Chauvin lawyer loses bid to sequester jury
Before jurors were brought into the courtroom, Chauvin's lead lawyer, Eric Nelson, sought to have the panel sequestered in light of the fatal police shooting a day earlier of a Black man named Daunte Wright in a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, a suburban city just north of Minneapolis.
Nelson noted parallels with his own client's case: Chauvin, who is white, and other officers were arresting Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, on suspicion of his using a fake $20 bill to buy cigarettes at a grocery store. Chauvin was captured on video kneeling on the neck of Floyd for nine minutes. The arrest prompted protests against racism and police brutality in many cities in the United States and around the world.
Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill denied the request, though he plans to sequester jurors by confining them to a hotel once they begin deliberations in downtown Minneapolis, which is already heavily fortified against potential unrest based on the outcome of the high-profile trial.
