Chauvin Trial GUILTY ALL COUNTS!
Sentencing in 8 weeks, state moving for aggravated sentencing above and beyond guidelines
THE VERDICT IS IN. We will cover live
Chauvin sentencing in 8 weeks.
FYI, state has filed Blakely motion for aggravated sentencing, above and beyond guidelines, arguments for that will be heard over next couple of weeks.
Chauvin could have had jury make call on aggravation factors, waived that right, Cahill will make that call.
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GUILTY ALL COUNTS
Count 1. 2nd degree felony murder: GUILTY
Count 2. 3rd degree murder: GUILTY
Count 3. 2nd degree manslaughter: GUILTY
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Cahill unseals verdict, flips through pages. Will read.
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Judge Cahill is seated in courtroom, parties, rising for jury.
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While we wait, DON’T CLOSE THIS WINDOW!, but might want to open up a second browser window, check out post I’d started today before imminent verdict announced:
Chauvin Trial: The Big Lie of the 3-Minute-Plus “Restraint While Pulseless”
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One thing for certain, jury unanimous on whatever decision.
If they had deadlocked on anything, would have informed, judge, judge would have read them whatever Minnesota calls an “Allen Charge” to go back and try harder, and that would have been done publicly in courtroom, and we’d know. That didn’t happen, so no deadlock on any charge.
Either guilty, or not guilty, period, nothing in between.
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Tick-tock, tick-tock …
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Minnesota sentencing guidelines are outside my expertise, but talking heads are saying the recommended sentences for someone with no priors, like Chauvin, would be as follows:
2nd-degree “felony” murder: Recommended 10.5 years (max 40)
3rd-degree “reckless” murder: Recommended 10.5 years (max 25)
2nd-degree manslaughter: Recommended 4 years (max 10) and/or $20k fine
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Chauvin and Nelson reported present at courthouse.
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RE: sentencing, prosecution has notified court earlier that they intend to pursue aggravated sentencing, although I don’t know the details on that. Chauvin had right to have a jury decide on aggravation, or waive that right and have Judge Cahill decide on aggravation, and he opted to waive and have judge decide, assuming there was a guilty verdict at all.
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Very surprised no questions from jury at all, even on causation, suggests didn’t really consider the legal merits.
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Three counts for jury to have considered:
2nd-degree “felony” murder: Max of 40 years
3rd-degree “reckless” murder: Max of 25 years
2nd-degree manslaughter: Max of 10 years and/or $20k fine
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Attorney Andrew Branca here, folks, just waiting for details.
Informed guess given how rapidly the jury has arrived at a verdict is that it will guilty on multiple, or all, counts.
FYI, we’ll be updating info by typing it at top of post, like this, then updating the whole page, so you’ll need to refresh the page on your end to see new content.
UPDATES:
3:15 p.m. Tuesday (/WAJ)
Expecting verdict to be read between 4-5 p.m. Eastern
EARLIER COVERAGE:
This is a “group” post in which primarily Andrew Branca and Prof. Jacobson will post updates as we await a verdict, but other authors may jump in depending who is available when news breaks, including if the jury has questions or there are other court proceedings.
The author of the update will use his/her initials, and the updates will be posted in reverse chronological order, with the most recent at top. (/WAJ)
They are boarding up businesses in … San Francisco … for the “mostly peaceful” protests.
Tuesday 2:50 p.m. (/WAJ)
Ilan Omar has an opinion.
“The case, to me, feels like a closed case” Representative Ilhan Omar gives remarks about the Derek Chauvin Trial this morning in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota #BrooklynCenter #ChauvinTrial pic.twitter.com/3fKCY3IcVX
— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) April 20, 2021
Tuesday 12:30 p.m. (/WAJ)
Biden says he’s “praying the verdict is the right verdict” in Chauvin Trial
Tuesday 10:55 a.m. This image tells you everything you need to know about the atmosphere for the trial. (Via this YouTube channel broadcasting live today). (/WAJ)
Tuesday 9:15 a.m. This CBS News report from yesterday is generating a lot of controversy, coming close to doxxing a juror. This is part of the problem of the jurors knowing they will be outed and targeted if there is a not-guilty verdict. (/WAJ)
.@jamieyuccas reports on the makeup of the 14 jurors in the Derek Chauvin trial. At least one of them lives in Brooklyn Center, where Daunte Wright was fatally shot by police last week. https://t.co/QAcai1sXgl pic.twitter.com/CC3QNMjnDn
— CBS News (@CBSNews) April 19, 2021
Tuesday 8:45 a.m. – Jury concluded deliberations at 8 p.m. (Central) last night, return this morning. Minneapolis is boarding up and the Governor has called for more National Guard to be ready. (/WAJ)
[Featured image is a screen capture from video of today’s court proceedings in MN v. Chauvin.]
