Court: Chauvin should face 3rd-degree murder charge
Video shows Federico attacking officer
A Minnesota appeals court ruled Friday that a trial court judge should not have refused to reinstate a third-degree murder charge against former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, accused of killing George Floyd by pressing his knee to Floyd’s neck last May.
Chauvin already faces second-degree murder and manslaughter charges.
The trial was scheduled to begin Monday with jury selection.
It was unclear what effect the ruling would have on that schedule. Defense attorney Eric Nelson has argued that he is unprepared to argue the additional charge.
Chauvin has the option of appealing the Appeal’s Court decision to the state Supreme Court, which would delay the trial. Nelson declined to comment on the ruling Friday.
Ben Crump, an attorney for Floyd’s family, praised the ruling.
“The world watched far worse than third-degree murder when it watched Derek Chauvin press his knee into George’s neck, knowing that continuing to do so would kill,” he said in a written statement.
“However, the jury must be given every means and opportunity necessary, to hold this former officer accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” Crump said. “Too often, juries fail to hold officers accountable for the unlawful killing of black men.”
Floyd died May 25 after being pinned to the ground by Chauvin. Floyd, who was handcuffed, cried out repeatedly that he couldn’t breathe. The incident was captured on video and sparked protests around the country against police brutality and systemic racism.
In late May, Chauvin was charged with multiple counts of murder, including one count of third-degree murder, for his role in Floyd’s death.
Last fall, Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill threw out the thirddegree murder charge due to a reading of the state law that holds that it applies only when a defendant has put multiple people in danger and someone dies.
According to Minnesota law, thirddegree murder involves “perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind.”
That law has been interpreted to mean it doesn’t apply to an incident involving only one person.
But in February, an appeals ruling in another case cast doubt on that reading of the law.
The ruling upheld the third-degree murder conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Muhammed Noor, who fatally shot Justine Ruszczyk Damond in 2017.
Because that ruling allowed the third-degree charge even though only one other person was involved, prosecutors in the Chauvin case asked Cahill to bring back the third-degree murder charge.
Cahill refused. That’s when prosecutors went to the Court of Appeals to ask it to uphold the interpretation of the law and reinstate the additional charge.
With Friday’s ruling, the court reversed Cahill’s decision and sent the case back to Cahill for consideration. He can consider other arguments, the appeals court said, but his decision must be consistent with the Noor precedent.
Often prosecutors add other charges to enable the jury to choose among different options.
“I don’t think they think they can get a conviction for second-degree murder and they want this in as a compromise for the jury,” said Joe Friedberg, a longtime Minnesota criminal defense attorney. The irony, he said, is that sentencing guidelines for both charges are 155 months.
The Noor case has now been appealed to the Minnesota Supreme Court. Should the Supreme Court ultimately rule Noor should not have been convicted of third-degree murder, that’s likely to keep the charge out of Chauvin’s case.
Three other officers have also been charged in connected with Floyd’s death and were to face trial in August.
WASHINGTON – U.S. employers added a surprisingly robust 379,000 jobs last month in a sign the economy is strengthening as virus cases drop, vaccinations ramp up, Americans spend more and states ease business restrictions.
The February gain marked a sharp pickup from the 166,000 jobs that were added in January and the loss of 306,000 in December. Yet it represents just a fraction of the roughly 9.5 million that the economy must regain to return to where it was before the crisis.
Unemployment fell from 6.3% to 6.2%, the Labor Department reported Friday. That is down dramatically from 14.8% last April, just after the virus erupted in the United States. But it’s well above the prepandemic rate of 3.5%.
“The recovery really has some legs, some momentum now,” said Odeta Kushi, deputy chief economist at First American Financial Corp.
In suggesting the economy is on the mend, the strong jobs report could complicate President Joe Biden’s struggle to push through his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package, which passed the House. Senate approval was considered likely over the weekend, after which the House would consider any changes and whisk it to Biden for his signature.
