Many years ago, I interned in the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office when I was in law school. I have witnessed or participated in many trials since then.
I watched portions of the Derek Chauvin trial. The assistant Minnesota Attorneys General who prosecuted this police brutality (murder) case conducted what I believe to be the finest example of lawyering I have ever witnessed in a case of this nature. This is the new gold standard for prosecutions of police brutality. Maybe this will be an inflection point for justice going forward.
As for defense counsel, I was embarrassed for him. He was completely outclassed and outlawyered. I would suggest he contemplate a career change to something more suited to his skills set, like personal injury attorney.
NBC News reports, Derek Chauvin guilty of murder in George Floyd’s death:
Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all counts Tuesday for his involvement in George Floyd’s death, a verdict that could send the disgraced former Minneapolis police officer to prison for the rest of his life.
Dressed in a gray suit, Chauvin’s eyes darted left and right over his light blue surgical mask as the judge read the jury’s verdict, but he betrayed little else in the way of emotion.
Convicted of second- and third-degree murder, as well as second-degree manslaughter, Chauvin stood up quickly after the judge ordered his bail revoked and compliantly placed his hands to be handcuffed before he was led out of the courtroom. He faces up to 75 years in prison when he returns for sentencing in eight weeks.
Outside the courthouse, the crowd erupted into cheers when word of the verdict filtered out.
“All three counts! All three counts!” the crowd chanted.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called the verdict “a first step towards justice” and said Floyd “sparked a worldwide movement.”
“George Floyd mattered,” Ellison said.
The panel of seven women and five men, which began deliberating Monday after three weeks of witness testimony, took a little over 10 hours to reach the unanimous verdict.
Second-degree murder carries a maximum sentence of 40 years. Third-degree murder carries a maximum sentence of 25 years. Second-degree manslaughter is punishable by up to 10 years.
The third-degree murder charge had initially been dismissed, but it was reinstated after an appeals court ruling in an unrelated case established new grounds for it days before jury selection started.
Chauvin, who is white, knelt on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes as Floyd, who was Black, was handcuffed and lying on the ground.
Prosecutors argued that Chauvin’s actions caused Floyd to die from low oxygen, or asphyxia. The defense claimed that Floyd’s illegal drug use and a pre-existing heart condition were to blame and urged jurors not to rule out other theories, as well, including exposure to carbon monoxide.
During closing arguments, prosecutors sought to focus jurors’ attention on the 9 minutes, 29 seconds they say Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck, while Chauvin’s defense attorney told them that “the 9 minutes and 29 seconds ignores the previous 16 minutes and 59 seconds” of the interaction.
Prosecutors called 38 witnesses, including the teenager who recorded the widely seen bystander video that brought global attention to Floyd’s death. She and other bystanders who testified said they are haunted by Floyd’s death and that they wish they had done more to try to save his life. The defense called seven witnesses, two of whom were so-called experts.
Candace McCoy, a professor of criminal justice at John Jay College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, analyzes, Derek Chauvin trial verdict is guilty on all three counts. Here’s why the prosecution won.
Doubt is at the heart of every criminal defense: Beyond a reasonable doubt, did Derek Chauvin cause the death of George Floyd, and if so, what was the degree of his intent? Eric Nelson, a defense attorney for the former Minneapolis police officer, hammered this question home to the jury in closing arguments Monday. While the jurors might have thought the prosecution’s evidence was convincing, that wasn’t enough. It had to be convincing beyond a reasonable doubt on every count Chauvin faced: unintentional murder in the second degree, third-degree murder showing a “depraved mind,” and “culpable negligence” manslaughter.
On Tuesday, Chauvin’s defense resoundingly failed in that effort. After a remarkably quick deliberation of the charges starting late Monday, jurors found him guilty on all three charges, indicating that the tactics, traditional and non-, that the defense employed failed to do the job.
