Moderator Note
This thread is about Derek Chauvin, not the Capitol Riots. If you want to discuss the Capitol Riots, please do so elsewhere.
The first one is true:
The defense has said it was impossible for Chauvin to get a fair trial in Minneapolis because of pretrial publicity and community pressure on jurors to convict. That claim is sure to underpin any appeal.
But I dont think it will succeed for appeal.
COULD COMMENTS BY POLITICIANS LEAD TO A RETRIAL FOR CHAUVIN?
Judge Cahill seemed to think that’s at least a possibility.
He rebuked U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters on Monday for telling a crowd in a Minneapolis suburb days before deliberations started that, if Chauvin wasn’t convicted of murder, “we’ve got to get more confrontational.”
Would that not be ironic? Waters was totally off base there.
We are currently rewatching Firefly. In the ep Ariel, there is a scene where 3 handcuffed prisoners attack their 2 guards. One of the prisoner kills a guard by kneeling on his neck.
Boy - watching that today engendered some different feelings from the last time I saw it!
lawrence o’donnell had the 2 lead prosecutors on his show last night. i didn’t google the lawyers, so i was a bit surprized that the 2 left private practice and did the trial pro bono. i thought they were state attorneys. they will be prosecuting the next trial of the 3 policemen.
Prosecutors Speak To Lawrence After Chauvin Murder Conviction | The Last Word | MSNBC - YouTube
also today on gma a juror from the trial gave an interview. he speaks about the stress the testimony caused, and how the jury came to the decision. Derek Chauvin trial juror Brandon Mitchell details courtroom experience, deliberations: ‘You’re watching [George Floyd] die on a daily basis’ - ABC30 Fresno
Apparently one of the jurors in the case "felt pressured’ by the the riots & protests. Some right wing person posted some link from Fox on FB. Or Fox is wrong and they made it up.
Alternate jurors.
I assume it was based on the interview one of the jurors (not an alternate) gave on Good Morning America today. It’s a willful misinterpretation of what he said:
[He] wrote in his jury questionnaire he wanted to serve “because of all the protests and everything that happened after the event.”
“This is the most historic case of my lifetime, and I would love to be a part of it,” he wrote.
…
“We haven’t seen an outcome like this on a case. I really think this is a start, and I think it’s a good start,” Mitchell told CNN. “And then all the attention that it is still getting – just keeping that magnifying glass there has to spark some kind of change.”
So the federal government is moving forward with plans to indict him on federal civil rights charges, and even made plans to arrest him immediately at the courthouse in the event he was acquitted of state charges.
Apparently that was the plan from day one, (which makes them rejecting his plea bargain make a lot of sense) but unlike the city of Minneapolis, various other local government officials, Waters, and seemingly everyone else, they didn’t want to interfere with the rule of law, stomp on Chauvin’s constitutional rights, and spoon feed Nelson all kinds of appeal issues by not waiting until the state criminal proceedings concluded.
As much as I want to see Chauvin rot in prison, IMHO that is double jeopardy. But the courts apparently disagree.
I admit I admire their timing, however.
I suspect they aren’t legally double jeopardy for the same reason that trying him for three different crimes isn’t. The crimes they are charging him for have different components. They aren’t charging him for the unlawful killing itself, but for the violation Floyd’s civil rights, just like they did Rodney King’s assailants.
I know, but they violated his civil rights by… killing him. Now if he had not been found guilty than I can see it but…
True, the courts are against me, but I do not like it. I am but a tiny voice crying in the wilderness.
If it was double jeopardy, then the effect would be that states would be forbidden from prosecuting anyone for anything that might be a federal crime, because it’s unconstitutional for a state to impair the supreme law of the land by its own actions.
An absolute prohibition on double jeopardy (which I would also prefer) would require a unified national legal system, which we simply don’t have.
I’m assuming the main point of the federal case is to send a message to other police everywhere: “Don’t think you can get away with murder just because your local jurisdiction will cover for you. We’re watching too.”
I have mixed feelings about this, even though I agree with the message.
I understand where you’re coming from but I don’t see much of a downside to this. I might feel differently if it were the Trump administration prosecuting a BLM activist but I’d think it would be hard to convict. This gives the Feds a bit of power to counteract the states.
But that would equally be a breach of double jeopardy, by your approach, wouldn’t it?
I agree I am being a bit hypocritical here. But my main issue is “piling on” no so much “double jeopardy”.
But we can drop this, it is a side issue.
I think we’ve discussed, and settled, questions about double jeopardy like this in other threads already – in particular, questions about whether someone pardoned by the president can then be prosecuted for the same crime at the state level. Here is a summary as I understood it all, some points of which are relevant here:
Some conclusions were:
-
Double jeopardy only applies if, in the first place, you are tried for a crime and acquitted. If you are tried and convicted in one jurisdiction, you can still be tried for the same crime in another jurisdiction.
-
The Supreme Court decreed, somewhere, that the states and the Federal government are separate sovereigns, and neither jurisdiction can create double jeopardy in the other. Thus, even if you are tried and acquitted in either Federal or state court, you can still be tried in the other.
-
Some states, thinking that the above is not how it should be, passed their own laws saying that someone who is acquitted in a Federal trial cannot then be tried for the same crime in a state court. But this is not symmetrical, as it only binds that state and not the Federal government. So an acquittal in a state court could still be followed by a trial for the same crime in a Federal court.
-
Then the questions started coming in, as to whether a presidential pardon was equivalent to an acquittal and would preclude a subsequent trial for the same crime in a state court. This topic started heating up when Trump was handing out pardons for crimes that New York will still investigating and potentially going to prosecute.
-
So New York, IIRC, passed a more specifically targeted law, to the effect that close associates of the president, if pardoned, could still be liable for prosecution for the same crimes in state court, to override the more general state law that a presidential pardon would preclude state-level prosecution.
The verdict will not stand. Now one of the jurors has been caught lying about his involvement in BLM protests.
If they can establish that, (I haven’t followed closely enough to be sure) then the verdict is in doubt. People shouldn’t lie during jury selection. If the conviction is thrown out, I would expect some serious plea negotiations. Chauvin doesn’t want another trial, and there is no reason to expect a different outcome. The State doesn’t want another trial either, but could probably be ready in a week if need be. Retrials often benefit the defendant because they can now plan a response to the specific testimony they’re expecting. In this case, however, I don’t think it would matter.
If I were prosecuting, I’d offer a plea to Murder 2, and offer to drop the two lessor offenses.