Derek Chauvin is Guilty

The former officer, and an entire system, faces a reckoning

Nearly a year ago, a Black man was lynched on a public street corner in broad daylight by a Minneapolis Police Officer. The City of Lakes was rocked with protests and riots that were instigated by outside agitators.

For nearly a year, the murder of George Floyd and the topic of police reform were hotly debated in nearly all social, political, and legal circles both on and off social media.

Now, for the last four weeks, we have paid rapt attention to the Derek Chauvin murder trial. We watched as expert after expert trotted out and provided their expertise on how Mr. Floyd died. We watched the “Blue Wall of Silence” speak out vociferously. We watched Defense Attorney Eric Nelson bumble and fumble his way through his client’s case by propagating fallacy, leaning into racist tropes and offering up witnesses with questionable credibility. In comparison, we watched, as Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called them, a “Dream Team full of Michael Jordans” make the case for the State of Minnesota.

For the better part of a month, we’ve played armchair quarterback and employed our law degrees earned from watching too many television court dramas. And on Tuesday, April 20, 2021, we held our collective breath and got what we had all been waiting for: the fate of a murderous cop drunk on his own power.

The counts, and associated verdicts, rang out like a bell as Judge Peter Cahill read them off.