Fact check: Missing context in claim questioning whether Derek Chauvin received fair trial

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The claim: Derek Chauvin did not get a fair trial for the killing of George Floyd

After weeks of jury selection, arguments, testimony and 10 hours of jury deliberation, former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder in the killing of George Floyd.

Floyd’s death after Chauvin kneeled on his neck for nearly 10 minutes last year was a spark that set off nationwide demonstrations against racial injustice. The trial prompted public statements from elected officials, including President Joe Biden and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., ahead of the outcome.

Students for Trump co-founder Ryan Fournier believes those contributed to an unfair trial, as he claimed in a Facebook post.

On April 20, Fournier shared an image with the white text “Mob rule is not justice” set against a black background. He posted with that: “Derek Chauvin did not get a fair trial.”

After USA TODAY contacted Fournier to ask for evidence of an unfair trial, he added “This is my opinion” to the post, a point reiterated in an email to USA TODAY from Mark Chase, of RFAngle, a website Fournier founded.

“He believes the outcome would be different had the case not been politicized and elevated to become what it is now,” Chase wrote, pointing to statements from Biden and Waters and the potential for more demonstrations if the jury acquitted Chauvin.

Right to a fair trial

Legal experts interviewed by USA TODAY said courts don’t have easily defined criteria or tests to determine whether a trial was fair. High-profile trials such as Chauvin’s complicate it even more, they said.

“There are certainly benchmarks that the court uses in assessing particular claims about a trial,” said Vida B. Johnson, associate professor at Georgetown Law. “But there isn’t some kind of checklist.”

Elements include the rights guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment:

  • The right to a speedy and public trial.

  • The right to an impartial jury.

  • The right to an attorney.

  • The right to know your accusers and the nature of charges against you.

Jury selection

The jury is a key a piece to any argument about whether Chauvin’s trial was fair, legal experts said.

The jury in Chauvin’s trial was more racially diverse than Hennepin County, Minnesota, where the case was tried. Six jurors were white, four were Black and two were multiracial, according to National Public Radio. Seven were women, while five were men.

Judge Peter Cahill set aside three weeks for jury selection, and the court used what the Washington Post described as “a larger than usual pool of prospective jurors – about 326 people.”

The judge, prosecution and defense spent about two weeks whittling the pool down to a dozen jurors and three alternates, using questionnaires and interviews to determine who would hear the case.

More: Exclusive: Americans overwhelmingly approve of Chauvin guilty verdict, USA TODAY/Ipsos snap poll finds

In some cases, Chauvin’s defense attorneys and prosecutors didn’t need a reason to strike a juror from the pool, as long as it was not based on race.

Typically, defense attorneys in similar cases get five “peremptory” strikes, while prosecutors receive three, according to the Associated Press. In Chauvin’s case, defense attorneys were given 15 strikes compared with nine for prosecutors.

“It shows the judge bent over backwards to give the defense more opportunities to exclude potentially bad jurors even if the juror didn’t meet the technical criteria for a challenge,” said Ron Sullivan, a professor at Harvard Law.

Derek Chauvin is lead out of the courtroom in handcuffs after a guilty verdict is read during the trial of Derek Chauvin of the death of George Floyd at the courthouse in Minneapolis on April 20, 2021.
Derek Chauvin is lead out of the courtroom in handcuffs after a guilty verdict is read during the trial of Derek Chauvin of the death of George Floyd at the courthouse in Minneapolis on April 20, 2021.

Jury sequestration

University of Minnesota law professor David Schultz said Chauvin’s attorneys likely would argue on appeal that national attention on the case, a year of protests around the country and other factors made it impossible to seat an impartial jury.

But he said without statements from jurors saying they were influenced by coverage of the trial or could not vote to acquit out of fear of the consequences, the argument is unlikely to succeed.

“As of now there’s no evidence of it because we don’t have any evidence of a juror saying yes I received information and didn’t report it to the court,” Sullivan said.

Through most of the trial, jurors were “partially sequestered,” according to KARE-11 in Minneapolis. Although jurors were supervised at all times at the courthouse and escorted from a secure parking location, they were allowed to go home at night.

Cahill also told jurors during selection that they should avoid media coverage during the trial and shouldn't conduct research outside of the courtroom. In instructions before deliberations began, Cahill wrote to the jury that it must “disregard anything you may have heard or seen elsewhere about this case.”

More: The cause of George Floyd's death: Jurors faced alternate versions in the trial of Derek Chauvin

Jurors in the Chauvin trial were not fully sequestered until they began deliberations on a verdict, despite requests from Chauvin’s defense attorney after protests erupted in Minneapolis following the police shooting of Daunte Wright.

“Jurors tend to take their role pretty seriously," Johnson said. "I think that was probably even more true in such a high-profile case where you know that everything you’re doing is being watched."

People react after the verdict was read in the Derek Chauvin trial on April 20, 2021 In Minneapolis.
People react after the verdict was read in the Derek Chauvin trial on April 20, 2021 In Minneapolis.

Did Chauvin get a fair trial?

All three experts interviewed by USA TODAY agreed that Chauvin received a fair trial.

Harvard Law's Sullivan said an appellate court would have to determine if any of Chauvin’s challenges were “outcome determinative,” meaning that if those scenarios were different during the trial, it would have led to a different conclusion.

While the defense might be able to argue, for example, that the judge gave prosecutors too much latitude in allowing lay witnesses to testify as experts, Sullivan said, it’s unlikely to succeed.

“I think it was a clean trial,” said Sullivan.

Schultz, the University of Minnesota law professor, said without evidence to show jurors were influenced by outside factors, he would “have to tip the scale on the side of saying (Chauvin) probably got a fair trial.”

While the trial was not "typical," Georgetown Law's Johnson said it was fair.

“I would say all of the things you would expect to see in a trial, those were all present in this trial,” she said.

People react after the verdict was read in the Derek Chauvin trial on April 20, 2021 In Minneapolis.
People react after the verdict was read in the Derek Chauvin trial on April 20, 2021 In Minneapolis.

Our ruling: Missing context

The claim that former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin did not get a fair trial for the killing of George Floyd is MISSING CONTEXT. It's couched as an opinion in this post, but it's one that ignores the steps taken to ensure the trial was indeed fair. Cahill set aside three weeks for jury selection, and an unusually large pool of prospective jurors were called for the trial. Chauvin’s defense attorneys and prosecutors were both given more chances to remove jurors than is typical in Minnesota, but the defense received more. Jurors were sequestered in an undisclosed hotel to deliberate on the verdict.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Did Derek Chauvin receive fair trial for killing of George Floyd?