The mistake is one that America’s news media has moved quickly to correct. It’s not “the George Floyd trial”. It’s the trial of Derek Chauvin.
The point is minor but important given that the proceedings that started this week have risked becoming “The George Floyd trial” in the public’s mind. The name of a victim rarely takes such prominence in a criminal case – there’s a good reason why Google returns “the Charles Manson trial” rather than the “Sharon Tate trial” by a ratio of four to one – yet there are exceptions. We had the “Rodney King trials” and Google returns over 2000 hits for the “Stephen Lawrence trial” but only five for the more correctly labelled “Dobson/Norris trial”. “The Bulger trial” is more famous than the “Thompson/Venables trial”.
