Rochester man found himself in the middle of the trial of the century
May 24—ROCHESTER — The nation was embroiled over the death of George Floyd for about three months when Mike Pruett got the call to bring his skills to the case.
Pruett, founder and CEO of MLT Group, a Rochester-based digital marketing firm, was hired by the defense team to analyze and enhance video that was a key part of the case against then-Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin.
Chauvin was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
The high-profile case was not the first time Pruett has been called upon to examine video evidence, often manipulating the video to show evidence that might not be readily visible.
"Eric (Nelson, defense attorney) called me," Pruett said. "I'd worked for him before."
The biggest case he'd ever worked on — Pruett has provided video analysis on many murder cases, though none with the national profile of the Chauvin murder trial — came with hours of video evidence.
"There was the Chinese restaurant (across the street from Cup Foods), the convenience store, all the bodycams, the street cameras and all the people with iPhones," Pruett said.
For Pruett, the evidence started with body camera footage from one of the two officers who first responded to the scene — J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane — as they arrived at Cup Foods responding to a call that someone was passing counterfeit $20 bills.
That accusation led officers to Floyd, who was parked across the street.
The longest video — one of the police body camera videos — ran in length for about half an hour until Floyd was placed in the back of an ambulance and taken away, Pruett said. Some of the cell phone videos run closer to 10 minutes.
All told, Pruett said, he watched several hours of video showing the same 20 to 30 minutes over and over again. So much so, that by the time the trial occurred from March 8 to April 20, 2021, Pruett said he didn't even watch the proceedings, only paying attention if he happened to see something in the news.
Was any of the evidence he uncovered used in the trial?
"What I heard from afterwards, from people, was that a lot of things (I found), they didn't put in," Pruett said. "But that's up to the attorneys."
While Pruett said there were several things shown in the video that could be used by the defense or prosecution, what amazes him today was how people know so little about the scene despite it being such a notorious case.
For example, when officers first tapped on the window of Floyd's vehicle, they seemed to have woken him up. On top of that, Floyd wasn't the only person in the car. Another man and a woman were passengers.
"I've done this for over 25 years," Pruett said. "Doing forensics. Doing video enhancements. Doing slow-mos or stills for attorneys."
In total, he said, he's been involved in somewhere between 200 and 300 cases, many in the Twin Cities.
His career working on video for trials started when Olmsted County came to him, asking Pruett to digitize the video of a crime scene and make photos from the video. From that early effort, his reputation slowly grew until he began working on cases in the Twin Cities and as far away as Florida and Canada.
"What I do is, someone will send me a video — an attorney or a police department — and they'll say, 'This is what we're looking for if you see it,' or 'Can you enhance this area here?' where they have a shot of a gun," Pruett said. "A lot of times the videos are not the greatest in the world. (But) You can enhance the blur to show, yes, that was a gun."
Other than family and friends, Pruett said he doesn't talk much about the trial work he does. That includes this case.
"No, I kept my mouth shut," Pruett said. "I want to be very objective to this. I try to show that I'm going to look at video and — Black, white, yellow, green, purple, whatever — if they were wrong, they were wrong."
And with the proliferation of cameras — quality cameras — in public places, Pruett offers this advice for potential criminals: "People don't realize the amount of cameras that are in downtown Rochester and Mayo. ... So, stay away from Rochester."
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