The former Minneapolis police officer convicted of second-degree murder in the death of George Floyd will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review his conviction after the Minnesota Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal.
The U.S. Supreme Court is asked to look at thousands of cases each year, out of which it agrees to hear a mere fraction.
Before it recessed for the summer on June 30, the nation’s highest court had issued 58 opinions in cases argued in the term that began in October 2022.
The court is scheduled to release orders in ongoing cases on July 24, Aug. 21, and Sept. 8. It could act in the new case on one of those dates, or it could wait until the court’s new term begins in October.
At least four of the nine justices must vote to grant a petition for it to move forward to the oral argument stage.
The Minnesota Supreme Court dismissed the petition of Derek Michael Chauvin in a one-sentence order on July 18 without explaining why. This means his conviction and 22 ½-year sentence under state law will remain in effect.
Mr. Chauvin had asked the Minnesota Supreme Court to take up his case in May after the Minnesota Court of Appeals rejected his claim that he did not receive a fair trial the month before.
Mr. Chauvin, a white man who was a member of the Minneapolis police department at the time of the incident in March 2020, reportedly kneeled on Mr. Floyd, a black man, for more than nine minutes while he was handcuffed in a prone position after being detained on suspicion of passing a counterfeit 20-dollar bill at a convenience store. A passer-by captured video footage of him complaining while detained that he couldn’t breathe, and the video went viral, leading to protests in the United States and around the world.
The death of Mr. Floyd led to widespread public revulsion and a violent nationwide backlash against police that continues to affect the nation’s politics, criminal justice system, and culture, as well as riots across the country that resulted in billions of dollars in damages.
Another medical expert, Dr. David Fowler, Maryland’s former chief medical examiner, testified that Mr. Floyd’s heart issues were mainly to blame for his death. Use-of-force expert Barry Brodd, a former police officer, testified that Mr. Chauvin’s actions were reasonable and complied with the police department’s policies, a claim that was denied by Minneapolis police chief Medaria Arradondo.
Mr. Chauvin was convicted on April 21, 2021, of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter after jurors deliberated for two days.
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to his attorney, William Mohrman, but did not receive an immediate reply.
Mr. Mohrman told The Associated Press that he was “obviously disappointed” by the Minnesota Supreme Court’s decision not to accept his client’s appeal.
A key issue on which the appeal was based was whether conducting the trial in Minneapolis in 2021 amidst intense pretrial publicity and concerns about the possibility of violence in case of an acquittal had the effect of denying his client a fair trial, the lawyer said.
Mr. Mohrman said he will bring up that issue in the U.S. Supreme Court appeal.
“This criminal trial generated the most amount of pretrial publicity in history,” he said.
“More concerning are the riots which occurred after George Floyd’s death [that] led the jurors to all express concerns for their safety in the event they acquitted Mr. Chauvin—safety concerns which were fully evidenced by surrounding the courthouse in barbed wire and National Guard troops during the trial and deploying the National Guard throughout Minneapolis prior to jury deliberations.”
The petition did not yet appear to have been filed with the U.S. Supreme Court at the time this article was published.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat, said he was satisfied with the Minnesota Supreme Court’s decision to dismiss the appeal.
This “means that the Court of Appeals was correct in finding that his trial was properly conducted and he was properly convicted under law,” Mr. Ellison said in a statement.
“This development definitively holds Chauvin accountable and closes this chapter of the murder of George Floyd.”
Mr. Chauvin was also convicted of violating a federal criminal civil rights statute arising out of the same events.
Before that, in December 2021, Mr. Chauvin pled guilty in federal court to violating the federal law on two separate occasions.
He pled guilty to “willfully depriving Mr. Floyd of his constitutional right to be free from the use of unreasonable force by a police officer, resulting in Mr. Floyd’s bodily injury and death,” the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement last year.
“In the plea documents, Chauvin agreed that the sentencing for this crime should be based on the sentence for second-degree murder because he acted willfully and in callous and wanton disregard of the consequences to Mr. Floyd’s life.”
Mr. Chauvin also pled guilty to “willfully depriving a then-14-year-old child of his constitutional right to be free from the use of unreasonable force by a police officer, resulting in the child’s bodily injury.”
The sentence should “send a strong message that the Justice Department stands ready to prosecute law enforcement officers who use deadly force without basis,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said at the time.
“While no amount of prison time can reverse the tragic consequences of Derek Chauvin’s violent actions, we hope that this sentence provides some small measure of justice for the families and communities impacted.”
