Apr. 1 highlights for the murder trial of Derek Chauvin Day 4

Derek Chauvin's former supervisor said force used against George Floyd should have ended when he was handcuffed and on the pavement.

"When Mr. Floyd was no longer offering up any resistance," that should have ended use of force against him, retired Sgt. David Pleoger told jurors.

Pleoger, who recently retired from the Minneapolis Police Department, testified that he reviewed all of the body-worn cameras of Chauvin and the three other responding officers and that their restraint of Floyd should have ended much earlier than it did.

Prosecutor Steve Schleicher asked Pleoger: "Based upon your review of this incident, do you believe that the restraint should have ended at some point in the encounter?

Chauvin's attorney, Eric Nelson, objected and the attorneys had a private sidebar with Judge Peter Cahill.

Cahill ordered the jury out of the courtroom and Nelson argued that Pleoger had not reviewed all of the evidence, such as witness accounts.

The debate was primarily over how extensive of an opinion Pleoger would be allowed to give. 

Once Floyd died on May 25, the matter was deemed a "critical incident," and that triggered a review by internal affairs, taking the matter out of Pleoger's hands.

Nelson argued that Pleoger shouldn't be allowed to make a judgment on Chauvin's use of force.

"This officer, Sgt. Pleoger, did not make this determination. He has not done a use of force review," Nelson argued, outside the ears of jurors. "He has not reviewed the entirety of this particular case."  

Cahill ultimately directed Schleicher to withdraw his earlier question but said he could ask Pleoger: "Do you have an opinion as to when the restraint of Mr. Floyd should have ended in this encounter?" which he did after the jury was called back into the courtroom. 

Pleoger responded: "When Mr. Floyd was no longer offering up any resistance to the officers, they could have ended their restraint." 

"And that was after he was handcuffed and on the ground and no longer resisting?" Schleicher asked.

"Correct," Pleoger said.

This gets at the heart of the prosecution's argument that Chauvin did not follow proper protocol in his restraint of Floyd.

A restrained prisoner, handcuffed and feet secured, must be rolled on their side so they're not deprived of oxygen, Derek Chauvin's former supervisor told jurors.

David Pleoger is now retired but last year he was a sergeant and Chauvin’s supervisor on May 25 when the officer encountered George Floyd outside of Cup Foods.

A prosecutor and Pleoger went over Minneapolis police policies and what officers should do when a suspect is put in the "hobble position," when both their feet and hands are cuffed. Former Sgt. Pleoger said officers are instructed to roll a suspect on their side.

“It gets them on their side so they can breathe easier," Pleoger said. “So they don’t suffer breathing complications." 

Pleoger noted that this is the policy even if no officers are putting their weight on a prisoner, as was the case when Floyd was taken into custody.

Mary Moriarty, the former chief public defender of Hennepin County, explains that the prosecution is walking through the Minneapolis Police Department's policy on when a supervisor must be told about an officer's use of force. 

David Pleoger, who recently retired as a sergeant with the Minneapolis Police Department, is testifying about the proper protocol. Pleoger was supervising Derek Chauvin and the three other officers who arrested George Floyd last May 25. 

The prosecution has called recently retired Minneapolis police Sgt. David Pleoger to the stand.

Pleoger was supervising Derek Chauvin and the three other responding officers last May 25. A 911 dispatcher testified Monday that she called Pleoger after she watched the officers pin George Floyd to the ground live in a security video.

The dispatcher, Jena Scurry, said the officers restrained Floyd for so long that she asked someone whether her "screens had frozen because it hadn't changed" and "was told that it was not frozen."

Jeremy Norton, a captain with the Minneapolis Fire Department, took the witness stand Thursday afternoon in the trial against Derek Chauvin. He was the fourth witness called to the stand on Thursday.

Norton was among the first responders who arrived at the scene of Floyd’s arrest.

During a testy exchange, Derek Chauvin's attorney, Eric Nelson, asked Derek Smith, a Hennepin County paramedic who responded to the scene of George Floyd's arrest, about his actions in the ambulance.

Smith testified that his colleague who was driving the ambulance had pulled over to assist him in performing chest compressions on Floyd in the back of the vehicle.

Nelson questioned why Smith didn't ask Officer Thomas Lane, who was fired a day after Floyd's arrest and is charged in his death, to perform chest compressions instead. Lane had traveled in the ambulance with the paramedics and Smith testified he had directed Lane to deliver chest compressions on Floyd en route to the hospital, where Floyd was pronounced dead.

"Why didn't you just have the officer continue to help you?" Nelson asked.

"That's not what we do," Smith said.

"Is it because he's not an EMT," Nelson asked?

"Any lay person can do chest compressions," Smith responded. "There is no reason Minneapolis [police] couldn't have started chest compressions."

"That's not my question," Nelson shot back. "My question is: He's not an EMT, correct?"

Smith said he did not know the level of certification the officer in the ambulance had.

A paramedic who responded to the scene of George Floyd’s arrest said in testimony Thursday that he thought Floyd “was dead” when he assessed his condition at the scene.

The Hennepin County paramedic, Derek Smith, said Thursday afternoon that he arrived to see three officers on top of Floyd. When he inspected the man he said he did not detect a pulse from Floyd.

“I thought he was dead,” he told prosecutors.

Smith said he looked to his partner and told him, “I think he’s dead, I want to move this out of here.”

He then said he would begin care at the back of the ambulance.

The trial has resumed after a lunch break with a second Hennepin County paramedic on the witness stand. 

The paramedic, Derek Smith, who was on duty last May 25, said when he arrived on the scene, he believed George Floyd was dead. 

Two attorneys for George Floyd's family said jurors should look past his drug use after his girlfriend testified Thursday about their shared opioid addiction.

In a joint statement, the lawyers Benjamin Crump and Antonio Romanucci said they "fully expected the defense" to put Floyd's "character and struggles with addiction on trial because that is the go-to tactic when the facts are not on your side." 

Crump and Romanucci said they "are confident the jury will see past that to arrive at the truth — that Floyd would have lived to see another day if Derek Chauvin hadn't brutally ended his life in front of a crowd of witnesses pleading for his life." 

"We want to remind the world who witnessed his death on video that George was walking, talking, laughing and breathing just fine before Derek Chauvin held his knee to George's neck," they said.

Prosecutors called Floyd's girlfriend, Courteney Ross, to the stand and questioned her about Floyd's drug use in an apparent effort to head off the argument from Chauvin's lawyer, Eric Nelson, that drugs could have caused Floyd's death.

On Monday, before opening statements, Crump said the defense's strategy relied on "the same old playbook."

"They're going to try to assassinate his character — the fact that they found trace amount of drugs in his system is just a distraction," Crump said. "The thing that killed George Floyd was an overdose of excessive force."