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Ex-Officer Guilty on All Counts in George Floyd's Death; 17- Year-Old's Decision to Take Video Changes Course of History. Aired 7- 7:30a ET

Aired April 21, 2021 - 07:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[07:00:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN NEW DAY: Derek Chauvin is waking up in prison this morning. The judge revoking hI bail immediately after the verdict and sentencing will take place in about eight weeks.

The other three officers at the scene with Chauvin go on trial together in August. President Biden said he believes the conviction, quote, can be a giant step forward in the fight against systemic racism, although, he insists it is not nearly enough.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: I can't breathe. Those were George Floyd's last words. We can't let those words die with him. We have to keep hearing those words. We must not turn away. We can't turn away.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: We're beginning now with Adrienne Broaddus who is live in Minneapolis. Adrienne?

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Brianna. This is a copy of that Star Tribune the front page, which John was talking about. You see here, it says, convicted: jury finds Derek Chauvin guilty of murder. And this is something many people, Minnesotans in particular say they hoped they would see it but feared they wouldn't see it.

They thought they wouldn't see it because of history, specifically citing the case of Philando Castile, you might remember, a similar fashion. Philando was pulled over, not in Minneapolis but in a twin city suburb, a traffic stop. The aftermath of that was caught on camera. He was shot and killed. And people thought because there was video, the officer in that case would be not only charged but convicted. He wasn't.

So when the jury read the verdict yesterday, there was a wide range of emotion. Some people were quiet as they listened, just to take it all in, really processing what they had just heard. And then here in the downtown area just outside of the Hennepin County Government Center where the verdict was read, there was a symphony of celebration. That celebration was led by cars blowing their horns and people crying. This is a moment people say they will remember.

Something else people are remembering, that 17-year-old Darnella Frazer who captured this incident on camera. I remember when I was working in reporting in Minneapolis that day, police told us in an overnight press conference and they also sent us a statement saying a man died from a medical condition who was in police custody. We now know that man was George Floyd, and the video showed us something much different. Brianna and John?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: Brianna, I'll take it here. Adrienne Broaddus in Minneapolis, thank you so much for being there for us.

So, Derek Chauvin has been convicted but a sentence yet to be decided. Here to explain the sentencing options, CNN Legal Analyst Elie Honig. He's a former state and federal prosecutor.

Elie, what's the maximum that Chauvin can get?

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, John. So, Derek Chauvin is now being convicted of all three charges against him. Top count, murder in the second-degree, carries a maximum sentence of 40 years. Count two, murder in the third-degree, counts a maximum sentence of 25 years. And then manslaughter, that carries a maximum sentence of ten years.

Now, if each of these counts related to separate conduct, then you could run these sentences what we call consecutive, meaning, back to back to back. However here, they all relate to the same conduct to the murder of George Floyd. So as a practical matter here, the maximum sentence is going to be 40 years.

BERMAN: Maximum 40, but what do you think is likely?

HONIG: Yes. So this is important. Minnesota has what we call a sentencing guideline system. The sentencing guidelines are these charts that give the judges guidance on what they should be sentencing somebody to. So let's do the calculation for Derek Chauvin. You start with criminal history category. Derek Chauvin, this is his first time being convicted of a crime. He's in the lowest category, which is zero. Then you look at the severity of the top crime charged.

Here, Derek Chauvin's top conviction was murder in the second-degree. When you go across here, you get his range, which is in months, 128 to 180 months. The presumptive sentence is 150 months, which means 12.5 years.

BERMAN: 12.5 years, I'm glad you did the math on that so I didn't have to.

Elie, we heard a lot about aggravating factors though. That's one of the things the judge will be thinking about in the next eight weeks.

HONIG: These aggravating factors are going to be so important. The prosecution is going to ask the judge to increase that sentence anywhere from 12.5 years all the way up to 40 based on what the prosecution argues are five aggravating factors that make this crime particularly heinous. One, they argue that George Floyd was a particularly vulnerable victim because he was handcuffed behind his back. Two, they argue Chauvin acted with particular cruelty because the knee to the neck as bystanders begged him to stop. Three, they argue that Chauvin abused his position of authority, meaning abused the badge as a police officer.

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Four, they argue that Chauvin committed the crime as part of a group of three or more people, referring to the other police officers. The other three officers have been charged. They face trial in August. And, finally, prosecutors argue there were children present. We heard from some of them at trial as young as a nine-year-old.

BERMAN: And the defense actually decided that it shouldn't be the jury that gets to decide this. It's the judge. That may have turned out to be a good decision for them.

HONIG: This was a really important moment because Derek Chauvin -- any defendant has the right to have a jury find those aggravating factors. Chauvin made a legal strategic decision here and he said, I'm going to let the judge decide. He made that decision before the verdict. As it turns out, having seen the verdict, that decision is probably one that I think he's very glad he made.

