Under the US justice system the verdict was given by 12 jurors, a panel made up of lay citizens, who heard nearly three weeks of testimony and legal arguments presided over by a judge and discussed it for about ten hours spread over two days. During the nationally televised trial, the jurors—six whites, four blacks and two of mixed ethnicity—and the viewers saw a recording made by a teenage girl showing Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds as repeatedly pleaded, “I can’t breathe.”

Those words, “I can’t breathe,” became the rallying cry of the rejuvenated Black Lives Matter movement that cut across racial lines raising the national consciousness. Floyd’s brother Philonise said that after the verdict “we are able to breathe again.” Significantly, the harrowing video of the killing saw the collapse of the so-called “blue wall of silence,” the closing of ranks by police to protect their own, and police officials called as witnesses acknowledged that Chauvin used excessive force and did not conform to training. Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, acknowledged, “A man lost his life needlessly at the hands of an officer.”