A juror from the Derek Chauvin murder trial appeared on Good Morning America and CBS This Morning Wednesday, where he spoke about the stress of the trial and how the jury came to its verdict.
Brandon Mitchell, a 31-year-old basketball coach who was juror #52, said that the jury had preliminary votes for each of the charges against former Minneapolis police officer Chauvin— all of which he was ventually found guilty on. A difficult part about the trial as a whole, Mitchell added, was the stress of watching Chauvin murder 46-year-old father George Floyd each day on video.
“We were just stressed about the simple fact that every day we had come in and watch a Black man die,” Mitchell told CBS’ Gayle King. “That alone is stressful. Coming in each and every day and having to watch somebody die is stressful enough by itself. So anything outside of that was secondary just because as a human its natural to feel some kind of way as you watch somebody in agony.”
Mitchell also told King that the most convincing talking points during the trial came from pulmonologist Dr. Michael Tobin, who said that Floyd died from a “low level of oxygen.”\
“With him speaking so scientifically, but also making it understandable for everyone along with the exhibits he came with, I thought he just broke it down in a manner that was easy for all the jurors to understand,” Mitchell said. “And I didn’t think there was any way for the defense to come back after that. To me, the case was done at that point almost.”
In conversation with GMA’s Robin Roberts, Mitchell also spoke on the diversity of the jury and the importance of showing up for jury duty in all cases.
“In order for change to happen, we gotta get into those types of avenues, get into those rooms,” he explained. “We gotta show up for jury duty. We have to vote. Those are things that are important to society as a whole, and if we want to be viewed differently in society and start to see different results, we have to start to do those things.”
Previously, alternate juror Lisa Christensen spoke with reporters last week, as Judge Peter Cahill ordered that the jurors’ names will not be released for another six months due to emails to attorneys that have been “frequently incendiary, inflammatory, and threatening in nature.”
