Guest Opinion: The challenge of a fair trial for Chauvin
When a legal proceeding is as emotionally supercharged as this one, and has taken on such enormous symbolic significance, leaders of the community would seem to have a particular duty to urge the public to remain calm and patient, to respect the processes of law, and to withhold final judgment until all the facts and arguments from all sides have been fairly examined.
Written By:
D.J. Tice | Minneapolis Star Tribune | 2:00 am, Feb. 26, 2021 ×
In December the Hennepin County District Court made public a questionnaire it was sending to prospective jurors in the upcoming murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
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A fired Minneapolis police officer who kept crowds away from George Floyd’s fatal arrest says a leak to the New York Times about a co-defendant seeking a plea deal will taint the jury pool.
Former Minneapolis Police Officer Tou Thao enters the Hennepin County Courthouse with his attorneys before a motions hearing last July. (Evan Frost/Minnesota Public Radio via AP)
MINNEAPOLIS (CN) A frigid weekend in Minneapolis brought a flurry of developments in the lead-up to the trial of fired Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, including the second appeal in two weeks by prosecutors and a motion to dismiss the case against one of Chauvin’s former colleagues over a press leak.
Protesters gather at a memorial for George Floyd in Minneapolis last June. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
ST. PAUL, Minn. (CN) The Minnesota Court of Appeals has rejected an effort to rejoin and delay the trials of the four former Minneapolis police officers facing charges in the death of George Floyd, finding that prosecutors had not shown that a late-in-the-game separation of the trials would sufficiently jeopardize their efforts to convict the officers.
A three-judge panel led by Judge Tracy Smith issued the court’s order Friday, finding that public health risks created by Covid-19 do not meet the “critical impact” standard required to justify pretrial review in Minnesota. Those risks, Assistant Attorney General Matthew Frank argued in his petition to the court, could create sufficient hazards to jurors, attorneys and others in the courtroom to justify review.