Very few Americans have been treated as unjustly by our so-called “justice system” as former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Back in May 2020, Chauvin restrained career criminal George Floyd as he was dying of a drug overdose. Chauvin called for paramedics as he was restraining Floyd and ended up being convicted of “murder.” He’s been stabbed once since he’s been in prison. Chauvin’s attorney has now filed a new petition to vacate his client’s sentence on the grounds that key information was withheld from the jury.
George Floyd had tried to use a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes in Minneapolis. When Derek Chauvin and other officers responded to the call and confronted Floyd, he immediately reached down in front of the passenger seat of his SUV. Chauvin showed remarkable restraint in that moment. Floyd could have been reaching for a gun or a knife, and Chauvin would have been perfectly justified in emptying his service Glock in Floyd’s torso.
Floyd wasn’t reaching for a knife, however. He was swallowing the stash of drugs under the front passenger seat. You can clearly see the powder on his lips if you go back and watch the police body cam video.
The drugs set George Floyd’s ailing and diseased heart racing, and he began to freak out. The officers tried to get him in the back of a police vehicle, but Floyd was uncooperative, insisting that he couldn’t breathe. To prevent Floyd from hurting himself, Chauvin and the other officers put him on the ground and restrained him.
Derek Chauvin was 5’7” tall and weighed 170 pounds that day. George Floyd was 6’4” and weighed 223 pounds. He towered over the other officers, and he was high on drugs. The officers were worried that Floyd would experience one of those bouts of superhuman strength that druggies are known for and hurt himself or someone else.
So, Chauvin restrained George Floyd in the exact way that the Minneapolis Police Department had trained him. He placed a knee on the much larger Floyd’s shoulder to keep him on the ground. He never placed his knee on George Floyd’s neck. If he had, George Floyd wouldn’t have been able to repeatedly cry out, “I can’t breathe!”
The key question from a legal standpoint in Chauvin’s trial was this:
Did the method that he used to restrain George Floyd fall within the training and standards of the Minneapolis Police Department?
According to 57 current and former MPD officers, it did. They’ve all signed affidavits for the new petition to vacate Derek Chauvin’s sentence.
Every Minneapolis police officer was trained to bring a large drug addict to the ground and restrain them with a knee on their shoulder, to prevent them from hurting themselves or others. It’s in the training manual, and they’re taught this method in classes. Derek Chauvin didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, per approved departmental policy. During the trial, prosecutors told the jury that Chauvin went outside of his training in order to murder George Floyd on the street in front of dozens of witnesses.
The jury never learned that all MPD officers were trained to do exactly what Derek Chauvin did in that situation.
“This case simply never made sense,” stated Attorney Greg Joseph in the new petition to vacate Chauvin’s sentence.
Derek Chauvin was on the radio with dispatchers. He requested an ambulance and emergency assistance. Dozens of witnesses were aiming their cellphones at him and his fellow officers.
And then he decided to murder the guy? Seriously?
The new petition argues that Chauvin’s murder sentence should be vacated, or at a minimum, he should be granted a new trial because of prosecutorial misconduct. Joseph argues that Chauvin “was deprived of his right to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Article I of the Minnesota Constitution.”
If Derek Chauvin acted within the bounds of departmental policy and his training, then there was no murder that took place. The testimony of 57 of his fellow officers should carry a great deal of weight in this petition. Prosecutors have 45 days to respond to the petition.