CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- The Chicago-based lawyer for the family of George Floyd is refuting a theory bandied about by among some conservative commentators and Republican politicians that the police officer who murdered Floyd may have only been convicted, because jurors were afraid there’d be rioting in the streets otherwise.
"To me, that sounds like politicians who are just catering to their base and looking for voters," said attorney Antonio Romanucci, to comments by Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and others.
Romanucci said the case has always been about the video, about what former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin did and said in it and what George Floyd and bystanders said.
"This case is about the video. It’s not about fear. It’s not about anything. We know that Derek Chauvin, as he was kneeling on [George Floyd’s] neck, at a certain point knew that his actions were designed to kill and we can now call it a murder," he said.
"What’s so compelling about what happened to George Floyd is that, not only did we see with our own eyes what Derek Chauvin was doing, we heard him speak on that video, we heard the bystanders speak, and we heard George beg for his life."
Romanucci said that in more than 30 years as a trial lawyer, he usually sees juries have questions of some kind or another during deliberations. This time, he said, they did not and that that's because "the evidence spoke for itself."
Romanucci spoke with WBBM Newsradio shortly before attending the funeral of 20-year-old Daunte Wright, an unarmed man who was shot to death by police in Brooklyn Center, a Minneapolis suburb, on April 11.
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