Convicting a murderous cop has its consequences. The integrity of a juror in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is being called into question because the juror attended a march for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. last August, CBS-affiliated WCCO reported on Tuesday. Floyd’s family spoke at the March on Washington, which was intended to commemorate the 57th anniversary of the civil rights leader's famous "I Have a Dream" speech. It also included a voter registration rally, which Brandon Mitchell, the juror in question, told WCCO was the reason he attended. His attire at the event, however, is now being scrutinized after he was photographed in a T-shirt with King's image and the words, “Get Your Knee Off Our Necks,” and “BLM,” which Mitchell explained were broader references to the circumstances of 2020.
“It was huge to get people geared for voter turnout, so being a part of that, being able to attend, you know, the same location where Martin Luther King gave his speech was a historic moment,” Mitchell told WCCO. “Either way, I was going to D.C. for this event, even if George Floyd was still alive.” Floyd is not alive, and don’t for one second let Chauvin’s apparent desperation to get away with murder obscure the fact that Floyd is not here to see his daughter grow up because of Chauvin. Not Mitchell or any other member of the jury.
Chauvin, who is due for sentencing at 2:30 PM ET on June 16, was convicted of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter last month. Several clips of witness video presented at trial showed him kneeling on the neck of 46-year-old Floyd for more than nine minutes on May 25, 2020, outside of the Cup Foods corner store in Minneapolis. That video went viral and ushered the case onto an international stage, fueling anti-racism and anti-police brutality protests.
Still, Mitchell, juror No. 52 in the trial, told CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King he didn't feel pressure to reach a guilty verdict "at all … And I don't think any of us felt like that. I for sure did not. I for sure did not feel like that,” Mitchell said. “The pressure more so came from just being in the room and being under stress. But it wasn't pressure to come to A guilty verdict." He told King he was stressed about having to come into the courtroom and watch a Black man die every day. “That alone is stressful,” he said. “Coming in each and every day and having to watch somebody die is stressful enough by itself. So anything outside of that was secondary, just because as a human, it's natural to feel some kind of way as you're watching somebody in agony.”
Chauvin's defense attorney, Eric Nelson, brought up the question of just how much outside opinions of the case might be affecting the trial when he didn’t like how Rep. Maxine Waters answered an interviewer's question about what demonstrators should do if Chauvin isn't convicted. “We’ve got to get more confrontational," she said. "We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business.” With that, Nelson brought up the possibility of a mistrial and said the jury should have been sequestered from the start of the trial. “My phone gives me alerts on things that just happened. I mean you can’t avoid it, and it is so pervasive that I just don’t know how this jury can really be said to be that they are free from the taint of this,” Nelson said. “And now that we have U.S. representatives threatening acts of violence in relation to this specific case, it’s mind-boggling to me judge.” Judge Peter Cahill admonished Waters but ultimately ruled that her remarks weren’t grounds for a mistrial.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents the Floyd family, told TMZ that Mitchell's interview "completely obliterates" any claim from the Chauvin defense that public opinions outside the courtroom influenced the jury.
Rachel Moran, a law professor from the University of St. Thomas, told WCCO an important consideration in the case is whether lawyers did their job in investigating jurors. Mitchell said in a questionnaire WCCO obtained that he never took part in a protest about police brutality and that the phrase Black lives matter simply means Black people "want to be treated as equals and not killed or treated in an aggressive manner simply because they are Black.”
“If he had been asked about it and he tried to hide it, that could be an issue,” Moran said. “But at this point, I don’t see anything, any evidence that he tried to hide it.”
The attorney added that “it’s really important for the viewers at home to know it’s really hard to overturn a conviction, and courts are especially reluctant to interfere with the jury deliberation process.”
Read the transcript of King’s interview with Mitchell from CBS News:
RELATED: Derek Chauvin found guilty on all counts
RELATED: Chauvin defense calls for mistrial after Maxine Waters relays hoped-for verdict. Then, Biden does it
“It was huge to get people geared for voter turnout, so being a part of that, being able to attend, you know, the same location where Martin Luther King gave his speech was a historic moment,” Mitchell told WCCO. “Either way, I was going to D.C. for this event, even if George Floyd was still alive.” Floyd is not alive, and don’t for one second let Chauvin’s apparent desperation to get away with murder obscure the fact that Floyd is not here to see his daughter grow up because of Chauvin. Not Mitchell or any other member of the jury.
Chauvin, who is due for sentencing at 2:30 PM ET on June 16, was convicted of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter last month. Several clips of witness video presented at trial showed him kneeling on the neck of 46-year-old Floyd for more than nine minutes on May 25, 2020, outside of the Cup Foods corner store in Minneapolis. That video went viral and ushered the case onto an international stage, fueling anti-racism and anti-police brutality protests.
Still, Mitchell, juror No. 52 in the trial, told CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King he didn't feel pressure to reach a guilty verdict "at all … And I don't think any of us felt like that. I for sure did not. I for sure did not feel like that,” Mitchell said. “The pressure more so came from just being in the room and being under stress. But it wasn't pressure to come to A guilty verdict." He told King he was stressed about having to come into the courtroom and watch a Black man die every day. “That alone is stressful,” he said. “Coming in each and every day and having to watch somebody die is stressful enough by itself. So anything outside of that was secondary, just because as a human, it's natural to feel some kind of way as you're watching somebody in agony.”
Chauvin's defense attorney, Eric Nelson, brought up the question of just how much outside opinions of the case might be affecting the trial when he didn’t like how Rep. Maxine Waters answered an interviewer's question about what demonstrators should do if Chauvin isn't convicted. “We’ve got to get more confrontational," she said. "We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business.” With that, Nelson brought up the possibility of a mistrial and said the jury should have been sequestered from the start of the trial. “My phone gives me alerts on things that just happened. I mean you can’t avoid it, and it is so pervasive that I just don’t know how this jury can really be said to be that they are free from the taint of this,” Nelson said. “And now that we have U.S. representatives threatening acts of violence in relation to this specific case, it’s mind-boggling to me judge.” Judge Peter Cahill admonished Waters but ultimately ruled that her remarks weren’t grounds for a mistrial.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents the Floyd family, told TMZ that Mitchell's interview "completely obliterates" any claim from the Chauvin defense that public opinions outside the courtroom influenced the jury.
Rachel Moran, a law professor from the University of St. Thomas, told WCCO an important consideration in the case is whether lawyers did their job in investigating jurors. Mitchell said in a questionnaire WCCO obtained that he never took part in a protest about police brutality and that the phrase Black lives matter simply means Black people "want to be treated as equals and not killed or treated in an aggressive manner simply because they are Black.”
“If he had been asked about it and he tried to hide it, that could be an issue,” Moran said. “But at this point, I don’t see anything, any evidence that he tried to hide it.”
The attorney added that “it’s really important for the viewers at home to know it’s really hard to overturn a conviction, and courts are especially reluctant to interfere with the jury deliberation process.”
Read the transcript of King’s interview with Mitchell from CBS News:
RELATED: Derek Chauvin found guilty on all counts
RELATED: Chauvin defense calls for mistrial after Maxine Waters relays hoped-for verdict. Then, Biden does it