An Insider’s View of the George Floyd Murder Trial
The country was riveted for three weeks in 2021 during the trial of the former police officer Derek Chauvin, as a jury in Minneapolis considered whether the death of George Floyd was murder. Through it all, Keith Ellison, the attorney general of Minnesota who was directing the prosecution, was a constant yet silent presence in the courtroom.
Through the proceedings, he wrote in old notebooks saved from his days serving in Congress. When he ran out, a friend who worked for a law firm supplied him with more notebooks. He filled those, too.
“I wasn’t trying to be a stenographer,” Mr. Ellison, 59, said in an interview this month. “I was thinking, ‘What do I need to remember?’”
Those notes informed the prosecution's nightly meetings during the trial. But they also became the foundation for Mr. Ellison’s new book, “Break the Wheel: Ending the Cycle of Police Violence,” which will be published by Twelve on Tuesday. It is a trial diary of sorts, a clear, methodical account of his experience directing the prosecution of Mr. Chauvin, in the rare murder conviction of a police officer for an on-duty death.
Source: The New York Times