BERMAN: Because the jury had wasted no time in rendering this verdict very quickly. That's how much time -- we've talked about how much time Chauvin is likely to be sentenced to. How much will he actually serve?

HONIG: Minnesota has two-thirds rule. Meaning, generally, you serve two-thirds of whatever your number is, you get one third off for good time in prison. So if he ends up getting the maximum sentence, let's say, 40 years, two-thirds of that comes out to a little over 26 years. If you do the math, Derek Chauvin is a 45-year-old man, if he ends up serving 26 years, he'll be in prison until he's 71. If he gets less than 40 years, then take that off the top.

BERMAN: Elie Honig, thanks for helping us understand this. I really appreciate it.

HONIG: Thank you, John.

BERMAN: Brianna?

KEILAR: In the moments after the Derek Chauvin verdict, a huge crowd of demonstrators raising their fists in George Floyd Square in Minneapolis, a poignant moment for a city that has faced a lot of trauma in the aftermath of Floyd's death.

Joining me now is former Minnesota State Senator Jeff Hayden. Sir, thank you so much for being with us. George Floyd, of course, was killed in your district. You live nine blocks from where this happened. How did you receive this verdict yesterday? What was it like for you? JEFF HAYDEN (D), FORMER MINNESOTA STATE SENATOR: You know, I was really anxious. I had been out actually on the square talking to one of your correspondents, Omar, a little earlier before. They said verdict was coming in. So when I got home and I was going to pick up my wife, we knew that the verdict was coming in, so we were really anxious but were very satisfied and relieved that justice was served.

KEILAR: The governor, Governor Walz, last night was talking about racial disparities in Minnesota. Let's listen to some of what he said.

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GOV. TIM WALZ (D-MN): I think for state, I'm incredibly very proud, we rank near the top in so many things, well being, life expectancy, home ownership, education, unless you're black. And that has been laid bare to the world. And I think for many of us, it's a feeling like, okay, this happened. Now the work really begins. If you don't fix these things, you end up with George Floyd being killed. You end up with Daunte Wright being killed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: So, now the work, as he says, needs to begin. What does that need to be? What needs to happen?

HAYDEN: Well, I'm glad the governor acknowledged that. I know the governor, I've worked with him for a long time. We like to be called the land of 10,000 lakes. We're also the land of 10,000 disparities. So the legislature in local government, we have to get laser-focused. We have the recovery act now that's coming in. We have to get laser- focused to make sure that we target those resources and dollars and change those policies to start to change the trajectory of what happens in our kind of secret here in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that we have such large disparities on almost every category.

KEILAR: Sir, thank you so much for being with us. We really appreciate your perspective.

HAYDEN: Thank you.

BERMAN: So what does this verdict mean going forward? I think everyone is asking that question this morning. I want you to listen to one man's reaction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is something different. This is new. Just because we've been here so many times before, and, honestly, the first thing that I really thought about was the Rodney King situation. And I thought it could have been something similar to that just because we all saw that too. And this feels like we can breathe. This feels like something new. It's hopefully a new day in America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: This feels like something new said to our reporter, Omar Jimenez, there on the streets overnight.

I want to bring in CNN Political Commentator Van Jones. So, I guess, Van, my question is it? Is he right? Is it something new? Waking up this morning, what if anything is different?

VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, it can be. It can be something new. I'll put it that way. This was not the system working. This was people making the system work. That's the key. Don't forget, initially, the police report said, oh, it's a medical incident, somebody died, what are we doing? The initial charging documents from the local prosecutor was a joke, literally a piece of tissue paper that something to sneeze on, nothing.

People rose up and said we're not going to let this go. The governor stepped, gave that case to Keith Ellison, who is African-American, Muslim, progressive guy that everybody rallied around before to get in office.

[07:10:01]

Keith Ellison put so many resources on the table. You've never seen a prosecution like that of anybody. You need to go back to the John Gotti days to make sure that the right thing happened.

So what happened is the voting worked. You can tell the young people, voting matters. The protesting worked. You can tell young people, marching matter. And the truth, the fact that people got involved with their video cameras, they captured, citizen engagement matters. So there's a formula now that you can begin to show people we can make the system work for change. That's what's new.

KEILAR: There is no doubt when you look at all of the factors that contributed to this from very reasonable bystanders including --

JONES: An EMT?

KEILAR: -- an EMT. And you had, I mean, a slew of people who very clearly knew from the jump that this was wrong what they were seeing. They were on the stand, a prosecution that told an amazing story, told the story of George Floyd. He wasn't there to tell it, and also witnesses who humanized George Floyd. And they didn't sugarcoat anything. This was George Floyd who had some challenges in life --

JONES: A human being.

KEILAR: -- and a human being, and the jury accepted that.

