Chauvin Lawyer Receives Clobbered by Witness’s Gripping Testimony

Darnella Frazier, the teen who recorded the video that went around the entire world — depicting the deadly very last minutes of George Floyd’s restraint by Minneapolis police — gave a very relocating testimony at previous officer Derek Chauvin’s murder demo this morning. I could not understand why defense attorney Eric Nelson questioned her at all, other than perhaps to thank her for coming to court. It is the online video that hurts Chauvin, not the kid who recorded it. And there is not often an upside in inquiring pointed issues to a young, anxious, really sympathetic witness.

But for regardless of what explanation, Nelson requested her a handful of questions about her first job interview by police — not extremely hostile, but it didn’t get him wherever. Then, simply because I guess he figured he had to stop with one thing, he concluded by inquiring her regardless of whether recording what transpired to Floyd “changed your lifestyle,” to which, of system, she answered, “yes.”

With the door swung vast open, prosecutor Jerry Blackwell obtained up on redirect examination and requested, “Darnella, could you inform the jury how it altered your life?” Her halting response, with trembling voice, was devastating. She reported she blames herself for not executing a lot more to support George Floyd in his time of distress. More, she has fantastic anxiousness about her father, who is black, her brother, who is black, and some of her black buddies, since she noticed what Chauvin and the other policemen did to Floyd, and she anxieties that it could transpire to them, way too.

Blackwell realized far better than to check with any much more issues. He took his seat and still left the jury with Darnella Frazier’s altered daily life to feel about.