Three guilty verdicts against Chauvin are the first, absolutely necessary step forward

By E.J. Dionne Jr.,

The three guilty verdicts against Derek Chauvin, the police officer who murdered George Floyd by keeping his knee on the neck of a man begging for help and mercy, is the first, absolutely necessary step toward justice in our deeply divided nation.

The jury’s decision was a statement by a group of responsible citizens — “regular people from all walks of life,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called them after the verdict was in — that outrageous violence by police officers is, and must be declared, unacceptable.

Racism must be recognized for what it is. Murder is murder. And the fact that this killing was carried out by an officer sworn to uphold the law made the crime all the more disgraceful.

The import of the Chauvin verdict should not be underestimated, but it will not by itself transform the relationship between police officers and Black Americans. It is a large step forward — and only the beginning.

This outcome should mark, as Ellison said, “an inflection point,” part of a longer “journey to transformation and justice.”

“Enough, enough, enough of these senseless killings,” President Biden said after the verdict. He called it “a giant step forward toward justice” but noted that just outcomes on behalf of Black Americans were “all too rare.” Vice President Harris also lauded the verdict but insisted: “A measure of justice isn’t the same as equal justice.”

Former president Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama also hailed the verdict, but added that “if we’re being honest with ourselves, we know that true justice is about much more than a single verdict in a single trial.” The Obamas called for “concrete reforms that will reduce and ultimately eliminate racial bias in our criminal justice system.”

When Judge Peter A. Cahill read the first verdict of guilty on the toughest charge, murder in the second degree, one could almost hear sighs of relief across the nation.

Our collective relief reflected, above all, the justness of the verdicts but also that the nation would be spared an evening or days of rage over what many Americans of all races and ethnicities, but Black Americans in particular, would have seen as yet another example of a system that was incapable of protecting Black people’s safety and their rights.

The fact that Chauvin was tried on two other charges — third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter — gave the jury at least the possibility of rendering a “compromise” verdict: holding Chauvin accountable but reducing the penalties he faced.

That the jury did not take this route spoke to the evidence in the case — the sickening video of a man having the life choked out of him by an officer who already had Floyd in his control. The chief of the Minneapolis Police Department quickly made clear last summer, and again more recently in testimony, that he did not see Chauvin’s actions as right, or moral, or justified. Several other police officers also testified about the “unnecessary” force that Chauvin had exerted against the handcuffed, begging Floyd.

It’s possible to see the verdict as the product of the awakening that took hold across the country in the wake of Floyd’s murder. When Floyd’s 6-year-old daughter, Gianna (“Gigi”) declared last summer that “Daddy changed the world,” she spoke the truth.

Video of Gigi, perched atop the shoulders of Floyd’s friend Stephen Jackson, the former NBA player, went viral. Outrage over Floyd’s brutal death, Ellison said Tuesday, “sparked a worldwide movement.” The jury’s verdict showed that change is possible. It also signaled to the world that the struggle for racial equality in the United States, a long history of victories and defeats, of progress and setbacks, of peace and violence, might be bending again toward justice.

Social change can arise from anger and catastrophe, but sustained movements for reform require a measure of hope and a belief that political and legal systems can be pushed in new directions and reshaped for new purposes.

For the sake of the nation, the relief of April 20, 2021, must be the opening for a longer campaign to renew civil rights, preserve voting rights, and enact enduring reforms in our police and criminal justice systems. This was a trial in a single case with a public record so rich that it made denial impossible and alibis unbelievable.

We need a movement for a new system in which the forces of order genuinely protect and serve, in which citizens have confidence in those charged with protecting them and their communities, and in which cries for “law and order” — a phrase so often drenched in politics and racial animus — give way to a consistent commitment to safety and security for all.

Our nation should celebrate this moment of justice. Let it then inspire the work that must still be done.

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Read more: Eugene Robinson: Derek Chauvin’s conviction shouldn’t feel like a victory. But it does. The Post’s View: Unlike so many other times when Black people died at the hands of police, the Chauvin jury got it right Jennifer Rubin: The nation breathes a sigh of relief after Derek Chauvin’s conviction Margaret Sullivan: By bearing witness — and hitting ‘record’ — 17-year-old Darnella Frazier may have changed the world