THE jury, in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the ex-police officer accused of killing George Floyd last year, has retired to weigh up its verdict.
Security has been ramped up around the court building in the US city of Minneapolis, which is protected by barbed wire, high barriers and armed soldiers from the National Guard.
“This was murder,” the prosecutor said in closing arguments on Monday.

The defence argued that Chauvin had correctly followed police training.
He behaved as any “reasonable police officer” would, lead lawyer Eric Nelson said, adding the circumstances surrounding Floyd’s death gave rise to reasonable doubt.
But prosecutor Steve Schleicher urged jurors to “use your common sense. Believe your eyes. What you saw, you saw,” referring to the video showing Chauvin kneeling on Floyd for more than nine minutes last May. “This wasn’t policing; this was murder,” he added.
The footage of Chauvin, who is white, restraining Floyd, a black man, on the floor as he shouted “I can’t breathe” spurred months of global protests against racism in 2020.
The trial of Chauvin has been described as a pivotal moment for race relations and policing in the US.
Cities across the country are bracing for protests regardless of whether the jury decides to convict or acquit Chauvin of murder and manslaughter charges.
On Monday the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, requested security assistance from the states of Ohio and Nebraska ahead of the verdict.
Walz thanked Ohio and Nebraska for helping Minnesota’s state troopers and police officers “as they continue to work to keep the peace in our communities”.
The prosecution and the defence made their closing statements in a trial that lasted three weeks. The prosecution then had another opportunity to rebut Nelson’s arguments before the jury was sent to deliberate.

Jurors could take a short amount of time or days to decide whether to convict former Minneapolis police officer Chauvin.
The jury will have to consider testimony heard from 45 witnesses, including doctors, use-of-force experts, police officers, bystanders and people who were close to Floyd.
Chauvin has been charged with second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and manslaughter. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.
He faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted of the most serious charge – second-degree murder.

A conviction on any of the counts against Chauvin will require the nine-woman, five-man jury to return a unanimous verdict.
After the jury had left court on Monday, lawyers for the prosecution and defence continued to debate procedural matters.

Judge Peter Cahill rejected a last-gasp attempt by Chauvin’s defence lawyer to declare the trial invalid because of media coverage and comments made by a member of Congress.
Nelson suggested remarks made by Democratic representative Maxine Waters over the weekend may have influenced the jury.

Waters spoke on Saturday in Brooklyn Centre, a suburb of Minneapolis where Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old black man, was fatally shot by a police officer last week.
If there is no guilty verdict in Chauvin’s trial, Waters said, “then we know that we got to not only stay in the street, but we have got to fight for justice”.
She also rejected curfews and said: “We’ve got to get more confrontational. We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business.”
In court, Nelson described Waters’ comments as “threats against the sanctity of the jury process”.

“Now that we have US representatives threatening acts of violence in relation to this case – it’s mind boggling to me,” Nelson said
In response, Judge Cahill said: “I give you that congresswoman Waters may have given you something on appeal that may result in this trial being overturned.”
The judge said he wished “elected officials would stop talking about this case, especially in a manner that is disrespectful to the rule of law”.
“Their failure to do so is abhorrent,” he said.

However, he said Waters’ “opinion really doesn’t matter a whole lot” and therefore dismissed Nelson’s motion for a mistrial.
Earlier on Monday, Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader of the US House of Representatives, defended Waters over her remarks, insisting she had no reason to apologise. (BBC)