Derek Chauvin to ask U.S. Supreme Court to review conviction in George Floyd’s murder

Former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review his conviction for second-degree murder in the killing of George Floyd, now that the Minnesota Supreme Court has declined to hear the case, his attorney said Wednesday.

The state’s highest court without comment denied Chauvin’s petition in a one-page order dated Tuesday, letting Chauvin’s conviction and 22 ½-year sentence stand. Chauvin faces long odds at the U.S. Supreme Court, which hears only about 100 to 150 appeals of the more than 7,000 cases it is asked to review every year.

Floyd, who was Black, died on May 25, 2020, after Chauvin, who is white, pressed a knee on his neck for 9½ minutes on the street outside a convenience store where Floyd tried to pass a counterfeit $20 bill. A bystander video captured Floyd’s fading cries of “I can’t breathe.” Floyd’s death touched off protests worldwide, some of which turned violent, and forced a national reckoning with police brutality and racism that is still playing out.

Chauvin’s attorney, William Mohrmann, told The Associated Press that they were “obviously disappointed” in the decision. He said the most significant issue on which they appealed was whether holding the proceedings in Minneapolis in 2021 deprived Chauvin of his right to a fair trial due to pretrial publicity and concerns for violence in the event of an acquittal. He said they will now raise that issue with the U.S. Supreme Court.

“This criminal trial generated the most amount of pretrial publicity in history,” Morhmann said. “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 — 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.”

Mohrmann asked the Minnesota Supreme Court in May to hear the case after the Minnesota Court of Appeals in April rejected his arguments that he had been denied a fair trial. The Minnesota attorney general’s office, in a response last month, asked the Supreme Court to let that ruling stand instead.

“Petitioner received a fair trial, and received the benefit of a fulsome appellate review,” prosecutors wrote at the time. “It is time to bring this case to a close.”