Chauvin trial judge denies the defense's request for a mistrial, BUT he did SLAM Maxine Waters for her threatening comments in Minnesota this weekend to jurors, calling them "abhorrent" and "disrespectful to the rule of law and to the judicial branch and our function." pic.twitter.com/rAoa1QvcqZ
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) April 19, 2021
Judge Peter Cahill has been prejudiced against the defense from the beginning.
He allowed the third-degree murder charge to be brought, even though that was a gross overcharging of the defendant.
He prevented previous arrest records of George Floyd to be brought up to show a pattern of resisting behaviors.
He allowed witnesses who contributed no facts in evidence to give emotional pleas.
He didn’t allow a change in venue or jury sequestration despite all the public outcry and threats.
Now, this.
If he’s not ideologically aligned against Chauvin, then he’s a coward who makes rulings based on what he thinks will cause the least amount of protester attention to be directed towards himself.
I suspect that Chavin’s lawyer has spent the rest of today writing Chauvin’s appeal.
I respectfully disagree that Judge Cahill is a slimy ideologue. He might be, but his conduct during the trial has been mostly what one might expect in a criminal trial of this magnitude.
He has upheld quite a number of defense objections and overruled quite a number of state objections.
He did allow the lesser 3rd-degree murder charge, but also the 2nd-degree murder charge. Yes, it’s a bit of a stretch, but being a stretch just makes the prosecution have to work harder to prove it.
George Floyd’s prior arrest records weren’t ever going to be allowed unless the defense could demonstrate to the court’s satisfaction that Derek Chauvin knew about them. He didn’t, so the defense couldn’t show that, so the records weren’t allowed. The trial is about whether the officer acted reasonably based on what he knew at the time, not based on information he couldn’t have known.
(That said, the defense did a great job questioning witnesses who knew about Floyd’s prior arrests and got that implication before the jury, even if they couldn’t get the actual records. Judge Cahill did not instruct the jury to disregard that knowledge.)
Witnesses give emotional pleas all the time. It doesn’t add to the factual evidence, and the jury is instructed to look at the facts of the case. More than anything, the emotional pleas just wasted time. But the witnesses bringing no facts is the fault of the prosecution, not the judge.
He denied a change of venue, but OTOH, with the trial as nationally-high-profile as it is, would that really have made a difference? Think back to George Zimmerman: the case was national news months before his actual trial. Would moving it from Sanford to Jacksonville have made a difference? Would moving it to f@#$ing Montana have made a substantive difference?
Judge Cahill’s biggest fault has been to not sequester the jury. On that issue, I wholeheartedly agree.
But overall, I think he’s been pretty fair. Especially since defense counsel Eric Nelson brought up “an elected official, a United States Congressperson”, but Judge Cahill called “Representative Waters” by name, and said that Rep. Waters’ actions and statements give the defense a strong case for appeal.
His other option is to declare a mistrial, in which case the prosecutors will likely re-file charges and we’ll have to do this all over again next year.
That, I think, is one of the major driving factors behind a lot of his decisions on various motions: The fact that anything other than a unanimous “Guilty” or “Not Guilty” from the jury just means we have to do this again.
Sparing Derek Chauvin from having to do this multiple times — not allowing the process to become the punishment — decidedly favored the defense, in my mind.