Welcome back we continue to follow developments out of Minnesota the jury deliberating the fate of the former officer accused of killing George Floyd Derek Chauvin’s trial lasted almost three weeks now the jury got the case about five o’clock tonight after closing arguments took most of the day joining us now to break down the trial and what happened today is attorney Enrique L1 Latoison thank you for being with us and just like they did in opening arguments the prosecution played video of the last minutes of George Floyd’s life many times today are prosecutors worried the jury will get bogged down deliberating the expert testimony and forget about the impact of that video well the prosecution here is using their most important evidence which is that video this is how they started out in the opening this is what they use during the trial over and over again and of course when you get to the closing they’re going to focus on that video that video is how it hits home they’re trying to tell the jury to trust their eyes they went over this video over and over again it’s their best piece of evidence and of course they’re going to use that front and center in their closing but Enrique as you know the defense team they also played that video today right including floyd saying he could not breathe so why did they do that first of all and does that run the risk of backfiring on them do you think well as we’ve always talked before when you look at a video there’s multiple interpretations to that same video that we all could be watching at the same time so the defense actually started out with a kind of history of what took place up until that moment they were showing different videos they kept using the words reasonable officer and i believe they were actually doing a pretty good job of kind of going along the way they were kind of putting the jury into the mindset of officer Chauvin now once they got to that part and they showed the exact moment that George Floyd actually passed away that kind of stopped it kind of went away from that and they didn’t want to kind of focus on the part of when he actually was passed and he already had died how they continued to have the knee on the neck of Mr. Floyd so i think at some point you know he kind of went there but then he kind of got away from it and i believe at the end once again it’s going to be how the jury interprets this video and both sides spent a considerable amount of time walking the jury through the legal elements of each charge now normally that’s reserved for the judge to do well i actually think it was kind of refreshing this is something i always do and i do believe on this trial both sides did it what they did was they broke the elements down and they use the elements and they talked about their best arguments in reference to the elements and they talked about each and every element of each crime that the jury has to decide now if either party were to misstate the law the judge would interject and they would you know correct that but you know i believe they were basically trying to give the jury something to work with and something to argue when they went back to deliberations Enrique is a defense attorney you know better than anyone right the juries are very unpredictable hard to get people to agree could the prosecution already be preparing for the possibility maybe of a hung jury no verdict on some or all of these charges so what the prosecution did in this case was they did three charges they have a top charge which has a maximum penalty or years which that second degree murder then they have another charge which has a maximum penalty of years which is the third degree and then you have the manslaughter which has a maximum charge of charges okay years okay so what they did in this particular case was they gave all three of these charges to the jury and i believe they did that just in case there has to be some kind of wheeling and dealing with the deliberations and they wanted to make sure that they had the top the medium and the less charge to allow them to be able to come to a decision just in case they can’t decide on all of them it’s the prosecution’s ability to decide what charges they’re going to give the jury in this particular case they give them three so hopefully they get all three or two or one and i think that’s kind of hedging their bets here Enrique L1 Latoison and thank you and we of course are awaiting a verdict from Minnesota as soon as we learn there’s a decision we will bring it to you live Enrique thank you of course make sure you have the NBC app to get that breaking notification when it happens
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