times."

"This is not hard case," Floyd echoed. "We just want justice, we want a conviction. If you cant get justice as a Black man in America for this, what can you get justice for then?"

"If this trial is hard, we got two justice systems in America — one for white America and one for Black America," Floyd's nephew, Brandon Williams, later said.

The family and civil rights leaders kneeled for 8 minutes and 46 seconds Monday morning at 8:46 local time before the start of the trial.

"What kind of venom, what kind of hatred do you have that would make you press down that long while a man is begging for his life, begging for his mother?" asked Rev. Al Sharpton. "At what point does your humanity kick in?"

The jury is made up of nine women and five men. Eight of the jurors identify as white, four as Black and two as mixed-race. They range in age from 20s to 60s.

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