JUDGE REJECTS DELAY ON FLOYD FILINGS
Prosecution feared material could taint jury pool for trial
A Minnesota judge on Thursday rejected prosecutors’ request to put a 48hour hold on filings in the criminal cases of four Minneapolis police officers charged in George Floyd’s death.
Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill said a natural lag in the court filing system gives prosecutors sufficient time to see filings and, if they choose, to ask that they be sealed.
As evidence of that lag, Cahill cited this week’s filing by defense attorneys that sought to introduce evidence from a 2019 arrest involving Floyd, including police body-camera video from the arrest. Prosecutors from the state attorney general’s office successfully delayed public posting of that defense filing as they asked the judge for the 48-hour hold.
Floyd, who was Black, died May 25 after Derek Chauvin, who is White, pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck for several minutes even after Floyd said he couldn’t breathe. Floyd was in handcuffs as police tried to arrest him for allegedly passing a counterfeit $20 bill at a convenience store. Floyd’s death was captured on bystander video that set off protests around the world.
Chauvin and three other officers were fired. Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter; Thomas Lane, J. Kueng and Tou Thao are charged with aiding and abetting seconddegree murder and manslaughter.
Cahill said attorney f ilings aren’t considered official until the court reviews and accepts them. He said that had not yet happened with the filing from Lane’s attorney, Earl Gray, before the state requested the delay.
Prosecutors argued that the body-camera video from the 2019 arrest could taint
the pool of potential jurors, adding to pressure to move the former officers’ trial from Minneapolis.
Cahill said the video simply shows Floyd had been arrested before — information “basically everybody already knows,” he said — and that it might even help the state’s case.
Cahill didn’t immediately say when the video would be made public. He also ordered that going forward, only written motions will be accepted and no audio, video and photographic attachments will be allowed to be submitted with motions.
Gray’s filing this week also included transcripts of the 2019 arrest of Floyd, which he said shows Floyd was not the law-abiding citizen he has been portrayed to be.
In seeking the 48-hour delay on filings being made public, prosecutors had argued that the state “anticipates that filings in this case will involve protected or inadmissible evidence” and that if evidence becomes public it could unfairly inf luence public opinion.
“The proposed temporary protective order strikes the appropriate balance between the need for public disclosure and the need to avoid the disclosure of confidential or inadmissible information,” prosecutor Matthew Frank wrote.