up more on the justice for george floyd. >> we have more on this actual story, rev, including some of your remarks. so thank you very much, sir. >> thank you. >> and thank you for joining us this sunday evening. we have msnbc special coverage right now of this murder trial for the police officer who killed george floyd. the trial gets under way tomorrow with opening statements. our special right now is the trial, the killing of george floyd. tonight, you'll see new reporting of what will happen in the trial, what we know legally. you'll also see the stakes. and what we have already learned about who is on the jury. as the nation reflects on many civil rights challenges right now, a new police response to a mass shooting and a possible hate crime. later tonight, a special report on the evidence of a racial double standard and how police make arrests and use force. now, tomorrow's trial provides a possible reckoning for one of last year's defining moments. before may 25th, 2020, george

floyd was an unknown, regular, and innocent civilian. his slow, brutal killing, 8:46, caught on tape, sparked something that if you think about it tonight, virtually every american now knows at least something about it. national protests spanning months, the reignited blm movement, center stage. formal demands for police reform, and ultimately what barack obama himself called the greatest social justice push of this entire generation. so now, many do know about george floyd. his face portrayed in murals and memorials around the nation, but as a legal matter, this trial is primarily not about floyd but rather about the defendant, officer derek chauvin. the judgment will be for him, not floyd. the evidence will be to assess hiss actions and mind state, not that of the man he killed. chauvin faces a range of murder charges including third degree murder and his side haas already lost one opening request to try to move the trial somewhere

else. chauvin's lawyers had claimed all the publicity could hurt him as a defendant. >> i don't think there's any place in the state of minnesota that has not been subjected to extreme amounts of publicity on this case. >> now, that was an initial and procedural loss. chauvin's loss did get the use of some video evidence that shows the 2019 arrest of floyd because of the delayed compliance there. we can also report early wrangling shows there will be disputes about the range of factors that contributed to floyd's death, as a factual matter. the defense eyeing evidence to argue that floyd's health was somehow compromised apart from how police treated him. as a legal matter, even bad health is not a defense to killing someone. the judge ruling, chauvin can be guilty if he was a contributing cause of death. contributory cause, not -- he doesn't have to be the sole

cause of death. this trial is expected to be run up to a month. it will be broadcast on television. the judge expects the state to present witnesses as soon as tomorrow afternoon. we're going to get right into this in america tomorrow. prosecutors plan to call floyd's family to testify and the goal there, the role will be simply to humanize him for this jury, and that will be allowed under state law. there are also limits that will avoid a wider discussion of, for instance, his character and any past criminal history because that has been deemed inadmissible. the justice system has a demand, whatever you think about this case, you have clearly learned about it. you're watching the news now, so you have probably watched it before. you may have ideas on what happened and what was wrong, but justice demands the jury rule only on the evidence admitted in court, not all that other stuff we may know as citizens and it also demands these jurors not bring in any wider views of policy or justice and injustice across america. so that's the law. i can tell you about that.

but you also, of course, need to understand the very fact that this trial is occurring tomorrow is also clearly bound up in these protests, in this demand for changes to the way american criminal law works. murder trials for police killings of black americans are very rare. convictions, even more rare. there have actually only been five officers convicted of any kind of murder on the job in the past 15 years. to begin our special tonight, we're joined by nyu law professor melissa murray and former federal prosecutor paul butler. good evening to both of you. melissa, i emphasize the way evidence works in court because this is a trial where people know a lot, i think, about what's happened. yet, tomorrow it will be the jurors' job to do what? to listen to what? educate us. >> well, both sides, when this trial begins, are going to be at

great pains to get to the heart of the mater for each of them. the government has the burden of establishing mr. chauvin's guilt on the times charged beyond a reasonable doubt. that's a high standard. that means for the defense, what they really need to do is inject the element of doubt. as you said, this question of mr. floyd's underlying health conditions will be really critical because the government has to show beyond a reasonable doubt that derek chauvin's actions on that fateful day were a substantial cause of mr. floyd's death. so the defense is going to be at great pains to introduce evidence showing that there were other factors so that this was not a substantial cause of his death. that these other factors were more significantly contributing. >> and if a juror says, like a viewer might say, well, knrut heard this or i read this online, what will happen tomorrow? how will the judge deal with that? >> they're not supposed to bring in evidence that comes from outside. they're really supposed to focus on what's presented to them. not everything that could be

