So in the Minneapolis trial of Derek Chauvin, one of the officers accused of murder in the case of George Floyd, jury selection began last week and seven jurors had been selected.
Then the city of Minneapolis announced a $27M settlement with the Floyd family.
This has seemingly caused all kinds of problems with the jury selection - in fact, two jurors were dismissed today because they had heard about the settlement and admitted it could affect their ability to be impartial.
There was (and still is, perhaps?) talk of delaying the trial due to the announcement of the settlement.
Is this just a case of the city of Minneapolis not communicating with the Hennepin County courts about the timing of the announcement? I guess what I’m asking is would the courts have preferred the announcement to wait until after the trial (which certainly could be lengthy) or is this just the way it goes, everyone shrugs their shoulders and moves on?
Any insight into the coordination of the trial and the settlement (and its announcement) would be appreciated.
Just adding that nine jurors had been selected and with the dismissal of two, the pool was down to seven. (It’s now at eight.) My original post was incorrect.
They are not the same parties. The courts (and the criminal case parties) may well have preferred for the settlement announcement to wait, but they don’t get a say.
The parties to the lawsuit would have been weighing the advantages of settling before the criminal trial vs their chances of a positive, advantageous, outcome in that trial. So there would be some pressure to settle before trial. The City Attorney basically said the timing was because they needed to act quickly to accept the settlement that was being offered.
There was zero coordination of the trial and settlement, one case is State of Minnesota v. Chauvin in criminal court and one is the relatives of George Floyd v. the City of Minneapolis.
Normally civil cases happen when the criminal case is done as a criminal conviction generally makes the civil case a slam dunk (one of the benefits of the Alford Plea is that it can’t be used as guilt in a future civil proceeding).
No one in the criminal case wanted this or all the blabbing the city leaders have done in general about the case. The defense and judge want a fair trial while the prosecution doesn’t want prime appeal issues spoon-fed to the defense. But the city of Minneapolis had their own incentives in blabbing about Chauvin’s guilt nonstop (to assuage the rioters) and to settle for as little as possible when possible in the civil case.