ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin appealed his murder conviction in the killing of George Floyd to the Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday, saying the district judge’s decision not to move the proceedings out of the city deprived him of a fair trial.
His attorney, William Mohrman, filed a petition for review with the state’s highest court a month after the Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld Chauvin’s conviction for second-degree murder and let his 22 1/2-year sentence remain in place.
Morhman had unsuccessfully asked the appeals court to throw out the ex-officer’s conviction for a long list of reasons, including the massive pretrial publicity. But the three-judge panel last month sided with prosecutors who said Chauvin got a fair trial and just sentence. Chauvin raises several of those arguments again in his latest appeal.
“We’re very hopeful that the Minnesota Supreme Court will accept review of the case,” Mohrman said.
Floyd died on May 25, 2020, after Chauvin, who is white, kneeled on the Black man’s neck for 9 1/2 minutes. A bystander video captured Floyd’s fading cries of “I can’t breathe.” Floyd’s death touched off protests around the world, some of which turned violent, and forced a national reckoning with police brutality and racism.