presented will be presented. again, there's already been evidentiary rulings lilting the scope of some of the evidence that can be presented so they really have to stick with what they're given. this is a case with which the jurors are likely incredibly familiar because it's been in the ether for so long. again, limiting or mitigating external influences will be difficult. >> paul, take a listen to what the state's attorney general said about the prospects of success for the prosecution. >> we are following the path of all of the evidence. every single link in the prosecutorial chain must be strong. it needs to be strong because trying this case will not be an easy thing. winning a conviction will be hard. the very fact that we have filed these charges means that we believe in them. >> he says it will be hard, and yet if you were an alien landing from outer space, and you read

that we have laws against killing people, and you read the text of them, and then you said the way you prove that in court is strong evidence, and you said in this case, here's this video. that alien or any other person looking, stacking that up, might ask why does someone as knowledgeable as ellison think this is going to be hard. it sees to many that it stacks up as a strong piece of evidence in the case. >> no prosecution of a police officer is ever a slam dunk. jurors are often sympathetic to police officers. they think even if they made a mistake, they were just trying to do their job. and the law encourages jurors to look at what happened from the perspective of the police officer. there's videotape in this case that's very compelling, but there was videotape in the rodney king beating, and those cops walked. there was videotape of south

carolina police officers shooting walter scott in the back. and those officers were not convicted in the first state trial. so this is a long hurdle. officer chauvin has nothing to prove. the prosecution's heavy burden is to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. >> as you remind us, that is something that is uniform. always the burden on the prosecution, and viewers may know you, paul, like melissa, as one of our great analysts, very thoughtful, very thorough. you also were, if you don't mind me complementing you on live tv, a very celebrated prosecutor and one of the top federal prosecutors in the nation in the d.c. office. you would actually do these cases. you would think through how do you get a jury there. i want to put up what we now know about this jury. this starts tomorrow, that's why this is a special tonight on msnbc and america's eyes will be on the case tomorrow, and thus thinking about what the jurors are seeing. this is what we know so far.

60% of -- i'm sorry. looking at the wrong number. i thought i had the -- i was looking at a different number. let me just do it from memory, which is i know there's several different categories of jurors. there's six white women, there's multiple black members of the jury, multiple white members of the jury. more women than men on that sigh, and we saw a lot of wrangling about that because it's important who is actually on the jury if race is going to be a factor. what is your thoughts -- here we go, and my apologies before. this has the breakdown for viewers as well. they're anonymous, we don't know who they are. but your view of the wrangling over who's on the jury and what if anything can be gleaned on it, from it, paul? >> the jury has six people of color, four black folks and two people who identify as multiracial. it also has seven people who are in their 20s and 30s.

so the combination of people of color and younger folks makes it look like a good jury for the prosecution. because those are people who might be more skeptical of the police. and in this jury selection pros, we saw that even white perspective jurors were impacted by the national reckoning on race. every person seated on the jury had heard about it in advance. they had to assure the judge they could put aside what they heard and rule on the evidence presented in court. but there's one white woman who said that she strongly agreed that the police are biased against african-americans. the judge said, well, can you put that aside and be fair? she said yes. ari, she's on the jury. >> right. which is a reminder of how this works. both of our experts stay with us. we want to bring in for an additional perspective, mark claxton, a retired nypd detective and brings police

experience. he's also director of the black law enforcement alliance. mark, you have police experience. you also are a civil rights advocate. so i want to ask you to do two things here. number one, what is the kind of police defense we should expect to start hearing in this case? and then number two, what might be the response or analysis you want to give of it from a civil rights perspective? can mark hear me? i think while we figure that out, i'm going to throw it over to the professor, mark claxton. proof of life he's here, but we'll figure out the audio issues. professor, same question to you if you heard it. >> the question as i heard it is what should we make of the composition of the jury, what arguments the defense would make? the defense is really going to,

