It was a moment that convulsed America and reverberated across the world. On the fateful evening of May 25, 2020, in a street in the city of Minneapolis, lay an unarmed black man, gasping for his life. ‘I can’t breathe,’ he said repeatedly as a white police officer seemed to press down on his neck with his knee. Then the man stopped speaking and his body became motionless.

The life of 46-year-old George Floyd was over. But the explosive fallout from his death was about to begin. The day after Floyd died in police custody, Minneapolis saw huge protests, which by nightfall had descended into violence, complete with vandalism and attacks on the police.

Worse rioting followed over the next four days, forcing the police to abandon one of their precinct buildings in unprecedented scenes of disorder. Soon, with millions watching the footage of Floyd’s death on their phones and in some cases frustrated after months of Covid lockdown, violent unrest was sweeping through America’s cities, accompanied by angry demands for racial justice led by the Black Lives Matter movement.

The fury of demonstrators was all the more intense because George Floyd’s final, harrowing moments captured on video served as a metaphor for the darkest fears about police racism and brutality. Just as the image of Floyd’s face became a symbol of the fight for equality, so his agonising last words, ‘I can’t breathe’, were turned into a battle cry against oppression.

The police remained the prime target for the rioters’ discontent, reflected in calls to slash their budgets or even ‘defund’ them entirely. And the immediate focus was on ensuring that the men seen as directly responsible for Floyd’s death were held to account for their actions, particularly Derek Chauvin, the officer who had played the central role in restraining Floyd with his knee. He and three colleagues – Tou Thao, Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane – were put in the dock in early 2021.

The trial was presided over by Judge Peter Cahill, who rejected all requests to delay it because of the incendiary prevailing atmosphere, which had the potential to undermine the fairness of proceedings. To cheers from Black Lives Matter activists and other radical groups, Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree murder and was sentenced to 22 years in prison. The other three were jailed on lesser charges of aiding manslaughter.

George Floyd’s face became a symbol of the fight for equality, while his last words, ‘I can’t breathe’, were turned into a battle cry against oppression

Around the world, the relief at the outcome was widespread. Soon after the jury had reached its verdict, President Joe Biden declared that the case ‘had ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see systemic racism’. In an even more extravagant vein, Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat Speaker of the House, thanked Floyd ‘for sacrificing your life for justice’.

Yet the killing of George Floyd also generated a climate of hysteria over race. Suddenly, ‘white privilege’, ‘unconscious bias’, ‘decolonisation’, ‘critical race theory’ and ‘cultural humility’ were phrases we all began to hear.

As a black woman journalist and commentator, I experienced this myself. At one point, when I dared question some aspects of the BLM movement, I was maligned as the worst kind of racist and even – absurdly – called a ‘black Nazi’.

Derek Chauvin, whose very name is synonymous with racist evil, is like the hate figure Emmanuel Goldstein in George Orwell’s novel 1984, designated by the state as an enemy of the people. But given the backdrop of turmoil in America in early 2021, it is now legitimate to ask whether he really received a fair trial. The willingness even to pose such a question would provoke outrage among liberals and would be seen by some as an act of racism in itself.

But that kind of overblown hostility to any scrutiny is in fact precisely why we should revisit this episode. Justice will not be protected by censorship and insults.

Ever since 2021, there have been voices expressing doubts about the verdict. One is that of Liz Collin, the former CBS reporter whose film, The Fall Of Minneapolis, disputes much of the conventional wisdom about the case. Commentators like Tucker Carlson have been just as sceptical, warning of the danger that ‘facts’ can be twisted to fit an agenda.

Last week, conservative influencer Ben Shapiro launched a petition calling on President Trump to pardon Chauvin on the grounds that Floyd was not ‘murdered’ at all but died from the impact of a drug overdose on a pre-existing heart condition. Shapiro published a letter addressed to the President on his site The Daily Wire claiming that Chauvin was ‘unjustly convicted,’ writing: ‘Make no mistake – the Derek Chauvin conviction represents the defining achievement of the woke movement in American politics.’ Such a call would have been unthinkable only four years ago. But as the election of Trump proves, there is a growing backlash against the woke world view.

So is the conviction of Chauvin really open to challenge? To find a possible answer, we have to go back to that tragic evening in 2020. The events that led to Floyd’s death began when a store clerk contacted the police to report that Floyd had just made a purchase with a counterfeit $20 bill.

George Floyd’s final, harrowing moments were captured on video, with Derek Chauvin holding his knee against the man’s neck

The day after Floyd died in police custody, there were huge protests, which by nightfall had descended into violence, complete with vandalism and attacks on the police

Immediately, Chauvin, an experienced officer with almost 20 years in the city force, was dispatched to the scene with his three colleagues, Kueng, Thao and Lane. Ironically in light of the subsequent race furore, the quartet was very diverse, with Thao of Asian heritage and Kueng hailing from a mixed-race background. Chauvin, too, had never been accused of racism. If he had been, the prosecution would have ruthlessly exploited such a fact at his trial.

