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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. As the jury deliberates in the Derrick Chauvin trial, let's look at what's likely going on in the jury room with an eye not just on yesterday's closing arguments, which, of course, has gotten a lot of media play, but also the makeup of the jury and the judge's instructions to the jury, which don't get much media play, but which WNYC legal editor and race and justice editor, Jami Floyd says could be crucial to the outcome.

With us now is WNYC legal editor and race and justice editor, Jami Floyd, who has covered trials for more than 25 years and participated in them as an attorney before that. Behind the scenes here, Jami has circulated an explainer on various aspects of the trial that we all found extremely illuminating. So we'll use that as somewhat of a guide to looking at the state of the case at this moment. Hey Jami, welcome back to the show.

Jami Floyd: Good morning, Brian.

Brian: Let's talk about the judge's instructions. I'll play a clip in a minute from Judge Peter Cahill's instructions as broadcast on TV yesterday, but in general, why do you say judge's instructions, which we might think of as generally neutral could affect the outcome?

Jami: It's often the most boring part of the trial Brian, there's no witness sobbing on the witness stand, the judge is generally reading from an instructions manual. In this case Judge Cahill, I believe read from his own instructions, largely written by himself, which made it a little more interesting and he was very efficient, 20 minutes before the closing arguments and another eight minutes thereafter.

A really illuminating way to do it. The jurors could lean into what the judge had told them to listen for in the closing arguments. Quite a smart way to do it. Here's why it matters. Brian, the instructions bring together the facts and the law for the jurors. Basically, what you get in the trial is the evidence, the facts. You don't get any law at the end, in the closing arguments, the attorneys get up and they argue what they think the jury should do, but closing arguments, that's not evidence, it's not anything the jury is required to consider.

The judge instructs, and he did hear all judges instruct, what you hear in closing arguments, not evidence. Opening statements, not evidence. That's where the lawyers argue their idea of what the law should be and then the facts come in. That's evidence, testimony, all the videotapes we saw, the physical evidence about the medical examination, et cetera, but the law is what matters and the only place the jury hears that is in the instructions at the end.

The judge gives them the law and then they go back with the jury instructions in hand, the law in hand, and they marry the facts that they've learned and the law. And that's why the instructions really matter. They are the most important thing after the selection of the jury itself. In some cases, more important because without the lot of hang the facts on you can't come to a conclusion as a jury.

Brian: Let's go through some of this as it pertains to this case. You wrote the prosecutors want the jury to focus on Chauvin's actions, not his state of mind, defense attorneys want precisely the opposite. Why is that? Why would focusing on Chauvin's state of mind work to his advantage?

Jami: Right. Well, there are really two issues in this case. Putting aside the biggest issue in my mind, which is race but there are really two factual issues here. Use of force and cause of death. Was the use of force here reasonable? And then did officer Chauvin, in fact, cause Mr. Floyd's death? In other words, but for his actions, would George Floyd have died that day? When it comes to use of force then, Brian, the question is reasonableness. Was it a reasonable use of force? So prosecutors want the jury just to look at the videotape, use your eyes, apply your common sense.

Does that force look reasonable to you as a citizen, as an objective matter? Just looking at Chauvin's actions, just look at his actions, does that make sense? The defense Brian wants the jury to think like a police officer on the scene of an arrest. The crowd is gathering it's becoming stressful. You've encountered a man who initially was a bit resistant and now he has compromised underlying medical conditions. You're employing your training. The defense wants the jury to think like a police officer rather than focus on the actions of the man, Derek Chauvin. It's a tough defense, but that's what they're trying to do.

Brian: To that point, here is defense attorney Eric Nelson yesterday making part of his reasonableness case to the jury in the context of asking them not to go too much by the gruesome experience of watching George Floyd die with Chauvin's knee on his neck for the length of that video that showed it, that we all know nine minutes and 29 seconds.

Eric Nelson: A reasonable police officer would in fact take into consideration the previous 16 minutes and 59 seconds. Their experience with the subject, the struggle that they had, the comparison of the words to actions. It all comes into play, why? Because human behavior is unpredictable. Human behavior is unpredictable and nobody knows it better than a police officer.

Brian: Jami, what do we learn from that clip?

Jami: Well, the prosecution's, I thought, closing was masterful. The defense did because they anticipated the reasonable police officer defense which had been raised throughout the trial and said to the jury, "Look, use your common sense," but even for a police officer, "This was unreasonable," said prosecutors. Then, the defense did the best job they could possibly do with the defense. You have to play the cards you're dealt.