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Comments
Ben Shapiro does not believe the jury gave any consideration to the evidence at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTgge2bCDbk
Isn’t that what America is really about ??
Agree. There’s no way they reasonably could have debated the evidence in the time they had.
100%. The night deliberation began, they probably just decided on the foreman and went to bed. So in all likelihood, they came back the next morning at 1000 and made the decision in a couple hours. There’s no way you can honestly consider all of the evidence and come to a conclusion in that timeframe. Embarrassing.
I live in a southwest suburb of Minneapolis/St. Paul and have followed every day of this trial as well as this blog. For the past year, I have been heavily burdened for Derek Chauvin. Last summer, I felt called to send him a letter while he was at Oak Park Heights prison. I wrote the letter and then carried it around for a week or more. I don’t think I would have mailed it had I not run into an old friend who runs a prison ministry. He is a former addict who served prison time years ago for drug crimes but has been sober probably 10 years or more. Anyway, I told him my feelings about DC, basically that I felt he was “the most hated man in America” and that not one person seems to be coming to his defense, his wife left him, etc. Well, my prison ministry friend said “Ill go see him!” Just like that. You see, the Bible says we are all sinners – not one of us is worthy, not even one – but NO ONE is beyond redemption!! so I mailed that letter. IN it, I also included witnessing information and a gospel tract. I don’t know if he’s a Christian or what – but felt very strongly the Holy Spirit called me to do this. He was released on bail about a week after he should have received the letter but as far as I know he never contacted my friend with the prison ministry.
I feel like people want to wipe him off the earth, like they want him to disappear like he never existed, never contributed anything worthwhile, doesn’t matter. Well, he still matters to GOD! Why rub salt in the wounds? The people who wanted guilty verdicts got them. Wanting retribution is not Christlike. I would’ve been very impressed if Rev Al Sharpton included DC in his prayer. Jesus died for tax collectors, sinners, and prostitutes. I only pray he will survive his time in prison.
I feel terrible for Chauvin. He should have testified. Explained, under oath, what he did and why.
I thought the same thing when it was announced that he took the 5th. While that is the right of every defendant, cops almost always testify and present their side of the story. Cops are very practiced at this sort of thing – explaining their actions and presenting plausible arguments. He didn’t. Obviously, Chauvin and his legal team concluded that testifying would do him no good, and that was a big clue to the jury that he was guilty.
I can see why he was advised not to:
YES, he could tell his story, as aided by his own lawyer.
HOWEVER, he can’t avoid being cross-examined with unethical insinuating questions by the state lawyer. And he isn’t allowed to just say what he wants. Lawyers are very very good at making a person look bad. 🙁
Honor a violent crackhead habitual offender?
Vice President Kamala Harris
@VP
United States government official
We are all part of George Floyd’s legacy. And now our job is to honor it—to honor him.
https://twitter.com/VP/status/1384661340070023169
It’s truly disgusting. I don’t agree with the verdict, but people who believe Chauvin did something wrong can do so without turning George Floyd into a saint. I don’t understand how we’ve ended up here.
Dershowitz predicts SCOTUS will reverse the verdict
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKWuxJTrInQ&t=1s
Dershowitz makes a lot of sense there. I was annoyed when conservative media’s reaction to Waters’ statements made more of the “incitement to violence” aspect than it did the “jury intimidation” one. SCOTUS addressing it would be interesting.
Alas… I’m not sure there are the votes even in SCOTUS. Roberts isn’t going to join any opinion that will cause the country or the courthouse to go up in flames. So, you need to somehow simultaneously convince Gorsuch (libertarian), Kavanaugh (maybe safer) and Barrett (“I think it is an entirely uncontroversial and obvious statement, given as we just talked about the George Floyd video, that racism persists in our country,”), assuming that Thomas and Alito would be on the side of reversal.
Maybe Dershowitz read my comments on LI.
SCOTUS is so political now thanks to John Roberts…they wont touch it but I hope that I am wrong.
Lucky for Chauvin that Dersh is never wrong
“Dershowitz predicts SCOTUS will reverse the verdict”
In the normal course of events it will take many years for the case to make it to the Supreme Court (if it ever does).
Yes, many years, and by then it will be moot because Chauvin will have long been murdered by his fellow inmates in jail.
“Dershowitz predicts SCOTUS will reverse the verdict.”
Dershowitz is smoking dope, hooping, speed balling, bumping lines, and riding the white horse popping whippets if he is relying upon the Supreme Court will overturn this.
Chauvin is a human sacrifice to the dark gods of unreasoned passion and cynical exploitation. Anyone who stands athwart this mob gets trampled by it.
The justices on the Supreme Court have lifetime tenure. Why end that prematurely?
