MINNEAPOLIS — Two former Minneapolis police officers charged with aiding and abetting George Floyd's killing appeared in court Tuesday morning to ask the judge to delay and relocate their trial, set to begin in downtown Minneapolis in two weeks.
Attorneys for Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng told Judge Peter Cahill it will be impossible to select an impartial jury in a city that just days ago marked the two-year anniversary of Floyd's death, reigniting worldwide news coverage of a police murder that started a reckoning over brutality in American policing.
The attorneys listed a litany of new developments they say could taint the jury pool, including the recent guilty plea from their co-defendant, Thomas Lane, the February guilty verdicts for all three former officers in federal court, the settling of costly civil rights lawsuits and public comments from politicians like Attorney General Keith Ellison. Thao attorney Robert Paule held up the Star Tribune's Variety section to the Zoom camera, which contained a story about a PBS Frontline/Star Tribune documentary premiering Tuesday evening following the newspaper's coverage of Floyd's killing and the aftermath.