It would provide, among other things, $1,400 checks to most adults, more money for weekly unemployment benefits and another round of aid to small businesses at a time when many Americans have seen their income shrivel and have fallen behind on rent, mortgages and other bills.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that the job gains have been too slow and that much higher unemployment rates among Hispanic and Black Americans show the need for more aid. She noted that it will take several years to recover from the pandemic layoffs.
“This is unacceptable,” Psaki said. “Congress must pass the American Rescue Plan now so we can get Americans back to work.”
About 4 million people who have lost their jobs have stopped looking for work and so are not classified as unemployed. If they were included, along with a separate group that was misclassified as working, the unemployment rate would be 9.3%, according to Oxford Economics.
Still, one year after the pandemic triggered a sudden recession, economists are increasingly optimistic that hiring will accelerate in the coming months as Americans seize the opportunity once again to travel, shop, attend sporting events, go to the movies and eat at restaurants.
Households as a whole have accumulated a huge pile of savings as lockeddown Americans slashed their spending. Much of that is expected to be spent once people feel more comfortable about going out.
Last month’s job growth was driven by a steady recovery of bars, restaurants and hotels. Bars and restaurants, in particular, snapped back, adding 286,000 jobs as business restrictions eased in California and other states. This week, Texas joined some other states in announcing it will fully reopen its economy.
Also hiring last month were retailers, which added 41,000 jobs, health care companies, with 46,000, and manufacturers, with 21,000. On the other hand, construction companies shed 61,000 jobs, most likely in part because of the severe storms and power outages in Texas.
Stefan Coker, the owner of What’s Pop-in, a gourmet popcorn company in Buffalo, New York, said people seem increasingly comfortable about shopping in person. His online sales are also growing, and he hopes to strike a deal with the grocery chain Wegman’s to sell in those stores.
To meet growing demand, he is moving into a larger storefront with warehouse space, and he plans to hire two or three more workers in the coming months.
“I’m seeing a major difference now in in-store sales,” Coker said. “Walk-in traffic has doubled. It’s been amazing to see.”
With the pandemic easing, he said, the company is also fielding more inquiries about custom bags for weddings and baby showers.
The virus has killed more than a halfmillion Americans. Deaths and new cases per day have plummeted over the past two months, though they are still running alarmingly high. The U.S. is averaging nearly 1,800 deaths and 62,000 newly confirmed infections per day.
The U.S. has administered over 82 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, according to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control. More than 21% of the nation’s adults have received at least one shot, and close to 11% have been fully vaccinated.
“The best stimulus is vaccination,” said Constance Hunter, chief economist at KPMG. “My hope is that we don’t backslide on the virus” as states reopen.
The job gains last month were sharply uneven. The unemployment rate among whites fell slightly, to 5.6%, and among Hispanics, to 8.5%. Among Asians it dropped to 5.1%. But for Black Americans it jumped from 9.2% to 9.9%.
Women fared slightly better than
men, with unemployment dropping among women from 6.3% to 6.1%, while men’s unemployment fell one-tenth of a percentage point to 6.3%. More women started looking for work, though millions of them have had to stop their job searches to care for children during the outbreak.
Lane S. Fulton, who lives in Bloomington, Indiana, has been mostly unemployed since the crisis began last March.
He said he has applied for roughly 600 government positions after earning a graduate degree in public administration from Indiana University in the fall of 2019. But state and local governments have slashed 1.4 million jobs since the pandemic erupted, and most have instituted hiring freezes.
Fulton was also thrown out of work from his part-time job at Panera Bread last March.
The federal government’s moratorium on collecting student loans allowed him to redirect his $600 monthly payment to more urgent bills.
“That pause was what allowed me to survive when I wasn’t getting unemployment,” he said.
WASHINGTON – A U.S. program created after the 2001 anthrax attacks to help detect biological weapons provided protection in less than half the states and couldn’t detect many of the known threats, according to a report released Thursday.
The program known as Biowatch, which described itself in a mission statement as a nationwide early-warning system, was capable of detecting only six of 14 biological agents known to be potential threats. It also left detection equipment exposed and unguarded, the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security found.
