July 21st 2023.
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is set to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review his second-degree murder conviction in the George Floyd case. This follows the Minnesota Supreme Court's decision to decline the one-page petition without comment, meaning that the more-than-22-year sentence stands.
Chauvin's attorney, William Mohrmann, believes that his client was deprived of a fair trial due to the level of media attention and the potential for violence in the event of an acquittal. In a statement, Mohrmann 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."
The Minnesota Court of Appeals rejected these arguments last April, and the state's attorney general's office has since asked the Supreme Court to let that ruling stand in order to bring the case to a close. During the sentencing, Judge Peter Cahill wrote that the case warranted a harsher sentence, claiming that Chauvin "abused his position of trust and authority, treating the victim without respect and denied him the dignity owed to all human beings."
The nationwide protests in 2020 were sparked by the release of body camera and witness video footage of Floyd's final moments, which showed Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck and back for more than nine minutes. As a result of this and an additional third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter charges, Chauvin was sentenced to more than two decades in prison, exceeding Minnesota's sentencing guideline range of 10 years and eight months to 15 years.
Chauvin is currently serving his sentence in Arizona, concurrent with state charges, after pleading guilty to separate federal civil rights charges, for which he was sentenced to 21 years.
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