From New York Times, I'm Michael Barrow. This is a Daily.

Today, the prosecution's case so far in the closely watched trial of Derek Shillvin,

the former Minneapolis Police Officer, accused of murdering George Floyd.

I spoke with my colleague, John Eligo, in Minneapolis.

It's Thursday, April 8.

John, I wanted to start by having you set the scene there in Minneapolis this past week or so.

What are your impressions of this trial so far?

It's really a city on edge right now. I mean, you walk around downtown.

There's cement barricades with fencing and barbed wire up.

There's National Guard, Armor Vehicles, and National Guard members who are standing outside, watching over everything.

People are already starting to board up windows.

So there's clearly this underlying tension of, you know, what's going to happen with this trial?

What's the verdict going to be? And is that going to lead to more unrest like they saw last year when, you know,

there was lots of vandalism and buildings burning amid, you know, mass protests for racial justice.

So you really get like around the town that this is something that cannot be avoided, that people cannot stop thinking about.

And then you look, you know, in the courtroom now.

And you have to look from afar, right? Because of COVID protocols.

There's very few people allowed into the courtroom.

As reporters, we're not even allowed in there.

We were allowed to have one person representing all print media, one person representing all broadcast media.

So I'm sitting here in my hotel room with, you know, bag of chips and some bottle water watching this trial.

And, you know, what's proceeding inside the courtroom?

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