The defense tried to cloud the facts of the case by blaming the victim and the bystanders for the actions of Chauvin, in which he kept his knee planted on Floyd’s neck for some 9 minutes leading up to his death. The lawyer then brought in rebuttal medical testimony in an attempt to prove Chauvin’s acts were not a substantial cause of Floyd’s death. But these efforts clearly weren’t very effective.
Smearing the reputation of the alleged victim, in this case Floyd, is a classic defense strategy. Though it should be irrelevant to innocence or guilt, in practice a victim’s actions and reputation can affect jurors’ perceptions of what occurred. Their interpretations may depend on how well the opposing attorneys can show the victim was a person deserving respect and sympathy — and the prosecution seems to have done so here. Prosecutors took great care to call witnesses who testified about Floyd’s family life — he was close with his mother and was calling for her as he died — and didn’t deny his drug addiction but rather painted it as a very sad fact of his life.
Blaming the bystanders for pressuring the alleged perpetrator, in this case implying that Chauvin was pushed to take actions he wouldn’t have otherwise, was more creative. A variation of “blaming the victim,” Nelson aimed to show it was the urgency of avoiding the restive crowd, not Chauvin’s “depraved mind,” that caused him to subdue Floyd so forcefully. However, the prosecution effectively countered by having the sympathetic bystanders testify and showing pictures of them looking distressed rather than threatening at the scene of the encounter.
On the other hand, getting a medical professional to contradict the findings of the prosecution’s professionals — the prosecution’s witnesses included the county coroner and another highly regarded expert on asphyxiation — is a typical move. Chauvin’s medical expert said it was Floyd’s drug use or a pre-existing heart condition rather than police force that killed him. But the operative legal issue that emerged is that the defendant Chauvin’s actions must be only a “substantial cause” of the death, not its sole cause. In the battle of the experts, the jury apparently remembered the many credible ones who said it was.
However, the defense was most likely to have planted some doubt in some jurors’ minds as to what Chauvin intended to do when he assisted in getting a large and agitated man, albeit one handcuffed from behind, into the squad car for transport to the police station. The top charge was called “felony murder” because it covers a situation in which a person intends to commit a felony and as a result another person dies; in other words, it wasn’t necessary to prove that Chauvin premeditated or even intended Floyd to die, just that he intended to assault him (the predicate felony) and the terrible outcome was his death.
It was quite possible the jurors would have regarded Chauvin as a law enforcement officer confronted with a difficult situation that he drastically and tragically mishandled, rather than having set out to assault Floyd. Such doubt as to Chauvin’s intent to assault the victim would have meant doubt as to whether he committed the underlying felony on which the murder charge rests. It was the place where the prosecution was most vulnerable. But the jury didn’t buy it.
Why was the case more unshakable on the lesser charges? Because proving third-degree murder, which means that a defendant committed an eminently dangerous act “evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life,” didn’t require establishing what Chauvin’s intent was as he came into the situation. The prosecution only needed to prove that, once into the struggle with Floyd, he got angry enough that he had no regard for the human life beneath him. The prosecution repeatedly showed the picture of Chauvin with his hands placed insouciantly in his pockets as he pushed on Floyd’s neck. It would have been hard for even the most skeptical juror to conclude that Chauvin did not intend to cause Floyd’s death.
And for the least-severe charge of manslaughter, the prosecution didn’t need to prove that Chauvin intentionally killed Floyd but just that he displayed “culpable negligence whereby the person creates an unreasonable risk, and consciously takes chances causing death or great bodily harm to another.” Therefore, the jury unanimously concluded that Chauvin’s disregard for the policies and training in the Minneapolis Police Department — which he would have known well as an experienced officer and which his boss, the police chief, testified he violated — was negligence that made him criminally culpable in Floyd’s death.
Chauvin will now face sentencing, and the Minnesota sentencing guidelines require a person convicted of any of these charges to serve a prison term. The median imprisonment for second-degree murder is 30 years. But Cahill has indicated he will add time to the baseline term by pointing to an “aggravating factor” that allows him to increase the sentence — such as when a crime was committed before a child, as in this case.
