Derek Chauvin, the police officer sentenced to 22 ½ years in prison for the murder of George Floyd in an incident that led to the biggest outcry against racial injustice in the U.S. in generations, will ask the Supreme Court to review his conviction after the Minnesota Supreme Court declined to hear his case, reports CNN.
"This criminal trial generated the most amount of pretrial publicity in history," Chauvin's attorney, William Morhman, told The Associated Press. "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."
Attorney General Keith Ellison said in a statement that the state Supreme Court's denial of review "means that the Court of Appeals was correct in finding that his trial was properly conducted, and he was properly convicted under law. This development definitively holds Chauvin accountable and closes this chapter of the murder of George Floyd."
Floyd, who was Black, died on May 25, 2020, after Chauvin, who is white, pressed a knee on his neck for 9 1/2 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.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
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