They did the best job they could possibly do in their closing and with the instructions on the table to say, "This is the scene that Chauvin encountered when he got there. Then, it became increasingly difficult for him and he made the choices he made." I would not have defended this case, but had I been asked to defend it, I would have defended it differently, but once they got to closing with the instructions they had and the evidence that came in, I thought they did reasonably well with their closing argument.

Brian: Listeners, we welcome your questions on the case before the jury, the closing arguments, the jury itself, the role of the judge for our legal editor, and race and justice editor, Jami Floyd, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280 or you can tweet a question @BrianLehrer. By contrast to what we just heard from the defense attorney Eric Nelson, prosecutor Steven-- Is it, Schleicher or Schleicher-

Jami: It's been pronounced both ways in court, Brian.

Brian: -said, "How can you justify the continued use of force on this man when he has no pulse, no pulse. Continued the restraint, continued grinding and twisting and pushing him down and crushing the very life out of him. It wasn't too late. He could have rolled him over, performed CPR, but no, he continued," said the prosecutors. Jami, my own common sense, not as a member of the jury, obviously, not having watched every minute of the trial, though I did watch big chunks of it on television, but my gut, I guess, in terms of this word "reasonableness" tells me nothing that came before really does matter.

Even if a suspect is resisting arrest in any way, once that person has been subdued after that point, the police officer's professional obligation and the ways that police officers are trained are supposed to kick in and you stop risking a suspect's life or safety, and nothing that came before really matters if he is subdued. Is that the law in this case?

Jami: Well, the law doesn't really come to answer that question. That's a question of fact. Was his training to at that moment, at four minutes and 44 seconds to change up and begin to take duty of care for his arrestee? As a police officer, you're responsible for the person you're arresting for his wellbeing or her wellbeing and there were witnesses to-- So you're asking the legal question about what was reasonable in this case and the jury will have to answer that, but the question of fact about what was his duty of care and whether or not he did the right thing as an officer, as a matter of training was addressed in the testimony.

There were at least four witnesses who testified about whether this was the right thing to do as a MPD officer and one of those was the chief of police, Brian. Another was a nearly 40-year decorated detective who's the chief of homicide, or captain of homicide, I think is the official title, the head of the homicide division. He also testified, they both testified that this was not a proper use of force, that this was a deadly use of force, quoting, "deadly use of force," and that Chauvin did not attend to his detainee as was proper in the training.

Now, of course, the defense called their own use of force expert and police training expert Barry Brodd, who said precisely the opposite. We had a battle of the experts. He said, "Well, look, I was a police officer, this was appropriate under the circumstances, this was a proper use of force." I thought the prosecution pretty much torn to shreds on cross-examination, but they did have an expert who was willing to take the stand and say that it is the officer who must decide what is appropriate under the circumstances.

Brian: Did the prosecution establish according to your lawyer's eye that Floyd had been subdued for a period of time before he died?

Jami: Yes, and they did that both in terms of-- According to the training manual, once a suspect is in handcuffs, you no longer are under the same kind of threat as an officer that you would be when the suspect is not handcuffed. Right there, Mr. Floyd did not present the same threat that officers might have felt before he was handcuffed. That's number one.

Number two. The two most senior officers who testified, again, the chief of police and the head of homicide, said that to place somebody face down handcuffed on the pavement, even before you place a knee on his neck and back, that is a very dangerous and ill-advised under the training manual way to subdue someone when they are handcuffed and unnecessary. They did establish that as a matter of procedural and police policy, but then, Brian, the medical experts came in to say that as a medical matter after about four and a half minutes, Mr. Floyd was not a threat as a medical matter.

Even putting aside police procedure, the man was literally dying under Chauvin's knee. At that point, certainly, aid should have been rendered as the bystanders could see one of whom was herself a medical technician. At that point, it was established as a medical matter in the prosecution's case that the police and Chauvin especially needed to back up, back off, and render aid.

Brian: Let's take a phone call. Gail in Queens has a question. Gail, you're on WNYC with our legal editor and race and justice editor, Jami Floyd. Hi, Gail.

Gail: Good morning. This is the perfect person. I am so glad to be on with Jami because I've been wondering about this during this entire situation.

Jami: Good morning, Gail.