How much time will Chauvin ultimately face for the crimes he committed? We’ll soon find out.
As Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said, the verdict is “a first step towards justice.”
Last month, the House passed HR7120 – the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020. CNN reported, House passes bill named in honor of George Floyd aimed at preventing police misconduct:
The House of Representatives on Wednesday approved legislation aimed at preventing police misconduct that Democrats named in honor of George Floyd, whose death in police custody sparked nationwide calls to overhaul policing and address racial injustice.
House Democrats originally introduced and passed the bill — titled the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act — last year in the wake of Floyd’s death, but it never passed in the Senate, which was under Republican control at the time. Supporters of the bill say it would improve law enforcement accountability and work to root out racial bias in policing.
Democrats now control the Senate, which has a 50-50 partisan split with Vice President Kamala Harris acting as the tie breaker. But most legislation in that chamber still requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster and it’s not clear there would be enough Republican support to get the legislation across the finish line in the Senate.
Rep. Karen Bass, a California Democrat who is leading police overhaul efforts in the House, told reporters on Wednesday, “We are still trying to transform policing in the United States” and said that she is “confident that we will be able to have a bipartisan bill in the Senate that will reach President Biden’s desk.”
The legislation would set up a national registry of police misconduct to stop officers from evading consequences for their actions by moving to another jurisdiction. It would ban racial and religious profiling by law enforcement at the federal, state and local levels, and it would overhaul qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that critics say shields law enforcement from accountability.
Now it is time for the U.S. Senate to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020 and to send it to President Biden for his signature.
Derek Chauvin reminds me of something I heard a long time ago from a guy who had a horse ranch here in Tucson.
At the time I was working in San Diego. Frank (“the rancher”) owned an IT consulting business. We used to hire him for training, he was a brilliant teacher and the horses were really a hobby. He got kind of off track in class one day and talked about men he knew who beat horses with shovels. I was horrified by this, I asked him why they would do this.
Frank’s answer, “There is a certain kind of man who just wants to beat down some person or some animal that is bigger and stronger than he is.”
I fully believe that describes Derek Chauvin. He looked into that young woman’s cellphone camera with such arrogance and entitlement. In those moments, all 9 minutes and 29 seconds, Chauvin never thought that he would be held accountable for what happened to George Floyd. Chauvin was just doing what he wanted to do, and that day he wanted to beat down a big black man because the opportunity presented itself. He had a badge and a gun and no one was going to stop him.
Chauvin never dreamed he would hear a jail cell door slam behind him. But he has now and sadly, that’s how change will begin to happen.
I see the mainstream media referring to George Floyd’s killer as “former police officer”.
They should be calling him “convicted murderer” now that he’s been convicted.
This is why the mainstream media sucks.
And yet they have no idea why they’re on the road to irrelevancy. So long as advertisers’ big bucks keep rolling in….
Besides the fact that George Floyd was murdered, is that the alleged crime he perpetrated was the passing of a counterfeit $20 bill. He wasn’t stopped for a violent crime. I myself was given a counterfeit twenty by a woman asking for change at Jacome Plaza downtown, which I tried to spend later at a thrift shop. The store clerk recognized the bill as bogus so I paid with another bill. However, these counterfeit bills are out there and no one will know if George knew so or not when he had it. Regardless, he was killed by a police officer, with others standing by watching. Very tragic case for American history.
Carolyn, I can’t remember the guy’s name, but the clerk who took the $20 bill testified at the trial that he didn’t think that GF knew it might be counterfeit.
Liza, I didn’t watch the trial, but thanks for letting me know about that counterfeit twenty that George Floyd had. Yes, we don’t know if he knew, and those bills are very deceptive. I felt horrible when I found out that bill I had was fake, and what if that store owner had called the police TPD on me? I meant no harm and immediately rectified the situation, but I was very angry at the woman who duped me downtown.
Carolyn, most people would get duped, I’m afraid, because we have no experience with counterfeit money and we’re not looking for it. George Floyd could have easily been in that position.