again, go to the kwekz of injecting doubt into the prosecution's case to make the case that it wasn't officer chauvin's conduct that led to george floyd's death or certainly not by itself, but rather there were other contributing factors that may have been more substantial, like his pre-existing health conditions, like the fact they are go to allege he was perhaps intoxicated at the time of the arrest. all of that will come in to inject doubt into the prosecution's case. >> and paul, building on that, because again, you can't understand a trial well at all without looking at both sides, and a lot of the evidence, again, if we follow the facts, a lot of the public evidence is obviously bad for the police. it's bad for him, chauvin as a defendant. that's why there's a rare trial in the first place. having said that, paul, walk us through what a good defense lawyer would do as the professor was walking through, injecting doubt or trying to deal with something that may look quite obvious on video, but getting

the jury to question what the main cause of death might have been. >> ari, at the end of the defense presentation, you're not going to know whether it's chauvin who is on trial or george floyd. their defense is that chauvin literally did not kill george floyd, that george floyd died because of a lethal combination of drugs, illegal drugs, and his serious pre-existing health conditions. the toxicology report found drugs in floyd's system. the medical examiner says the cause of floyd's death was homicide. but that's a medical term, not a legal term. and importantly, the medical examiner does not say that floyd died of asphyxiation but rather that what chauvin did, his act of putting his knee on floyd's neck caused floyd to have a heart attack. but at the time of floyd's death, choke holds and neck

restraints were allowed in minneapolis, although they have since been banned. >> all fair points. i want to widen out a little bit, and for professor, take a listen to george floyd's brother. something that's happened in the law in the last several decades is a greater protection of what are called victims' impact statements and victim's role in the courtroom. it's a particularly acute issue in the black community because so much of the violence is coming from the state. and so we have this sort of grim process that we're all doing as a country and sometimes in the news where we're hearing from basically grieving family members. but in that spirit, george floyd's brother was speaking out. he chose to speak to msnbc's reverend sharpton, so i wanted to play that for you and the viewers. take a look. >> my brother, he died from asphyxiation. that's equivalent to being choked to death in the black community. i want him to think about eric garner, when he didn't get the

justice that he needed. i want him to think about breonna taylor, when she didn't get the justice that she needed. it's so many people around the world who didn't have footage who were killed, innocent people. and we need biden to look into that because the george floyd policing act is big. >> george floyd's brother broadening this, and so as a final point on this first segment in our special, professor, i want to get your reaction to that, him basically using what is a sad, grieving, tragic platform to call on action by the new president. >> so this victim impact statement is much more wide reaching than the ones we typically see. typically, they're introduced at the sentencing phase of the criminal trial as a means of assessing the way in which the crime has impacted others around them, and they're often used in a way that i think have been detrimental to the black community. this is an interesting turn where george floyd's brother is

making the case for civil rights gains that will ameliorate conditions of the black community vis-a-vis the police. >> really important points. we did cover a lot of grounds. we were trying to get mr. claxton in. you have tech issues, just like if you're doing a zoom at home sometimes. we have a lot more in the program which i'm going to tell you about. i want to thank melissa and paul, both of you. coming up, more on the key question of what the jurors will be considering. we're also be joined by congresswoman stacey plaskett. she's a former prosecutor and a house impeachment manager with extensive experience here. she's live. >> also, the wider context of the trial, the culmination of some of the largest social justice protests we have seen. we have the new aclu president, debra archer here, and later, when i mentioned our special report on this racial double standard when you see police use of force, it was back in the news this past week. you're watching an msnbc special, the trial, the killing of george floyd.

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when officer derek chauvin is put on trial tomorrow for murder charges in the death of george floyd, millions off americans may watch on tv and online, but the only people with a say are the jurors which includes three black men, three white women, and six white women, and given the issues in the case, as we have been covering, lawyers on both sides are eyeing the jury's racial and idealogical makeup. you have six jurors of color, nine white jurors. 14 present for opening statements and two alternates. the jurors are anonymous. and they won't be sequestered during this trial. that's a contrast to some other high-profile trial periods. they will be sequestered had they meet to deliberate. joining us is stacey plaskett. you may know her as a democratic

