The brother of George Floyd, the man killed after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers last year, told MSNBC on Monday that the family wants "justice" for the "modern-day lynching."
Philonise Floyd appeared on "MSNBC Live" with Craig Melvin alongside the family's attorney, Benjamin Crump, to discuss the upcoming trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who has been charged with second degree murder in the death of George Floyd in his custody.
"We all want justice," Philonise Floyd said. "We are all looking for a conviction."
He added the most difficult part of the trial is going to be "just sitting in there, just looking, and then engaging in just making sure that – hoping that these jurors, like – as you have seen the video, my brother was tortured to death while he had a smirk on his face. And if you can't get justice in America for that, what can you get justice for?"
Floyd later added, "I just want justice. I want a conviction. That was a modern-day lynching. My brother should still be here.
"He was a living human being who was killed in broad daylight in front of people who was trying to render aid, but nobody accepted that, nobody," he added.
Crump, who said the case was "very straightforward," noted: "The fact that this officer tortured an unarmed, handcuffed man who was face down while he begged 28 times to be able to breathe. The people on the streets, everybody knew that he was being killed. They even told them so. But Chauvin refused to take his knee off his neck."
Crump later said, "The defense is going to do what we have seen them do to Trayvon [Martin], to Michael Brown, to Philando Castile, everybody. They're going to try to attack the character of George Floyd. So, we have to make sure, no matter what they say about George Floyd, we are not distracted from what we see on that video."
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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