The Supreme Court of the United States has made a significant decision by rejecting the appeal of former Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin.
Chauvin was convicted in 2021 for the murder of George Floyd on Memorial Day in 2020. He had argued that his trial was conducted during a time of political turmoil and that the jury was influenced by the fear of more riots if they found him not guilty.
At the time of the appeal, Chauvin’s attorney William Morhmann said, “This criminal trial generated the most amount of pretrial publicity in history.”
“More concerning are the riots which occurred after George Floyd’s death (and) 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,” he continued.
With the Supreme Court’s decision, Chauvin’s conviction stands. He was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison for second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. George Floyd died on May 25, 2020, after Chauvin knelt on his neck for almost ten minutes while Floyd pleaded for his life.
Chauvin has not given up on challenging his conviction. He recently filed a motion alleging that new evidence shows he wasn’t responsible for Floyd’s death.
According to Chauvin, he wouldn’t have pleaded guilty in 2021 if he had known about the theories of a Kansas pathologist, Dr. William Schaetzel, who suggested that Floyd may have died from complications related to a rare tumor called a paraganglioma, which can cause a surge of adrenaline. However, Dr. Schaetzel didn’t perform an autopsy but based his conclusions on autopsy reports.
Chauvin believes that if the jury had heard Dr. Schaetzel’s evidence, they might have reached a different verdict. His motion aims to have his civil rights conviction overturned and to secure a new trial or, at the very least, a hearing to present this new evidence.
The death of George Floyd in May 2020 had profound implications. It led to widespread protests and riots across the United States and even in Europe. These events resulted in the burning of police precincts, damage to small businesses, and destruction of vehicles in various cities and towns.
There was no excuse for what Chauvin did that fateful day. His excessive use of force that led to the George Floyd’s death glorified a criminal and sparked the defund the police movement that swept the country over the next year.