congresswoman, but she also served in the justice department and as a bronx prosecutor. we come to you for more than one reason. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> as i was doing an opening of this special, i have been emphasizing to viewers there's what justice requires in the specific facts of the case, and then what is the obvious even glaring environment for this. one and two. and so with you, i would like to start with one as a prosecutor, your view of the equities in the case, what you're watching for tomorrow. >> well, i think, of course, we're all going to be riveted to hear what the opening statements are going to be, as both sides lay out their case. and lay out what they presume the jury is going to hear, what evidence they're going to be presenting, and their theory of the case. i would like to know what the defense's theory is going to be. and i think the prosecution is going to now have multiple charges that they're going to be able to utilize to try and convict the police officer in

this matter. >> and then widening out, as i mentioned number two and something you worked on and spoke about in your career in congress, systemic racism doesn't prove or disprove an individual case. it may be relevant to it, but ultimately, these jurors have to decide what's put forward to them in court. but when we widen out to what i call number two, there is systemic racism in minnesota, as there is in so many states in the united states, and not just quote/unquote certain states that some might think of. minnesota, for example, has plenty of democratic and liberal leadership in various parts. but let's look at the structural data here. the minneapolis police use of these neck restraints, so controversial. the vast majority of them are used against black residents there. this is a police department's own data, far disproportionate as compared to the population. and this, like the use of deadly

force and weapons, is of a piece with an american system where black people are quite routinely killed. on site, in daylight. how does that fit into all this and what the country takes from next week? >> well, i think, you know, that all fits into not only the mindset of the jurors but oftentimes unfortunately, mindset of police officers. when they're approaching individuals. since the killing of george floyd, there have been 100 unarmed black individuals who have either been brutalized or killed by police. and so we have to recognize that we have a system where it sees black people very differently than they see white individuals when they stop them. that's why members of congress have put forward the george floyd justice in policing act. which is not to defund police and not to stop police, but to support police officers to be

much more community oriented, to protect all of the people that they're there to fight for and to protect in the communities where they're serving. as you can see in the background, you might be able to see my grandfather was a police officer. my father served more than 30 years on the new york city police force. many of us are not against police. we need to provide them with tools so that they think differently, so that they have the mechanisms able to support the communities in which they serve. >> congresswoman stacey plaskett staying up with us on a sunday evening on the eve of this trial. thanks for your time tonight. >> thank you. thank you. we're going to be listening as this is holy week. i'm praying for everyone that they have a blessed week and that we all be prayerful during this time. >> well, as we say, amen. i can get down with you on that. and thank you very much. >> i didn't get a rap quote from

you. i was looking for it. i was waiting. >> well, you know, i will say this. as you and i both know, unfortunately, there's a long history of work in this domain. but when it gets superserious, sometimes i quote less, to be honest. but there is relevant stuff. do you have one in mind, before we go? >> i was thinking, of course, of, you know, i was thinking of protective custody, right? the lyrics from that. where you have so many of the rap artists who have got together to talk about it, talib qwali and others, but nothing immediately comes to mind. do you have anything? >> you know, we'll go next time, bar for bar. now that i know you're game. we don't always put members of congress on the spot. we'll do it next time. and thanks again, greswoman. >> take care. >> appreciate you. still ahead in our special, we have a report on this racial policing double standard. it was back in the news after

that mass shooting last week. and how deadly force really operates. >> but first, from the streets to the courts, what's at stake in this trial with these protests in the streets, when we come back. good morning, blair. [ chuckles ] whoo. i'm gonna grow big and strong. yes, you are. i'm gonna get this place all clean. i'll give you a hand. and i'm gonna put lisa on crutches! wait, what? said she's gonna need crutches. she fell pretty hard. you might want to clean that up, girl. excuse us. when owning a small business gets real, progressive helps protect what you built with customizable coverage. -and i'm gonna -- -eh, eh, eh. -donny, no. -oh. you're not using too much are you hon? charmin ultra soft is so soft -eh, eh, eh. you'll have to remind your family they can use less. charmin ultra soft is twice as absorbent so you can use less. enjoy the go with charmin.