It will be years before this gets to SCOTUS. And if it is retried, I’m sure Chauvin will still be found guilty of manslaughter. So, whether it is just a manslaughter case, or a manslaughter and murder case is just splitting hairs. Chauvin will be in prison a long time either way.
The manslaughter charge carries a 10 year maximum, though. He could potentially be a free man with time-served if he is retried and only found guilty of manslaughter.
BLM tried to carjack a big rig outside the courthouse
https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1384630976739954690
George Floyd’ nutjob girlfriend thanks him for dying
https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1384665501616545793
Red and black hair, black fingernails.
Satanist.
Satanist, or just drug-addicted with STI?
I thank him for dying.
I’m thankful he wasn’t able to drive away high on pills and kill an innocent person!
I bet she “made bank” on his death just like his family. For these people this is like hitting the big jackpot
Every juror on this case is now responsible for sending a man to prison for life. The karma they face…now they are getting book deals and trying to profit off it. Which makes it even worse.
Wouldn’t want to be them.
When you look at the Sam Shepard case Dershowitz talked about was 1954 took until 1966 to get to SCOTUS who overturned it for the same reasons as this could be. Media, jury intimidation.
Can this cop survive 12 yrs in prison?
Doubtful.
Every juror on this case is now responsible for sending a man to prison for life. The karma they face…now they are getting book deals and trying to profit off it. Which makes it even worse.
Wouldn’t want to be them.
When you look at the Sam Shepard case Dershowitz talked about was 1954 took until 1966 to get to SCOTUS who overturned it for the same reasons as this could be. Media, jury intimidation.
Can this cop survive 12 yrs in prison?
Doubtful.
The Judge too, going to hell.
He did not testify. Did not give jury a chance to find him not guilty.
I do not know if this is true but I’d read Ofc. Chauvin had some 18 complaints of excessive force lodged against him in his career (most all of which were dismissed as lacking evidence etc), and I wondered, even if that information were accurate, how can it possibly find its way into the presentence report? Can the judge even consider what were unsubstantiated claims or claims that led to minimal or no discipline? How wide is the scope of a PSI?
Criminals complained about getting arrested — AMAZING!
He worked in a junky part of town. I think complaints go with the territory. All MPD cops should walk out and don’t look back. No one wants to be next.
Had Chauvin testified, the prosecution would have at least attempted to question him about every one – or at least those they could portray as most egregious.
Question, how can an assault be the underlying felony?
Because it requires unintentional death committed during the commission of an underlying felony. Here, they are calling the underlying felony the assault, which is what caused the death. They can’t be one in the same. I think this is undeniable from the text of the statute itself, both because of the word “underlying”, which suggests an existing felony that was already ongoing, and the words “during the commission of”, which suggests, similarly, that it’s a separate felony they are participating in, with its own separate and distinct actus reus and mens rea, and that is was merely during the process of committing that other felony that someone got unintentionally killed.
To predicate a felony murder on the same conduct that forms the basis for the manslaughter claim and the 3rd degree murder claim is not how felony murder is supposed to work. It would be a neat little trick to get around ever needing any level of intent, but to apply it that way makes the rule look silly. It’s supposed to be an exception to the intent requirement, but when you make the underlying felony the actual and only unlawful act he is charged with committing, it would swallow the rule, and, again, just kind of make it look silly, and not how it is intended to be applied.
I don’t practice in MN, but felony murder rule is felony murder rule. And that isn’t how I’ve ever understood it?
Anybody?
Deliberations?
Shoot, contrary to what many posts claimed about the shallow mental abilities of the jurors, actually those folks must be geniuses.
So acute were their listening skills that, in a four-hour sprint, they were able to comprehend and digest, and without preconceived notions about Chauvin’s guilt, deliver verdicts; they were able to master every particular matter related to them by dozens of witnesses, some of the witnesses experts in law, experts in medical science, experts in policing, experts in physics.
And those jurors’ reading skills, mastering dozens (hundreds) of pages of transcribed testimony. Four damn hours. Who here can compare favorably? I cannot.
Poor, slow, dimwitted me who, after an intense 2.5 weeks here, trying to follow the reasoning fairly closely, trying to absorb what was offered in the unfolding of the trial, still can’t comprehend everything the jurors were able to assess and judge in four hours, even after having read and reread many posts and the cogent opinions of Mr Branca and Professor Jacobson.
Poor, slow dimwitted me. 2.5 weeks of frustrated thinking.
Four hours? Those jurors are motherfucking geniuses.
The jurors probably considered most of the volume of material to be irrelevant. And the more minutiae that are presented, the more is simply ignored. They focused on a few things. And the fact that Chauvin didn’t testify to explain his actions – something that cops normally do when accused of ,misconduct – probably was a big tell to them.