Gail: Good morning. Why are there two charges of murder, and one of manslaughter? I don't understand that. What are the parameters of sentencing for each charge? Thank you very much.

Jami: Well, that's such an excellent question. Essentially, what the three charges against Chauvin allow is it gives the prosecution three bites at the apple. It gives the jury three opportunities to convict. I have my own theories about whether this is wise because it allows the jury to compromise, to perhaps convict on a lesser charge. If you only charge say on second-degree murder and I'll whip through them quickly for you, Gail, don't fret, I can already hear you [laughs] asking, "Wait, what are they?"

If you only charge second-degree murder or first-degree murder, and you charge nothing else, the jury may come back with nothing else. Most often and almost always, prosecutors give jurors options. Let's very quickly, Brian, I won't belabor it, but very quickly talk about what the charges are, if I may.

Brian: Right. I think this is fascinating to me, especially the second-degree murder charge, and then it needs to be based on an underlying felony, and how that plays into whether he's going to be convicted of murder. Jami, go for it.

Jami: Right. Okay, I guess I'll start there, I was going to go backwards, but I'll start there. No first-degree murder on the table because that requires a premeditated intent, and we didn't have that here. Although, arguably, you could have gone for that, but there's an issue with overcharging a case and then losing the jury and the public. They went with second-degree murder, which is defined as causing death without the intent to kill, but with the intent to commit an underlying felony that results in death. Sometimes we call this felony murder.

Then, there's the third-degree murder charge that's causing the death to the individual by perpetrating an act that is so dangerous, we sometimes call it depraved mind killing or the judge chose to call it here, reckless endangerment, he changed the language a little bit. Culpable negligence, he used that language, unreasonable risk, the judge used that language, and then that action causes the death of another. That's the third-degree murder. Then, the manslaughter is no intent to harm someone, but an intent to do the negligent act. There's no intent to harm, but you have an intent to do the negligent act, and then in doing so you cause the death of another.

Now, to get back to Gail's question. Charging all three of these gives jurors and prosecutors an opportunity to achieve a conviction on second-degree, or third-degree or manslaughter, this is manslaughter in the second-degree, or all of those, he could be convicted on all of those, or none of the above. Or jurors could get back there, and one juror could say, "Well, I don't think he's guilty of anything," and another juror could be a second-degree person and they could compromise. This happens.

It shouldn't because the facts and the law should lead you to one conclusion, but sometimes jurors just get frustrated with one another, and they'll compromise somewhere in the middle. They could say, "Well, look, he intended to do the act, the act was highly likely to cause death, the death resulted, let's just go there third-degree murder and be done with it." That could be the result.

I will say one last thing about this third-degree murder was not on the table at the beginning of the trial. The judge added that after another Minnesota case went all the way up to the appellate court. It involved a police officer as well. It was the first police officer convicted in an officer-involved shooting, he happened to be a non-white police officer convicted of killing a white woman. The appellate court said that you can convict in this case of third-degree murder, and that's when the judge added third-degree murder back on in the Floyd case. That happened, I think, just about a week ago. That is the new charge in the case. Gail, there are all the answers to your questions. I hope it was helpful.

Brian: That's I think it's fascinating. Related to that, here's another clip of defense attorney Eric Nelson, making another central argument that even if Chauvin's prolong knee on Floyd's neck contributed to his death, it wouldn't have caused it if Floyd hadn't already been seriously ill and high on opioids.

Eric: A person has drugs in their system, and that drug causes an overdose. In the context of the police restraint, it's not the natural consequence of the restraint, it's the natural consequence of the deceased's actions.

Brian: Defense attorney Eric Nelson. Jami, my question about this is about what the police are required to presume when they're using what we might call discretionary force. Are they allowed to assume a theoretical average person in average health? Or must they take into account that they don't know the medical condition of any individual, so they have to be sensitive to the fact that some people will have asthma, some people have heart conditions, et cetera, in their professional approach?

Jami: It's so interesting that you asked that question, Brian, because we're doing a Mott Haven Project you know because you launched it on your show. In the course of the arrests up in Mott Haven, some people did have asthma, and their inhalers were removed from their person and they were without them for hours. Other people had other underlying medical conditions that were exacerbated by long, and this was nothing like what happened to George Floyd, but for the individual involved, if you have an underlying medical condition and you have a long encounter with police, that condition can be exacerbated.

