Legal scholar Alan Dershowitz tells Newsmax TV he's never heard a judge advise a defense attorney he had a good case for appeal as he did this week when Judge Peter Cahill said the words of Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., likely gave him a case for overturning Derek Chauvin's guilty verdict on appeal.
"I've done 250 appeals over a 50-year career," Dershowitz said Thursday on "Greg Kelly Reports." "I don't think I've ever remembered [a] judge giving me an appellate issue, telling me you have an appellate issue."
Cahill denied the defense's request for a mistrial, but did note Waters' comments at a public gathering the night before that if an unacceptable verdict were returned, protesters would have to "get more confrontational."
Such actions simply proved that the jury should have been sequestered from "day one," Dershowitz said. Jurors were only sequestered after deliberations began.
Chauvin, who was a Minneapolice police officer, was convicted of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for the death of George Floyd after 10 hours of deliberations. Chauvin held his knee on Floyd for 9 minutes, 29 seconds despite pleas from onlookers who filmed the event with cellphone cameras and from Floyd himself.
Police experts testified that Chauvin improperly used a restraint technique on Floyd, a Black man who had tried to pass a fake $20 bill at a convenience store.
"Every mayor in the city, every police chief, the president of the United States, all understood that if there was a verdict less than murder in this case … it would mean violence in the streets," Dershowitz said. "And if every mayor and every police chief and the president knew it, how could the jurors not know it? They were not sequestered."
The case should be reversed and Chauvin given a new trial in a different jurisdiction, he said. Dershowitz expects the case to go to the U.S. Supreme Court within two years. He said Chauvin should be allowed out on bail during that time.
"Now, if he loses the case, he could go to jail," Dershowitz said. "But if he wins, where does he get his two years back?"
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