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on the murder trial for the officer who killed george floyd. i mentioned earlier tonight the very fact this trial is happening is rare in america. police killings are just rarely charged. even when those killed are unarmed and they themselves are not suspected of any serious crime. even rarer are convictions of officers. this bears keeping in mind, only five officers have been convicted of murder in the past 15 years. you can see right here those few convictions have come more recently for on-duty shooting. there's no single factor in

tracking change. public pressure has altered who some of the top prosecutors are in certain areas and changed the dynamics for some of the decisions. and some states have new laws providing more independent mechanisms for whether to charge officers. the millions who have marched to save black lives matter this summer found that there is momentum, indeed, support for blm spiked with those protests after floyd's killing. when we have heard from a wide group of people demanding change and helping educate the public on the evidence of a systemic problem. >> george floyd's life mattered. ♪ i can't breathe you're taking my life from me ♪ ♪ just because he's from the ghetto ♪ >> for 400 years, you had your knees on your necks. a garden of evil with no seed of respect. >> we need justice for george floyd. >> as a matter of law and civil rights accountability for police brutality is a piece, one piece

of the wider challenge. this trial is a response to a steady problem that advocates want to change. why do they want to change it? well, for starters, so these kinds of trials aren't necessary. as you watch this trial begin tomorrow, keep in mind the rate of police shootings and killings. hold steady. it looks to be on that same track this year, 2021. and the goal of civil rights leaders here is not to just put police on trial. it's to reform a system so police stop killing innocent people and have to be put on trial at all. and that's not my observation here. i'm reporting what we have been hearing from leaders who have been working at this for decades. indeed, before anyone knew that this particular killing would become such a national and global catalyst, the civil rights leader and our colleague reverend sharpton spoke at floyd's memorial service and reiterated the goal, not a demand for help or special treatment or something like that. but rather a demand that america

finally change the story and get police to stop killing black people, as sharpton put it simply and sadly, quote, get your knee off our necks. >> george floyd's story has been the story of black folks because ever since 401 years ago, the reason we could never be who we wanted and dreamed of being is you kept your knee on our necks. it's time for us to stand up in george's name and say get your knee off our necks. >> there it was, that fateful day. we're joined by aclu president and nyu law professor deborah archer. your thoughts. >> well, thank you for having

me. you know, as you mentioned, it's very unusual to have an officer go on trial for murdering a black person. and as the trial begins tomorrow, it's certainly hopeful there will be some measure of justice for george floyd, for his family, for his communities. and i hope that the trial will end with black people believing that there's a possibility of justice and equality within our criminal legal system. but we can never really be confident or comfortable when it comes to addressing racial injustice. the history of racial injustice and atrocities in this country really ends with justice for the victims. so i'm hopeful, but i think it's an everyday challenge of being black in america to balance hope and optimism with the history of heartbreak and disappointment, and to be able to acknowledge the progress but not lose sight of how far we have come and how far we have to go. when you say have we learned anything, what has come from the protests, i think it depends on who the we is. and it depends on how we're measuring success or progress. first in terms of things i think

are definitely unfinished business, we're still in the beginning of a long overdue conversation in racialized harm in policing and the need to reimagine public safety, and that conversation is not advancing at the pace or the way the needs to given the harm. and in the end, today, we're still using police as tools to subjugate control, regulate, and devalue black people, and today, law enforcement still operates to control black people through a system that's really characterized by systemic racism. if we look back, we can reflect on changes in how police officers do their jobs and engage with the community. how police officers are hired, trained, disciplined, and held accountable. and we can look at whether we have made progress in beginning to unravel the systemic racism that has woven itself into our policing system over centuries and do the actual work to build stronger and safer communities. and i'm not sure that we have made the progress that anyone has hoped for or the kind of

progress that we have been promised. i think we can start with how officers do their jobs and engage with the community. if we just look at the past few months, we can compare the way an elected black member of the georgia legislature was dragged out of the state capitol by police for doing the job she was elected to do, or how new york police restrained, handcuffed, and pepper sprayed a distressed 9-year-old girl compared to how a white man who had killed eight people, mostly asian women, was armed and dangerous, and he was peacefully taken into custody, and how he was treated with kindness and empathy. and we continue to see murders at the hands of police, following the murder of george floyd, breonna taylor, rashon brooks, and so many others. we saw historic protests demanding justice and an end to systemic violence and the police responded by inflicting that same violence on black and brown people who were demanding justice and accountability for their communities. so i'm not sure how far we have

actually come. >> yeah. it all makes sense. i'm curious what you think about the paradox that it often takes the individual case, a person, a video, the face, the humanizing part of that to get more people onboard, and yet justice in the broadest sense is not freighted on just the outcome of a single case. so everyone now for the next few weeks may focus on this, and yet you just walked through the type of reforms that are broader. what do you say to that in the context of the fact that any perception of minimizing the outcome or where the jury lands would be seen in some circles, some civil rights circles as just soft, but a lot of leaders we hear from say the most important thing is not what 12 people are going to do, that's just a process. but having the systemic reform in state houses around the country? >> that's absolutely correct.

