Minnesota attorney general: Chauvin was motivated by "exertion of authority" in George Floyd murder
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said former police officer Derek Chauvin's decision to keep his knee on the neck of George Floyd was an "exertion of authority," meant to defy the group of onlookers exhorting him to stop. Ellison told 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley that Chauvin's demeanor – captured on video by those same onlookers – seemed to be saying, "You people have no control over me. I'm going to show you."
"We weren't required to prove motive," Ellison told Pelley. "But what I saw is somebody who just put ego before policing, ego before the discharge of a public trust and duty."
Ellison spoke to Scott Pelley Wednesday in his first interview since a Minneapolis jury found Chauvin guilty of murder in Floyd's death.
"The question of motive," Pelley said to Ellison in an excerpt from the interview that aired on "CBS This Morning." "Why? Why would this officer assault George Floyd?"
"Well, that's a question we spent a lot of time asking ourselves," Ellison said. "And all we could come up with is what we could divine from his body language and his demeanor. And what we saw is that the crowd was demanding that he get up. And then he was staring right back at them defiantly. 'You don't tell me what to do. I do what I want to do. You people have no control over me. I'm going to show you.'"
"I also think that, you know, George Floyd was treated that way because he was suffering from anxiety and claustrophobia," Ellison continued. "Cooperating with the police in every way, until they tried to make him take his 6'4" body and jam it into a very tight space in that car… And he kind of freaked out. And I think the fact that he was not complying, he wasn't-- I wouldn't call what he did resisting. I would call it, he wasn't complying because he was having an emotional reaction to getting into that car."
"I think what happened is you do exactly what we tell you to do when we tell you to do it," Ellison said. "No excuses. And it's-- it's-- it's really an exertion of authority, rather than trying to say, 'Look, the job of a police officer is to deal with people who are not having their best day.'"
The interview will be part of Pelley's report to be broadcast on the next edition of 60 Minutes, Sunday, April 25 at 7 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.