Brian, who among us does not have some underlying medical condition. Once you hit about the age 25, something is going on with you. I think the police certainly should take it into account, but your question is, "Are they required to?" That was your question. The answer is, yes. In the law, there are people in society who have a higher duty of care, not a lower duty of care, a higher duty of care, and police officers are chief among them. Others include, believe it or not, common carriers like train conductors and bus drivers, people that we expect to take care of us.

Police officers, even though we now have this tremendous conversation happening in our society about police officers doing harm, they in the law have traditionally been presumed to owe us a higher duty of care. Yes, if they are detaining someone and that person resists in some way, certainly, they can use reasonable and necessary force to restrain the person, handcuffs obviously, one way that they restrain a person, but they do need to take into account the medical needs of the person.

There's a case, Brian, that many judges rely upon the Graham case, I mentioned it to you in that memo, the man was a diabetic, he needed his insulin, he asked for it, police did not provide it. It's very similar to this case. I imagine the judge in this case, has read it many, many times because he does not want to be reversed on appeal. They do need to think about our medical conditions. Of course, also police do have to think about their own safety, and that is the tension that we now have.

The difference here, Brian, with most of the cases that we encounter, most cases are a split-second decision that police officers make where they pull the trigger, a gun is fired and then they say, "Well, I had to make a split-second decision, my life was on the line." That is not this case.

Brian: This is not that.

Jami: Right. This was a case where the man had nine minutes and 29 seconds to think about what he was doing. He certainly had four minutes, and I would say 45 seconds based on the evidence I've seen, to try to bring George Floyd back to life, to resuscitate him, to do CPR, to administer aid. This is not that case. Your question is very, very well put, you certainly have to, as we say in the law, take your plaintiffs as you find him. If your plaintiff has underlying medical conditions, well, that's on you. That's on you.

Brian: We'll continue in a minute with legal editor and race and justice editor for WNYC, Jami Floyd. Tour questions 646-435-7280.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC. As we're talking about the challenge facing the jury as it deliberates this morning in the Derek Chauvin trial with our race and justice editor and legal editor, Jami Floyd. Jami, here's a question from a listener via Twitter, who says, "Why isn't there a transcript for the trial? I was shocked by the lack of one. Isn't that basic in modern courtrooms?"

Jami: Right. I got a lot of tweets about that myself, Brian. Okay. The judge said in his instructions, "Don't ask me for the transcript. You're not getting one, there isn't one." [laughs]

Brian: I saw that.

Jami: Yes, I saw that too. That was a bit-- With all due respect to Judge Cahill, was a bit disingenuous. Of course, there's a transcript, not only did court TV film the whole thing, and you can just watch it, but there is the transcript that is kept by the court stenographer. It has to be kept for appellate purposes because if there's no transcript, there's no record. If there's no record, the defendant cannot appeal. What the judge is saying is he doesn't want them to go back there with the transcript and get bogged down in looking at what each witness said and start arguing over each word of each witness.

The tradition in our country is for the jury to go back there and do it basically based on memory and impressions. Then if they need a portion of the testimony of a particular witness read back, they can have that. Some judges have allowed video of witnesses to be played back. I don't know that this judge will allow that, he seems fairly traditional, but he doesn't want them to go back there with Brian, what would be thousands of pages of transcript. I've had to go through them as a young lawyer, thousands of pages. That would be more of a distraction than a help.

Brian: Here's Judge Cahill from yesterday, one minute's worth of the public part, I guess it was all public, as he tries to be very even keel, and basically asked the jury to be the same.

Judge Cahill: During your deliberations, you must not let bias, prejudice, passion, sympathy, or public opinion influence your decision. You must not consider any consequences or penalties that might follow from your verdict. You must not be biased in favor of or against any party or witness because of his or her disability, gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, national origin, or socioeconomic status.

Your verdict must be based solely on the evidence presented, and the law that I give you. Your like or dislike of any witness, attorney, or party, should not have an effect on the outcome of the case. The state of Minnesota and the defendant have a right to demand and they do demand that you'll consider and weigh the evidence, apply the law and reach a just verdict regardless of what the consequences might be.

Brian: Now, that sounds pretty boilerplate to me, but you were talking earlier about the centrality of the judge's instructions to the jury to the way the verdicts might come out. Obviously, that was just one minute out of about 20 minutes that he spoke. Did something like that, that we just heard seem to matter to how juries do their work?