“Without implementing changes to address Biowatch’s challenges, the United States’ ability to prepare for, detect, and respond to a potential bioterrorism attack is impeded, which could result in significant loss of human life,” the inspector general concluded.
Biowatch, which is run by a component of Homeland Security, was created in 2003 in response to the deadly mailing of anthrax-laced envelopes to news media and government offices two years earlier. It has faced criticism for years.
Intended to supplement existing surveillance programs, Biowatch consists of air sampling equipment and lab facilities around the nation. It was meant to reduce the time it takes to recognize an attack by monitoring for known biological agents. It costs about $80 million per year to run, according to previous government reports.
The inspector general noted, however, that it has detection capability in just 22 of the 50 states.
Contrary to billing, “Biowatch does not operate a nationwide early warning system,” the report said.
Previous reviews have faulted the program’s computer network security and said it lacked reliable data about its capabilities for detecting an attack, among other problems. The Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office, which runs Biowatch, in 2019 ranked lowest across 420 government agencies,
for employee satisfaction and commitment, according to a report by the General Accountability Office.
Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, co-chairs of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, have called for the replacement of Biowatch, which they say relies on winds blowing in the optimal direction and can take up to 36 hours to provide evidence of a biological agent.
The new report, based on an audit of the program conducted last year, found that Biowatch no longer carries out routine full-scale exercises, which in previous years had uncovered a range of problems with preparedness for a possible attack.
The Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office generally concurred with the findings in the report and said it is working to address problems raised in the audit. But its director also defended the overall value of the program. Biowatch is integral to the office’s mission “and serves as the department’s best tool to effectively prepare for, detect and respond to bioterrorism threats,” David Richardson, an assistant secretary at DHS who runs the office, wrote in a letter accompanying the report.
To address its coverage of the U.S., the office said it plans to work with the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which conducted the 2003 assessment upon which the office based the deployment of its monitoring equipment.
A former State Department aide in President Donald Trump’s administration has been charged with participating in the deadly siege at the Capitol and assaulting officers who were trying to guard the building, court papers showed.
It’s the first known case to be brought against a Trump appointee in the Jan. 6 insurrection, which led to Trump’s historic second impeachment.
Federico Klein, who also worked for Trump’s 2016 campaign, was seen wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat amid the throng of people in a tunnel trying to force their way into the Capitol on Jan. 6, the papers said. Klein pushed his way toward the doors, where, authorities said, “he physically and verbally engaged” with officers trying to keep the mob back.
Klein was seen on camera violently shoving a riot shield into an officer and inciting the crowd as it tried to storm past the police line, shouting, “We need fresh people, we need fresh people,” according to the charging documents.
As the mob struggled with police in the tunnel, Klein pushed the riot shield, which had been stolen from an officer, in between the Capitol doors, preventing police from closing them, authorities say. Eventually, an officer used chemical spray, forcing Klein to move somewhere else, officials say.
Klein was arrested Thursday in Virginia and faces charges including obstructing Congress and assaulting officers using a dangerous weapon.
He was in custody on Friday and couldn’t be reached for comment. It was not immediately clear whether he had an attorney who could comment on his behalf. A Trump spokesman said he had no comment.
At least five people, including a Capitol Police officer, died as a result of the violence, and two other officers killed themselves after. More than 300 people have been charged with federal crimes.
Klein became a staff assistant in the State Department shortly after Trump’s inauguration in 2017, according to a financial disclosure report. He held a top secret security clearance that was renewed in 2019, according to the court papers. He resigned from his position on Jan. 19, the day before Joe Biden was sworn in as president, authorities said.
One of Klein’s State Department coworkers helped authorities identify him, officials said.
A Department of State diplomatic security special agent interviewed by an
As the mob struggled with police in the tunnel, Klein pushed the riot shield, which had been stolen from an officer, in between the Capitol doors, preventing police from closing them, authorities say.
FBI agent said that Klein worked in the Office of Brazilian and Southern Cone Affairs, according to the court papers. The Department of State official identified Klein in photos and video shown by the FBI, officials said.