An additional third degree murder charge has been brought against the former police officer set to go on trial for the killing of George Floyd.
Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill reinstated the third-degree murder charge after the former officer, Derek Chauvin, failed to appeal against it.
Judge Cahill had earlier rejected the charge as not warranted by the circumstances of Floyd’s death, but an appellate court ruling in an unrelated case established new grounds.
On May 25 2020, Mr Floyd, 46 died after being restrained in Minneapolis by police, who held him down and pressed a knee to his neck.
In footage posted online, Mr Floyd, a black man, could be heard telling the officers that he could not breathe and calling out for his mother for eight minutes.
The incident sparked global outrage and led to both violent and non-violent protests in a movement that became known as Black Lives Matter (BLM).
Chauvin already faces second-degree murder and manslaughter charges. Legal experts say the additional charge helps prosecutors by giving jurors another option to find the defendant guilty of murder. Judge Cahill told potential jurors after the ruling that he still expects opening statements on March 29.
The dispute over the third-degree murder charge revolved around wording in the law that references an act "eminently dangerous to others." Judge Cahill's initial decision to dismiss the charge noted that Chauvin's conduct might be construed as not dangerous to anyone but Floyd.
But prosecutors sought to revive the charge after the state's Court of Appeals recently upheld the third-degree murder conviction of another former Minneapolis police officer in the 2017 killing of an Australian woman. They argued that the ruling established precedent that the charge could be brought even in a case where only a single person is endangered.
Arguments over when the precedent from former officer Mohamed Noor's case took effect went swiftly to the state's Supreme Court, which on Wednesday said it would not consider Chauvin's appeal. Judge Cahill said Thursday that he accepts that precedent has been clearly established.
"I feel bound by that and I feel it would be an abuse of discretion not to grant the motion," he said.