Jami: I think it's helpful to remind them of biases and prejudices and the import of the case. Although in this case, of course, they know the import. I think, Brian, it's worth noting how much of a responsibility this jury is taking on, we should be grateful to them. Any jury in any trial is taking on a civic responsibility. When it's a murder trial, even more so obviously death penalty cases among the most intense for jurors, and they will tell you they live with it for the rest of their lives.

We know that this jury-- You saw emotion of these witnesses. I have never, Brian, in my life in the hundreds, and I mean hundreds of cases I've covered, seen a case with witnesses this emotionally overwrought. These jurors will live with this for the rest of their lives, and they will live with their decision for the rest of their lives. In Minneapolis, by the way, Brian, there have been death threats for some of the witnesses. One of the witnesses had his former home, the vandals got the address wrong, but his former home horribly vandalized. The jurors they don't know that yet, but they know how significant their decision will be, and we should be grateful to them for taking it on.

Brian: Jami, I'll say that I was very struck by that line in your briefing document for our team about how you've been watching trials for 25 years and more, and you've never seen witnesses as emotional as in this case. Could you go a little more into that?

Jami: Oh, yes. Well, and I'm speaking of the prosecution witnesses, specifically the bystander witnesses. The witnesses who were there at 38th in Chicago, in front of Cup Foods, where George Floyd lived his last moments. These witnesses, every single one of them, Brian, and these are people from different walks of life, different socio-economic circumstances, different races, different ages, from age nine to about I think age 63 or 64, all of them overcome with emotion, some of them on the stand so much so that they couldn't proceed without taking a significant break in the testimony to collect themselves.

The two that stand out in my mind most are, of course, the nine-year-old girl who should never have to testify in any criminal case, and the 60 something-year-old man who was overcome with emotion and was the man who had the very last conversation with George Floyd as he laid dying, pleading with him to be calm.

Brian: Pleading with Chauvin.

Jami: Pleading with Floyd.

Brian: Oh, Floyd.

Jami: Pleading with Floyd. The man who pleaded with Chauvin was also fascinating. [chuckles] He was the martial artist. He was trying to talk to Chauvin about the effects of Chauvin's knee on George Floyd's neck, the medical effects because he knows how the physiology works and he could see what was happening, a Black man also. I'm talking about the older Black man, Brian, who was so overcome with emotion sobbing, on the witness stand sobbing. The judge almost called a break, but he got through the testimony.

I thought to myself, "This is a man who was a boy during the civil rights movement or a teenager. He has seen it all. He is not like the nine-year-old child who doesn't know about the civil rights movement yet. Maybe she does to some extent but certainly hasn't lived it." The young people will whip out their phones and start filming and they're going to hold power to account and thank goodness. This man, he didn't do that, he moved himself towards George Floyd and started speaking with the man, speaking with him, talking with him, pleading with him Black man to Black man. It was so moving. I have never seen anything like it. Then you have the other witnesses [crosstalk]

Brian: Let me jump in on him. Could that have played to the defense advantage because here was a guy sympathetic to George Floyd, telling George Floyd to be calm, meaning I guess, "Don't resist"?

Jami: It could have, but he was such a powerful witness. There wasn't much they could do with him on cross-examination. They tried, Brian, to paint these bystanders as a mob. The defense strategy was to say that this unruly mob of people was getting in Derek Chauvin's face and he couldn't think clearly, that was their strategy and they had to have a strategy. This was part of their strategy that this officer because of these people shouting and yelling and intervening, and one woman wanting to render medical aid and this elderly-- Elderly I say carefully as I approach the same demographic, but this older distinguished Black man trying to speak to George Floyd and then the martial artists, all these people, they were a disruptive mob.

That was basically the defense strategy. The problem being that there's videotape of what was going on. The jury will evaluate for itself whether this was a disruptive mop or a group of concerned bystanders trying to do the right thing. The other problem is that the experts who testified for the prosecution, the police experts said that any good police officer is used to this kind of response on the street and should be able to tune it out and do the right thing by their detainee. I don't think that worked at all for the defense.

Brian: Don in Teaneck you're on WNYC with Jami Floyd. Hi, Don.

Don: Hi, thank you for taking my call. Throughout this whole thing, there hasn't been many videos of the attitude and demeanor of this defendant after the actual death of this person. I didn't know was there remorse? Was there panic? What was his demeanor? I don't see much of that. That I think goes to now for forethought when there was no appropriate response to what had just happened. I'm just curious, has there been video out there that really gives us some insight into the demeanor of this defendant right after this situation where the person died right at that crucial point of death?