If this is the rule, I see no evidence whatsoever to support the second degree felony murder charge.
Minn.Stat. § 609.20(2) (1986). The distinction between the two offenses lies in the severity of the underlying crimes. In this case, the distinction is in the severity of the underlying assault.
“Assault” is defined by statute to include “[t]he intentional infliction of or attempt to inflict bodily harm upon another.” Minn.Stat. § 609.02, subd. 10(2) (1986).
Third degree assault, the underlying felony of the felony murder charge, occurs when a person “assaults another and inflicts substantial bodily harm * * *.” Minn.Stat. § 609.223 (1986). Fifth degree assault, on the other hand, is a misdemeanor that occurs when a person “intentionally inflicts or attempts to inflict bodily harm upon another.” Minn.Stat. § 609.224, subd. 1(2) (1986).
Thus, while third degree assault involves substantial bodily harm, misdemeanor assault involves mere bodily harm, a lesser threshold.
Both “substantial bodily harm” and “bodily harm” are terms defined by statute. Bodily harm means “physical pain or injury, illness, or any impairment of physical condition.” Minn.Stat. § 609.02, subd. 7 (1986). Substantial bodily harm is defined as:
bodily injury which involves a temporary but substantial disfigurement, or which causes a temporary but substantial loss or impairment of the function of any bodily member or organ, or which causes a fracture of any bodily member.
State v. Larsen (Minn. Ct. App. 1987) 413 N.W.2d 584, 586
Maybe Trump will pardon him.
Or President DeSantis? 😛
He wasn’t convicted of a Federal offense, so no President can pardon him. It would have to be the governor of MN. Good luck with that.
Several things are clear from me after watching the vast majority of the trial:
1. This trial was never about the law or if DC committed a crime. Judge Cahill clearly stated at the beginning of the trial that it was about the law and the facts of this case – nothing else. That was complete garbage. This was a key trial (and victory) for wokeness in this country. How do I know this? Look at every major mainstream media source. Look at what almost every elected official is saying including our most powerful leader – the President himself:
“It was a murder in the full light of day, and it ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism the Vice President just referred to — the systemic racism that is a stain our nation’s soul”
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/04/20/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-verdict-in-the-derek-chauvin-trial-for-the-death-of-george-floyd/
As many on here have stated, DC is a sacrifice to the god of wokeness. Unfortunately, if you feed a monster it grows bigger and stronger. The god of wokeness demands more: Kimberly Potter – she’s already GUILTY. The officer in the shooting last night in Columbus, OH – already GUILTY. It will continue and destroy everything in it’s path.
2. Eric Nelson did an outstanding job. Despite claims to the contrary (by mainstream media) – never once did I see another attorney working with Eric Nelson. He was by himself and faced incredible odds by the Prosecution. I’m sure he spent every waking hour in the past months working on this trial. But that is nothing compared to the force multiplier of 10-12+ attorneys (many working “pro bono”) by the state. Again, the power of the mob.
3. What’s next? I don’t know as I’m not an attorney, but I’ll link an interesting thread on reddit by someone who claims to be a MN defense attorney:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChauvinTrialDiscuss/comments/mv1wp5/chauvin_sentencing_and_beyond_answering_your/
I find the part about aggravated sentencing fascinating: the mob doesn’t want to just convict DC, they want him to pay the maximum price.
Moral of the story: the Mob now RULES in the USA
I’m commenting from Poland.
Chauvin only has two knees and has been found guilty of three homicide / murder with one man’s knee (GF) and in two different ways (intentionally and unintentionally). It seems a little strange to me. But it’s probably because I don’t know Minnesota law
I don’t think anyone has to know Minnesota law. It’s superfluous.
Mob law is the same everywhere.
Hang-’em high, that’s the basis.
No one seems to realize it but one of the prosecution’s witnesses unwittingly gave the proof that Chauvin DID NOT kill Floyd. During the rebuttal to the defense’s introduction of the possibility of CO2 poisoning, the witness said that it couldn’t have been CO2 because his O2 (oxygen) level was 98%. Now folks, NORMAL O2 level for a healthy person is 95% and above. There is NO WAY Floyd’s breathing could have been interrupted and his O2 level be at 98%. For Floyd to have died due to lack of O2 to his brain, his O2 level would have to have been MUCH lower. That his O2 level was 98% indicates that he was breathing normally at time of death.
unfortunately, that’s not as compelling as it seemed at first. Defense said that shouldn’t be what sticks with people because it was debunked on a later date in the trial. One of the expert witnesses said that the oxygen level was indeed 98% in the autopsy but that that level has no correlation with levels prior to death. Looking into it myself there are lots of studies with the same conclusion. The levels at autopsy postmortem can not be correlated with antemortem levels. Many reasons can lead to a high level during autopsy including postmortem autolysis.