I guess my question is there also though this more acceptance in an era to see a black man more as a human being that we have not seen in the past in a way that we wouldn't have had there not been this reckoning this past year?

JONES: Well, look, I think so. And also they tried to say, oh, look, he's done drugs. Guess what. He's hooked on opioids. So many people have that problem. Prince died five years ago today with an opioid overdose in that town, in the twin cities or near the twin cities. And so you -- listen, are you really going to go down the road to say that somebody deserves to be choked to death in front of a whole community because they got hooked on opioids? You are in a slightly different era.

The reality is going forward, what needs to happen. You know, you can't stop here. Congress needs to act. The chokeholds have still not been banned at the federal level. There's still no national registry, as she was just talking about, for cops like Chauvin. There's still no duty to intervene at a national level.

So you've got Tim Scott, you've got Cory Booker in the Senate, you've got Karen Bass in the House trying to get that done. Let's get it done. Everybody agrees on that now.

Also you have got an opportunity this week for Joe Biden to get the team he deserves. He's trying to get Vanita Gupta back in the Department of Justice. He's trying to get Kristen Clarke in the Department of Justice to help him get this done. The Senate could approve them this week. You've got an ability now for this to be taken forth, but the people have to stay involved. Push the Senate to act.

Where's Congress? The court did the right thing. The people did the right thing. Where's Congress?

BERMAN: President Biden did use last night's speech to bring up those two nominees.

JONES: Yes, it's critical. You've got to have a Vanita Gupta. She is trusted across the board. She's been there, she's done that, people know who she is. She could actually bring people together to get it done. But you can't sit here and say, oh, well, now the system is working. No, the people made the system work. Let's keep the system working for the people.

BERMAN: Hey, Van, can I ask? I feel like in a lot of ways we've lived history through your eyes the last several years or you've helped us understand so much of what we've seen in the last few years on a range, a whole range of things. So where does this fit?

JONES: You know, the guy mentioned Rodney King. I was 22. I was in law school. They were teaching about liberty and justice for all, and I look at T.V., and I can't see it. I walk out the front door at the Yale Law School, I can't see it in the street, just literally a few blocks away from campus and got kids going to prison for drugs. Kids in Yale were doing drugs all the time. Nobody ever called the cops.

Rodney King changed my life, the trajectory of my life. I spent the next ten years of my life working on police issues, youth violence issues. I couldn't believe what I saw. Had we gotten a positive verdict, that was 30 years ago, with Rodney King, my life would have been different.

You don't understand how a generation where you feel my life doesn't matter, anything could happen to me, I could be beaten like Rodney King, nothing would be done, you feel totally vulnerable. You don't feel like you're a part of society. I had a law degree and I felt like I was an outsider in my own country. And you have a whole generation looking over a cliff of that at an even bigger scale, and instead they can say, I can make the system work for me.

Literally, the country was at a crossroads like you can't understand. The humanity of a generation was on trial, not just a system, the humanity of the whole generation. And they now see, I can make the system work. It's not fair, I've got (INAUDIBLE) but I've got a shot.

We didn't feel that way in the '90s as young black folks. We felt like we had been thrown away.

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And so this is a big deal. I can't tell you what a big deal this is for me to be able to look at my sons and tell them, hey, look guys, it's been this way and worse, but you've got a way forward, keep fighting, you've got a way forward.

BERMAN: I guess (INAUDIBLE) universe bends toward justice, if we bend it.

JONES: If you bend it, if you bent it. You've got to fight for it. Hey, but guess what, sometimes when you fight, you win.

KEILAR: Van, thank you so much for being with us this morning.

Reaction to Derek Chauvin's guilty verdict is still pouring in this morning. We're going to hear from a man who shed tears on the witness stand. You'll remember this was a very emotional moment from one of the witnesses as he was recalling George Floyd's murder.

BERMAN: Also, how a 17-year-old witness may have changed the world by taking out her phone, bending it toward justice, the video that may have changed everything.

KEILAR: Plus, the big blow up on Capitol Hill over law enforcement.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You look at the past and how many people before had to die and had to not receive justice for this to happen today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:20:00]

BERMAN: A Minnesota teen may have changed the course of history simply by taking out her phone and shooting video. Darnella Frazier was 17 when she recorded the video of George Floyd's murder. She testified for the prosecution at Derek Chauvin's trial. This was her reaction on the verdict on Facebook. She said, I just cried so hard this hour. My heart was beating so fast. I was so anxious, anxiety busting through the roof. But to know guilty on all three charges, thank you, God. Thank you, thank you, thank you. George Floyd, we did it. Justice has been served.

CNN Writer on Race and Equality Nicquel Terry-Ellis joins us now. You know, we just spoke to Van Jones on this and he said something interesting, that justice can happen if we make it happen, he said. This video may have made this verdict happen. Could it have happened without it?