Brian: Thanks I appreciate your call. Jami.

Jami: Excellent question. I have spent countless hours watching this video. There are now we know many videos that were taken that day at 38th in Chicago. The one that we're most familiar with was shot by a then 17-year-old young lady who testified also at trial. Again, another young person who-- Four of the people who testified, bystanders, Brian, were minors at the time this happened, how horrific is that?

I've studied the face of Derek Chauvin over and over again. It reminds me, Brian, of my visit to the legacy museum down in Montgomery, where I spent a lot of time studying the faces of white people at various either lynching locations or places where Black people were being tortured and tormented to try to understand the mindset of the white people involved. I've done the same thing in the Chauvin trial.

I've studied his face over and over again, to try to understand what was he thinking? What was he thinking? What is happening here? What is going on? There isn't a lot of video of him thereafter. Don, there was some evidence put in before the jury of what was said on body camera footage, Chauvin's words on body camera footage, as well as the other three officers who will go on trial, by the way, in August, what they said on body camera footage. There's some indication of intent there, but there's not a lot to go on in terms of the footage of Chauvin.

Thereafter, of course, he has been very much out of the public eye. He was fired within 12 hours by the Chief of Police. Then, we've not seen him until he showed up in court, and the way the camera is set up because of social distancing and the mask, there's not the usual opportunity to observe his reaction in court that you get in a trial setting. Even the jury has been deprived because of the mask of much of his reaction. Don, we don't have as much as we might have in other trials.

Brian: Last thing, Jami, except that I'll ask you as we're ending if there's any way to gauge how long it's going to take the jury to do their work. I want to play one more clip from the closing arguments and get your take on this in the context of what America thinks is at stake here versus what the prosecution argued that the jury should consider. The gist of this is that the prosecution argued policing is not on trial. Any question of systemic racism is not on trial, just the opposite it's whether Derek Chauvin violated, betrayed the good things that being a cop is supposed to be about. Listen.

Stephen Schleicher: He betrayed the badge and everything it stood for. It's not how they're trained, it's not following the rules. This is not an anti-police prosecution. It's a pro-police prosecution.

Brian: Jami, I understand why the prosecution would frame it that way, but I've also heard some people suggest that it might risk making an acquittal easier because the jury might assume that a police officer in the line of duty is not generally biased or trying to do harm and mean them more toward the benefit of the doubt for Chauvin. I'm just curious if you see that argument as a calculated risk?

Jami: I think it is a calculated risk. I think the jury is well aware of the deep political context in which this case is presented. I think we all are. Getting back to Gail's earlier question about the charges here. Again, they did not charge first-degree murder, which requires a premeditation, also, getting to Don's question about intent. They could have. That premeditation can be formed in an instant and Chauvin was kneeling on George Floyd's neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds.

Certainly, long enough to form premeditation to kill. They made a choice, again, a calculated choice, Brian, not to charge that. Then, the three charges, two of them require some form of intent. The second-degree murder and the third-degree murder. The irony here, Brian is that criminal trials are about the individual, they're about individual responsibility. Now, for too long in this country, police officers have not been held responsible.

They've not had the same level of responsibility in court. In fact, they never get to trial. We hardly discipline them at all when something goes wrong. It is about the individual's responsibility. The larger meaning of George Floyd's life and legacy is not about this trial, it's just not. The larger meaning is the reform movement that started on May 25th, 2020, that's ongoing. That is already a movement underway. Whatever happens in this courtroom, the legacy of George Floyd will be long-lived well beyond the verdict of Derek Chauvin.

Brian: Listeners. We will talk about the criminal justice reform movement with the Philadelphia DA, Larry Krasner later in the show who is considered a prime proponent of it from within office-- In a district attorney's office, Larry Krasner coming up later in the show. Jami, what's your best guess as to how long this job facing the jury will take?

Jami: Oh, Brian I never guess about juries. I will say juries don't like it when they're sequestered, to be sequestered for very long. The judge having asked them to stay in a hotel and not go home to their families, he's certainly ensuring that it will be a shorter deliberation rather than a longer one. That's as far as I'll go, Brian

Brian: WNYC, race and justice editor and legal editor, Jami Floyd. So informative. Thank you, Jami.

Jami: Thank you, Brian.

 

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