Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison believes that ex-Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin, who was convicted last week of murder for the death of George Floyd, killed Floyd despite knowing he was being recorded because he thought he could get away with it like cops have before him.
“I think that if he looks at history, he has every reason to believe that he would never be held accountable,” Ellison told “60 Minutes” in a pre-taped interview that aired on Sunday evening. “There’s never been anyone in Minnesota convicted — any police officer convicted of second-degree murder in the history of our state. So this was precedent setting in that way.”
“So history was on [Chauvin’s] side,” the attorney general added.
Asked why Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck that day, Ellison said that “all we could come up with is what we could divine from his body language and his demeanor” on the video recorded by Darnella Frazier, who was at the scene, that went viral.
“And what we saw is that the crowd was demanding that he get up,” the official said. “And then he was staring right back at them defiantly. ‘You don’t tell me what to do. I do what I wanna do. You people have no control over me. I’m going to show you.'”
Ellison said he has “real doubts” that the public would have “ever” found out the truth of how Chauvin had killed Floyd last summer without Frazier’s video.
The former police officer was found guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in his trial last week.