NICQUEL TERRY-ELLIS, CNN SENIOR WRITER, RACE AND EQUALITY: Yes, John. I mean, we can only assume this bystander video weighed heavily on the jury's decision. This is a woman, a 17-year-old girl, who saw something that did not look right to her. She pulled out her camera phone, began recording, and then later posted the video to Facebook.

The whole world saw this video. It incited anger and frustration among people who saw Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes. And you just saw these uprisings that just happened across the country, meaning that this video definitely changed the way that we view race, racism and police brutality today. George Floyd has become a symbol for the fight for racial equality in this country.

The young woman testified that she wished that she could have done something in that moment to help George Floyd, but little does she know the difference that this video has made in the trial and thus leading to Derek Chauvin being convicted on all three charges.

And you think about how many black families have suffered and not gotten justice or a guilty verdict after losing a loved ones at the hands of police, even going back to Emmett Till. Back then, there were no police dash cam videos, there were not police body cam videos or cell phone videos to be used as evidence in these trials. And I think the hope in the black community is that now that we do have more and more of these videos being recorded that more families will be able to see justice in these cases of police brutality.

BERMAN: Nicquel Terry-Ellis, thank you for being with us this morning.

TERRY-ELLIS: Thank you.

BERMAN: I want to bring in Ron Johnson, former Missouri Highway Patrol Captain, he led the law enforcement response to the unrest in Ferguson, also Anthony Batts, former Baltimore Police Commissioner during Freddie Gray's in custody.

Ron, I want to start with you, because we had a conversation after the defense's closing arguments here, where the defense kept on saying Derek Chauvin behaved as a reasonable officer would. Well, the jury said, no, this is not the behavior of a reasonable police officer. How important is that message, and how do you think it will be received by police forces across the country?

RON JOHNSON, FORMER INCIDENT COMMANDER, FERGUSON, MISSOURI: You know, I believe that it's not policing. I know it's not policing, and so it's not reasonable. And so I think police across the country will stand by that, and they should stand by that. And it's a time for leadership courage (ph) within a professional law enforcement to step up. And I think leaders in law enforcement starting today should bring in men and women and then to have that conversation with them.

KEILAR: And, Anthony, one of the things that a lot of people seized on last night as this verdict came down, knowing what we found out from the trial, was the initial press release from the police department there saying that after he got out, George Floyd, he physically resisted officers, officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance, going on to say that he died at the hospital.

It is just -- it's not the truth. It omits everything that we learned in the trial and that we saw in that videotape, and the takeaway may be for there to be a lot of skepticism when it comes to what police are reporting. Should that be the case?

ANTHONY BATTS, FORMER BALTIMORE POLICE COMMISSIONER DURING FREDDIE GRAY'S DEATH: I think in my opinion when you first have an incident that takes place, it's so chaotic in the things that are going on, is that the police departments should try to get out information initially as quickly as they can without giving too much that they don't have answers to.

But the follow-up to that is the chief has been so courageous in his position. He went out front very early and talked about his disdain of the issue.

[07:25:02]

Also going to the trial, he was very courageous, he was very articulate and shared his expectations of his organization like most should.

BERMAN: Anthony, if I can stay with you for a second here, yesterday, Charles Ramsey, who, of course led, the police force in D.C. and in Philadelphia, after this verdict came down, he said, this is good for police. This should make police happy. This will make police jobs easier going forward. What do you think of that?

BATTS: I agree with him 110 percent, and Chuck is a good friend. And the fact is, is that ex-Officer Derek Chauvin stepped so far out of line, and most police officers that I talked to, and I visit with police officers in different states every single week, that they understand that. And I think as you hear, as a chief that's testifying, as officers are testifying, what you get back is that the police community is upset about this. And I know when I first saw it, my response on LinkedIn is, this is insane. I can't believe this is occurring.

KEILAR: And one of the other things that was so hard to believe, Ron, was that other officers didn't intervene. I just spoke with an officer who, when she did intervene in a somewhat similar situation, she ultimately was fired, recently exonerated, but this was something that happened 14 years ago. Do officers need to be prosecuted if they do not intervene in moments like this?

BATTS: Is that question for me or Ron? KEILAR: Oh, for Ron, please.

JOHNSON: Well, I think officers have to be held accountable. And leadership, leadership is about stepping up and doing what's right, so everyone has to be held accountable. And we have a duty to protect our citizens. And sometimes like the witness said, he called the police on police. The police have to make sure we hold each other accountable also.

KEILAR: Ron, Anthony, thank you so much to both of you for sharing your perspective on this momentous day after this verdict has been reached.

Up next, we're going to hear from a man whose own experience with the criminal justice system was turned into a major Hollywood movie, whose story you no doubt have heard.

BERMAN: Plus, a one-on-one interview with a witness whose testimony helped convict former Police Officer Derek Chauvin of George Floyd's murder.

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