unfortunately, it does take the death of individuals, harm to individuals to galvanize change. and calls for accountability. beyond accountability for individual bad actors, we need to see systemic accountability. we should hold individuals accountable. but how will we actually confront the systems of racism that are embedded in our policing system? that will take more than holding individual purveyors of harm accountable because there are more derek chauvins than there are jail cells, and holding those individuals accountable doesn't get to the underlying systemic inequality. the underlying problem with policing isn't just lack of oversight policies or more training or better procedures. or putting our hopes on one trial. while doing more to radically change all of these things really remains essential for hard reduction, the problem is more insidious in the small changes may reduce harm, but they're not going to eliminate it. >> right, which goes to actually

having a wider cultural, political reckoning that makes real change so the incentives are proactive and not responding to the worst of the worst. we have to fit in a break but i imagine we'll be calling on you throughout the trial. deborah archer, thank you very much. >> thank you for having me. i mentioned we have a special report. it's on the racial double standard. and it's next. with bounce pet hair & lint guard, your clothes can repel pet hair. look how the shirt on the left attracts pet hair like a magnet! pet hair is no match for bounce. with bounce, you can love your pets, and lint roll less. if you wanna be a winner then get a turkey footlong from subway®. that's oven roasted turkey. piled high with crisp veggies. on freshly baked bread! so, let's get out there and get those footlongs. now at subway®, buy one footlong in the app, and get one 50% off. subway®. eat fresh. if you're 55 and up, t- mobile has plans built just for you. and get one 50% off. switch today and get 2 lines of unlimited

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going to a car that reportedly had his three children. he was shot seven times, paralyzing him. what about the racial double standard? it was in the news again this past week, which drew comparisons back to dylann roof, a man armed with a rifle who gunned down nine innocent victims in church. police didn't fire one shot at him. indeed, they carefully and methodically apprehended him. in fact, you can see officers calmly handcuffing him and leading him into the back of that car there. this is the exact racial double standard at play over and over in different places around the country. the same double standard. people are not being treated the same by police. i repeat, police are not treating people the same. now, take a look at george floyd in the moments before he was killed. here he was beforehand. he was being walked out. he was not armed. he was restrained, but he was held in the choke hold, pleading the same words, i can't breathe. floyd told the police he was claustrophobic and was afraid to

get in the car. according to the arrest affidavit. so we know that from police. we don't have more information from floyd because they killed him. it's an incident that of course has shocked many in america, not because it occurred. police killings of civilians are frequent. but shocking because, like the blake interaction was caught on tape, and most americans have seen the citizen made video of floyd's killing. that's a piece of it on the right hand of your screen. but it's worth seeing the context of the other arrests like dylann roof, how police peacefully subdued a mass murderer, and other killers who were white, while escalating interactions with a black man up to the point where minnesota authorities alleged that what turned that into a crime scene, a murder scene, was what police did. george floyd literally could not move. he couldn't breathe. and then he was killed. now, this is the double standard. this is the inequity. this is what protesters are protesting, the racism.

but what about the law? some people emphasize, well, these people, some of them, apparently were resisting arrest. republican lindsey graham stressing that in the new case with blake, saying he didn't yield. >> i don't know what happened there, let's find out. it's dangerous being a cop. i don't know why the gentleman didn't yield when he was asked to yield. i don't know what the facts are. >> now, people say fleeing the police is illegal. and it is. it's also illegal to drive over the speed limit or be late on your taxes. the punishment for resisting arrest like those infractions is not the death penalty. not in court, not in a summary execution without trial on the street by self-appointed state executioners. now, this is important. it's illegal for police to use deadly force on someone fleeing. under the law, they may only use such force if that person

possesses the actual ability to kill or gravely injure people. the police or other people around. they have to have evidence of that. and this is what they call fundamental law, cops and lawyers know it because it was a major supreme court decision. >> today, in a decision written with great emotional intensity, the supreme court ruled that police may not shoot at a fleeing suspect unless there is good reason to believe the suspect might kill or injure the police or others. >> and how did the supreme court come to even rule on that issue 35 years ago? now remember, the court only rules on things that actually happen. it doesn't just issue a random opinion about an idea. something has to actually happen that is appealed through the system all the way to the highest court. in this instance, a police shooting so bad, even by the standards of the reagan era crackdowns on what was a higher crime rate, so bad that the court drew a line. what kind of case would that be? well, you're watching the news.