When the officers turned up to question Floyd, they found him behind the wheel of his parked car, with two other people in the back – an alleged drug dealer called Morries Hall and a woman named Shawanda Hill, who was also said to be a supplier. The police quickly saw that Floyd was in an agitated state, rocking back and forth, crying and apparently concealing drugs in his mouth. In an attempt to play the victim, he at once told officials two lies. ‘I just lost my mum,’ he said, though she had actually died two years earlier.

Secondly, he claimed that last time he was questioned by police ‘I got shot’. This again was untrue. In 2019 he was stopped in his car by another officer on suspicion of using drugs but no shot was fired.

In fact, the incident was remarkably similar to the one in May 2020, as Floyd, having eaten the drugs in his mouth, grew agitated and had to be restrained before he was taken to hospital.

In May 2020, Floyd begged the officers not to shoot him. They had no intention of doing so. They just wanted to question him and carry out a search for further fake bills or drugs. But they soon ran into trouble, as Floyd would not leave his car. ‘Stop resisting,’ Shawanda Hill wisely said from the back. But he did the opposite, and a ruck began. At one stage the officers managed to push him into the back seat of their vehicle, from where he complained of claustrophobia and anxiety, while he also said he ‘could not breathe’. Tellingly, this was before he was on the ground with Chauvin’s knee against him.

With his lengthy criminal record, Floyd always made a slightly incongruous international hero. His convictions included theft, drug possession and dealing, criminal trespass and aggravated robbery, for which he received a four-year jail term. So the allegation that day of using a counterfeit bill was just the latest in a catalogue of offences.

So many jobs, government grants and consultancies are tied to the belief that Chauvin was a racist murderer that there is tremendous pressure to stick to the story, writes Esther Krakue

Still agitated and struggling, Floyd ended up on the ground beside the police car.

Precisely what happened next is critical. One of the most vexing questions at Chauvin’s trial was whether the method he adopted against Floyd – leaning on him with his knee on the suspect’s neck – was officially sanctioned or not. Minneapolis police chief Medaria Arradondo testified under oath that his department did not train officers to use the technique.

However, the department’s own training manual appeared to instruct officers in just such a method, known as the ‘Maximal Restraint Technique’. In Liz Collin’s film, several officers express their indignation at their chief’s perceived dishonesty about MRT.

There were also claims at the trial that the police were indifferent to Floyd’s wellbeing. After Chauvin’s conviction, Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota and later Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential running mate, remarked that in the Floyd video ‘the lack of humanity is sickening’.

I have my own doubts about this. It was Chauvin’s team, after all, who called for emergency medical support. The ambulance arrived late, but that was not the fault of the police.

Of greater consequence was the autopsy report, which highlighted compelling evidence that Floyd might not have been killed by the police at all. And here, in a disturbing twist, the progressive political establishment stands accused of interfering with the proper judicial process to ensure that Chauvin ended up behind bars – and that the narrative of ‘police oppression’ was maintained.

Suffering from hypertension and other cardiovascular problems, as well as a tumour in his pelvis, Floyd was not a well man, according to Hennepin County examiner Andrew Baker. The autopsy was conducted by Baker, who wrote in his initial report that he found no signs of asphyxiation or strangulation, and no bruising on Floyd’s neck or back, though Baker had discovered significant quantities of the opioids fentanyl and methamphetamines in his system. These could have exacerbated Floyd’s existing heart condition.

With the mob on the rampage against the police, the initial autopsy report was not what the authorities or Floyd’s liberal supporters wanted to hear at all. In fact, complaints soon flooded in to Baker’s office. After a meeting with six FBI officers and other state officials, Baker agreed that his report should emphasise that pressure to the neck had been a major factor. This was backed up by a second autopsy report, commissioned by the Floyd family, which came to the conclusions that were seemingly wanted.

There were other aspects of the trial that ensured the ‘right’ results were achieved. The jury was not sequestered until its final deliberations, so its members were always aware of the anger of the protesters. Indeed it is hard to see how they could have remained impartial, especially when politicians like congresswoman Maxine Waters threatened more unrest if a guilty verdict were not returned. ‘We’ve got to stay on the streets and get confrontational,’ she told the press during the trial.

There is a sense in liberal circles that this case is untouchable – because to doubt the guilt of Chauvin would be to destroy the underpinnings of the BLM movement and the global ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ industry. So many jobs, government grants and consultancies are tied to the belief that Chauvin was a racist murderer that there is tremendous pressure to stick to the story.

Given the number of questions and inconsistencies surrounding the case, a judicial review and potential retrial seem to be the least that Derek Chauvin deserves. If he is truly guilty, let justice be served after a cold-hearted look at the facts.

But nearly four years on, we must ask: was justice truly served, or was Chauvin simply a scapegoat for a nation’s collective guilt?