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By Elie Honig

Dear Reader,

I once ran a marathon.  Emphasis on “once.”  And not particularly well.  (For those of you wondering — yeah, it was the Jersey Marathon, down the shore.  You know me by now.)  I bring this up not to brag — if you saw my time, you wouldn’t accuse me of that — but as a point of comparison.  At the end of the marathon, I was, of course, tired, exhausted, drained.  Pick your synonym.  I was wiped out.

Shortly after I ran that marathon, I started trying cases as a prosecutor with the Southern District of New York.  And at the end of every trial day, I’d feel this sense of utter exhaustion that was, in a way, even more intense than what I felt after the marathon.  It’s a different kind of exhaustion; the marathon is purely physical, while post-trial exhaustion is more holistic — body, mind, and spirit alike.

If you are feeling some version of that exhaustion, that stress, while watching the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the charged murder of George Floyd, then know this: it’s normal, and natural, to feel that way.

And: you’re not alone.  I’ve heard from an astonishing number of people — friends and strangers alike, in person and by email and text and tweet and DM — that they are feeling intensely stressed, even traumatized, by this trial.  I understand completely.  It happens to everybody connected with a trial, for a lot of reasons.

Part of this trial exhaustion phenomenon is physiological.  When you’re trying a case, you work long hours, so you go to bed late and get up early.  Sleep is tossy-turny, any exercise regiment goes out the door, and you eat whatever garbage you can find in the courthouse or trial room.  (At no time in life other than during a trial would I mindlessly down a bag of Doritos and a Coke for lunch).  You may be experiencing some of these physical stressors even as a viewer of the Chauvin trial.

But trial exhaustion is even more about the mind and human emotion.  There’s an adrenaline burst, every day.  As a participant or as a viewer, you understand the stakes, and you’re in a state of heightened alertness throughout the seven- or eight-hour trial day. There’s an intensity of focus.  Every detail matters, every question could yield a game-changing response.  When the day ends, you get that dreaded post-adrenaline crash, whether you’re trying the case or following along.

And there’s an element of trauma.  You’re viewing in vivid detail the death of another human being.  In the Chauvin case, the evidence is so disturbing, so immediate, so palpable: the all-too-close and all-too-clear videos taken by bystanders and police body cameras of George Floyd’s final moments.  Those images, and sounds, are etched in our minds.  It is difficult to watch, and hear, and it stays with you.

Throughout trial, there has been a sense of collective trauma.  We’ve seen that plainly in the testimony of the many eyewitnesses to Floyd’s death outside of that Cup Foods in Minneapolis — from the teenagers and minors who testified off camera about how they saw a man die that day; to the store cashier Christopher Martin and the bystander Donald Williams, both of whom wished they could have done something to help Floyd; and, perhaps most indelibly, Charles McMillian, who broke down on the stand while recounting the events he saw that day.

Many viewers are, understandably, experiencing their own version of that lingering distress, from watching the trial itself.  I understand that the trauma is particularly intense for Black and other minority viewers.  As my friend and CNN colleague Don Lemon put it in his new book: “Watching this shocking footage [of Floyd’s death], I and every other Black man I know saw the insensibly sluggish murder of ourselves.  In agonizing real time, I saw Billie Holiday’s strange fruit hanging from the poplar tree.  I had to close my door and cry.”

I don’t have a magic cure.  Perhaps it helps to know that public engagement in this trial is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.  By and large, that’s a good thing.  People understand the implications here — for the direct participants, for the family of George Floyd, for our justice system, and for the country.  It’s not easy, and it takes a toll.  But also know that we’re all going through this together.

Stay Informed,

Elie

Elie Honig is the author of the forthcoming book, “Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor’s Code and Corrupted the Justice Department,” now available for pre-order.