you live in america. i bet you already have some idea even if cow don't remember the case. police killed a black child unarmed, he weighed about 100 pounds and was 15 years old. he was running away, not a threat to anyone, but he had stolen allegedly $10. >> one of those killed was edward garner, a 100 pound unarmed 15-year-old who died one night on this fence in memphis after he failed to heed a police warning to stop as he fled with $10 and a purse from an empty house. >> i don't see no reason why they should have shot him. >> no reason. $10. 15 years old. that was too much even for a reagan era supreme court all those decades ago. now, it's as illegal today as it was then when the supreme court ruled it. that's the law. but here we go. you say all right, ari, you're telling me all this stuff and all this law. what's the point? the point is the system which

rarely investigates and punishes police when they break those laws, leevan so many black families objectively afraid of literally any potential police interaction because it clearly methodically, objectively, historically, documented, has a real risk of turning deadly in minutes. all of this comes full circle because that's what civil rights leaders were warning about long before even that supreme court decision. you can go all the way back to the 1960s, when stokely carmichael addressed how white fear can drive police brutality. >> white people have to admit they are afraid to go into a black ghetto at night. they are afraid. that's a fact. they are afraid because they would be beat up, lynched, looted, cut up, et cetera, et cetera. that happens to black people inside the ghetto every day, incidentally, and white people are afraid of that. you get a man to do it for you. a policeman. and now you figure his mentality when he's afraid of black people, the first time a black

man jumps, that white man is going to shoot him. he's going to shoot him. so police brutality is going to exist on that level. >> he's going to shoot him, and police brutality will exist on that level. here we are, it's 55 years after that address. and the facts of the law can only take us so war in at the root of it is systemic racism thwarting even the laws that have been passed to address some of this. the killing of george floyd is tragic but mutt be viewed in the wider context. on the right, police who made him a dead, innocent man, while on the left you have police who carefully let convicted murderers live. with a lunch order if they wanted. just four years ago, when colin kaepernick took that knee during the national enthem. kneeling in protest of all this. silent, peaceful, against systemic racism and violence plaguing the nation. we lived through the criticism

he faced for that peaceful protest and retaliation and in our people protesting in wisconsin around the nation and inside the nba, going back at the same thing. it is tragic. it is wrong. stokely carmichael's wisdom applies so seamlessly to today's america. also he said, we're tireds of trying to explain to white people we're not going to hurt them. the question is -- will white people overcome their racism, quote/unquote. we have been talking about race in this country since it was founded. if you use race as a prism we are still a very young democracy, because for so long people were not allowed to participate in their own lives, their feel, let alone voting or equal justice under the law. here we are on the eve of this trial, tomorrow, and we have more and more of the same evidence and the same arguments with the question -- will america do anything about it?

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welcome back to the conclusion of our special tonight "the trial." i am happy to have spent this hour, and i want to tell you as we've discussed this ener to hour with our guests, msnbc will have entire coverage of the trial starting tomorrow. opening stamgts for the mudder of george floyd, what prosecutors are arguing. by all accounts a historic inflection points. that's throughout the day. also we'll cover the trial a lot more tomorrow in my usual slot if you watch msnbc you may know. i averager "the beat" weeknights on msnbc. alicia menendez is next right after this break. after this br honestly, i add a couple of tide pods

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hello everyone. i'm alicia menendez. this sunday, new threats to democracy. republicans now working to restrict voting rights beyond georgia. dnc chair jaime harrison is here with his plan to fight back. plus, gun safety. could now be the time we finally do something. new remarks from the president on that and talking to two women with whom this fight is very personal. also, conspiracies about the southern border returning wild. guess wh