A couple of months ago we discussed once again the travesty of justice that was the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. This was a trial that was conducted just down the street from ground-zero of the BLM riots of 2020, which destroyed Minneapolis’ police precinct, caused $500 million in damage to more than 1,500 businesses, and resulted in several deaths. We’re talking about the single most destructive riot in United States history, after the Los Angeles riots of 1992. And it happened in the same place where Derek Chauvin’s trial was being held. But the judge — who later declared that “every case is about racial justice” in some way — didn’t move the trial to a different venue. Instead, he made sure that Chauvin’s fate was determined by jurors who knew well that their city would burn to the ground if they didn’t convict. They had security fencing and National Guard troops all around the courthouse throughout the trial, just in case that message wasn’t clear.
And those jurors did exactly what you’d expect them to do, under those circumstances. They convicted Chauvin without even addressing the question of whether he had actually killed George Floyd. The jurors admitted it on CNN; they simply decided that Chauvin didn’t express enough concern for Floyd’s well-being. That was how they rationalized it. For their part, prosecutors repeatedly lied to the jury about the level of fentanyl in Floyd’s system at the time of his death. Specifically, prosecutors compared blood samples taken from Floyd before he was pronounced dead, to samples taken from overdose victims long after their deaths. And they pulled this off without the defense team noticing it. Their goal was clear: They wanted to downplay the sheer amount of fentanyl in Floyd’s system, which was well over a lethal dose.
.png)
.png)
