By Anthony Gockowski
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case after the Minnesota Supreme Court declined to do so Tuesday, his attorney told Alpha News.
Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree unintentional murder and second-degree manslaughter in April 2021 in connection to the death of George Floyd. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison.
In April of this year, the Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld Chauvin’s conviction and declined his request for a new trial. His attorney then asked the Minnesota Supreme Court to review the lower court’s decision, which it declined to do.
“Based upon all the files, records, and proceedings herein, it is hereby ordered that the petition of Derek Michael Chauvin for further review is denied,” Chief Justice Lorie Gildea wrote in a Tuesday order.
William Mohrman, Chauvin’s attorney, told Alpha News in a statement Wednesday that Chauvin “will now petition the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his case on this fair trial issue.”
“We are obviously disappointed that the Minnesota Supreme Court declined to review the criminal trial against Mr. Chauvin. The most significant issue on which we appealed was whether holding this trial in Minneapolis deprived Mr. Chauvin of his right to a fair trial under the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution due to pretrial publicity and concerns for violence in the event of an acquittal,” Mohrman 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 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.”
Chauvin was transferred from Oak Park Heights prison to a federal prison in Tucson, Ariz., in August last year after pleading guilty to a federal civil rights charge.
This article originally appeared at Alpha News and was reprinted with permission.
