MINNEAPOLIS — Christopher Martin was 19 years old, working his evening shift as a cashier at Cup Foods when George Floyd paid for a pack of cigarettes with a blue-hued $20.
Store policy dictated that employees must pay out of pocket if they accept a counterfeit bill. Martin decided he'd take the hit, but his manager instructed him to bring Floyd back inside. He talked to Floyd, who appeared "high," outside the store, but Floyd didn't want to come back in, so a manager ordered another employee to call 911, Martin told a federal courtroom Tuesday morning.
Later Martin saw a crowd gathering outside. He stepped out of the store and saw an officer on top of Floyd. "He just had his knee on his neck," said Martin.
Asked how Floyd looked, Martin told the court: "Dead."
Martin, now a 20-year-old college student studying business, recounted his brief but life-altering encounter with Floyd in the civil rights trial of three former Minneapolis police officers Tuesday. It was a reprise of Martin's poignant testimony in the 2020 trial of Derek Chauvin, who was convicted of murder and manslaughter in Floyd's killing. He testified then of twice trying in vain to get Floyd to come back in the store and deal with the suspected fake bill before his manager had another employee call police. He testified of feeling "disbelief and guilt" for his role in the events that night.
Surveillance video was played for the federal jurors showing Floyd inside the store, interacting with others, and later of Martin and his co-worker confronting Floyd as he sat in the passenger seat of his vehicle before returning to the store.
Each of ex-officers' defense attorneys took turns questioning Martin. Among them, Thao's attorney, Robert Paule, elicited under questioning that Martin met with nine attorneys in preparation for his testimony. He asked Martin whether he had told the attorneys Floyd was so high he couldn't track the conversation they had inside the store.
On Tuesday morning, jurors watched Floyd's final moments from the perspective of one of the officers who helped restrain him as he pleaded for his life.
The footage shows J. Alexander Kueng's body-worn camera fixed on the passenger-rear tire of a squad car, as bystanders can be heard shouting from the sidewalk that Floyd is unresponsive. "You think that's cool, bro?" said one man, Donald Williams. "You're a bum for that." At one point, Kueng looks up and the camera shows Tou Thao, his fellow officer, holding back a group of concerned bystanders forming on the sidewalk.
Next was Charles McMillian, the first witness on the scene after Floyd was detained, who also repeated his emotional testimony from Chauvin's March trial.
Prosecutors played videos in which McMillian's voice can be heard telling Floyd to cooperate. On the stand, McMillian recalled telling Floyd to get in the back of the squad and make it easy on himself, saying, "You can't win."
"Once you get in handcuffs, you can't win," he testified.
At one point McMillian grew emotional as he said: "I knew something bad was going to happen to Mr. Floyd ... That he was going to die."
On cross examination, the defense attorneys focused on how McMillian couldn't see the whole scene.
"Did you hear officer Lane say, 'I think he's passing out?' asked Earl Gray, attorney for Thomas Lane.
"No sir," replied McMillian.
"So you didn't see officer Lane assisting the ER people?
"No sir."
"So your answer to the questions that you didn't see these police officers helping George Floyd at all isn't based on much?" said Gray.
Jena Scurry, a 911 dispatcher for Minneapolis, testified that the officers didn't report that Floyd was having trouble breathing. If they had, she could have sent paramedics from the Fire Department, which can get to a scene quicker than Hennepin County EMS.
"They can be almost anywhere within four minutes," she said.
The trial opened with continued testimony from FBI forensic media examiner Kimberly Meline that started Monday afternoon, which allows prosecutors to show videos that will be central to the case. The footage shows Kueng and his partner, Thomas Lane, approaching Floyd outside Cup Foods. The officers tell Floyd to put his hands up and wrestle him into handcuffs.
"When you're moving around like that, that makes us think way more is going on than we even know," one of the officers shouted.
The officers struggle to push Floyd into the back of the squad, as Floyd says he's scared and "claustrophobic." Floyd is pinned to the ground, pleading: "Mama, Mama, Mama." And then, "I can't breathe. Mama, I love you."
The footage will be key to both prosecutors and defense attorneys. In his opening statement, Kueng's attorney, Thomas Plunkett, said his client couldn't see everything that was happening that day, a perspective that jurors will weigh as they determine whether Kueng had a duty to intervene.
In her opening statements, Assistant U.S. Attorney Samantha Trepel described how Thao, Lane and Kueng ignored obvious signs of grave distress in Floyd, who they'd taken into custody. They continued to neglect their training and legal obligation to render medical aid as the window to save Floyd's life "slammed shut," Trepel said.
The footage, along with other videos played Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning, was previously shown during the state trial of Derek Chauvin. Chauvin pleaded guilty in December to federal civil rights charges and is now serving a 22 1/2-year state sentence after being convicted in Hennepin County District Court of murder for kneeling on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes while detaining him on the pavement at 38th Street and Chicago Avenue.
Monday's opening statements offered for the first time a window into the defense strategy, and a revelation that at least Lane plans to testify. In three separate introductory remarks, the defense attorneys described a hectic and at times scary situation in which the officers encountered a towering, erratic suspect who resisted their commands.
Gray, the attorney for Lane, said his client intends to testify as to how the officers found themselves in a "scary" situation when Floyd reached around in the console of his vehicle for what they feared could be a gun. Gray described Floyd as 6-foot-4, 225 pounds and physically combative. "He was all muscle," Gray said.
He said Lane tried to revive Floyd and raised the prospect of turning him on his side as Chauvin stayed on his neck. He described Lane as "not deliberatively indifferent about his health at all."
Concluding his comments, Gray called the state's case against Lane a "perversion of justice."
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