<p>The video footage of a white police officer, his hands in his pockets, kneeling on the neck of a Black man for more than eight minutes in May left a searing image that fueled anger and protest across the country.</p>.<p>But as the officer, Derek Chauvin, a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department, stands accused of murder in the death of George Floyd, he is pointing blame away from himself — and toward two rookie officers who were on the scene of the killing and whom he had helped train.</p>.<p>If the other officers, who were the first to interact with Floyd on the evening he died, had behaved differently, everything might have been different, Chauvin’s lawyer wrote in a motion seeking separate trials for the four officers who are charged with crimes in the case.</p>.<p>Chauvin, who was fired from the Police Department and is charged with second-degree murder, made his first in-person court appearance Friday in the case, which is scheduled to go to trial in March. His lawyers, and those of the other defendants, are seeking to move the trial away from Minneapolis, as well as to split what has been expected to be a single trial into four.</p>.<p>The three other officers who were on the scene were charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder, which can carry as serious punishment as the charge against Chauvin. From the time charges were announced against the four officers, there had been indications that they would not present a united defense, with the men faulting one another for the death. Some of those tensions were on display in the courtroom on Friday.</p>.<p>None of the other officers — J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao — appeared to make eye contact with Chauvin, although at one point Chauvin.</p>.<p>Prosecutors rejected suggestions that Chauvin — or any of the other individual former officers — could shift blame away from the larger group.</p>.<p>“The defendants watched the air go out of Mr. Floyd’s body together,” said Neal Katyal, a special assistant attorney general who is part of the prosecution team, led by the office of Keith Ellison, the Minnesota attorney general. “And the defendants caused Mr. Floyd’s death together.”</p>
<p>The video footage of a white police officer, his hands in his pockets, kneeling on the neck of a Black man for more than eight minutes in May left a searing image that fueled anger and protest across the country.</p>.<p>But as the officer, Derek Chauvin, a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department, stands accused of murder in the death of George Floyd, he is pointing blame away from himself — and toward two rookie officers who were on the scene of the killing and whom he had helped train.</p>.<p>If the other officers, who were the first to interact with Floyd on the evening he died, had behaved differently, everything might have been different, Chauvin’s lawyer wrote in a motion seeking separate trials for the four officers who are charged with crimes in the case.</p>.<p>Chauvin, who was fired from the Police Department and is charged with second-degree murder, made his first in-person court appearance Friday in the case, which is scheduled to go to trial in March. His lawyers, and those of the other defendants, are seeking to move the trial away from Minneapolis, as well as to split what has been expected to be a single trial into four.</p>.<p>The three other officers who were on the scene were charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder, which can carry as serious punishment as the charge against Chauvin. From the time charges were announced against the four officers, there had been indications that they would not present a united defense, with the men faulting one another for the death. Some of those tensions were on display in the courtroom on Friday.</p>.<p>None of the other officers — J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao — appeared to make eye contact with Chauvin, although at one point Chauvin.</p>.<p>Prosecutors rejected suggestions that Chauvin — or any of the other individual former officers — could shift blame away from the larger group.</p>.<p>“The defendants watched the air go out of Mr. Floyd’s body together,” said Neal Katyal, a special assistant attorney general who is part of the prosecution team, led by the office of Keith Ellison, the Minnesota attorney general. “And the defendants caused Mr. Floyd’s death together.”</p>