The DA emphasized George Floyd's humanity. 35 years ago, that was enough for a corrupt cop to win on appeal.
Will Derek Chauvin’s conviction be overturned?
One way that might happen: If the appellate court finds that the prosecution’s “overly emotional” statements may have influenced the jury.
I served on a jury 35 years ago, in New York City. The defendants were white cops, and a Black man had died in their custody.
The cops were charged with evidence tampering and official misconduct, and we voted unanimously to convict each of them for both felonies.
Many years later, I searched for the case, and found the appellate court record. I wasn’t surprised to see the conviction overturned–because I believed then, and believe now, that the whole criminal justice system is set up to protect cops who violate the law and abuse their public duty. Even so, I was upset by the appellate judges’ rationale.
The case was cut-and-dried.
Defendant was a Port Authority police officer who was tried and convicted together with codefendant Sergeant George Compas for crimes arising from their actions in concealing evidence and lying to the authorities following an incident in which a prisoner under their supervision committed suicide in a holding cell at the police station in the Port Authority bus terminal on November 2, 1985.
Defendant Hansen had arrested the prisoner, Leonard Jones, earlier in the day. Jones, who was apparently intoxicated and shouting obscenities at people in the bus station, was told by Hansen to leave the station. A short time later, Jones returned and lunged at Hansen with a knife. After a scuffle in which Hansen punched Jones in the head and Jones fell down a stairway, Officer Hansen arrested Jones and brought him to the Port Authority police station where he was locked in a holding cell.
During the ensuing hours, Hansen completed the requisite paperwork and at one point he took Jones from the cell to another room to be photographed. When he returned Jones to the cell, Hansen did not handcuff him nor did he remove his shoelaces from his high-top sneakers. Later in the day when Hansen went to the cell to take Jones to central booking, he found Jones lifeless, hanging over the cell door by his shoelace. As Hansen brought Jones down, the shoelace snapped. Hansen removed the shoelace and tossed it aside. After the initial rescue efforts of Hansen, Compas, and other police officers, Jones was taken to St. Clare's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Later, Compas went over to the cell "out of curiosity", found the shoelace on the bench, and placed it in his pocket. Hansen was present and saw Compas's actions. They made eye contact but did not say a word to each other.
The patrolman, Hansen, had admitted the facts before a grand jury. There was some wrangling over whether we, the jury, could receive the grand jury records, and once that was resolved, the case was closed, in my view. We spent some time deliberating over whether Hansen had tampered with evidence simply by keeping his mouth shut about what he’d seen. Once that was resolved (yes), we were ready to report our verdict.
The trial was plenty dramatic, though. After failing to revive Leonard Jones, the cops Compas and Hansen called their superior officer at his home. Compas had just taken an internal exam and was freaked that this would screw up his chances for a promotion. So he was lying his ass off to the captain. When the captain testified before us, he was still incensed about it. Maybe even more so because Compas left the phone of the hook after the call and inadvertently recorded himself and the other on-duty cops getting their phony story straight.
The Assistant DA got Hansen to confess after she suggested that the ligature mark on Leonard Jones’ neck matched the leather strap on Hansen’s nightstick. Then Hansen suddenly remembered about the shoelace.
And I thoroughly remember the Assistant DA’s summation. It was passionate, stirring, beautiful to see. However, it didn’t have any effect on the jury’s deliberations, which were entirely about “proper construction of the statute.” On that issue, the appellate court concurred, essentially, with what we non-lawyers figured out in the jury room.
Here’s what pisses me off:
The appellate court judges could see, as clearly as the jurors, that the facts of the case were cut-and-dried. The jury had no choice but to convict.
No choice–unless, of course, we did as expected and put aside the facts in favor of the defense’s case that the cops were really good guys just trying to do their jobs. In other words, we jurors should overturn the case the DA built based on the facts, because juries must support incompetent and dishonest cops just because they are cops.
We considered that, and didn’t do it, because–as we agreed unanimously after deliberating there in the jury room–it would be wrong to do so.
What I remember most clearly, all these years later, is the Assistant DA looking at us earnestly and saying, just as is recited in the appellate court’s decision:
After all, who is Leonard Jones? He is just some skel, so nobody cares about him. So it is OK to cover up what happened to him. So his family has no right to know the circumstances of his death.” “[Defendants] don’t care what right the public has to know about a prisoner’s death in police custody, and [defendants] don’t care about Leonard Jones’ family’s right to know.” “It’s just Leonard Jones, it is just some skel, just some bum from the Port Authority. What difference does it make?
The appellate judges Kupferman, Asch, Rosenberger, Ellerin, and Smith should have known, or maybe did know, that the Assistant DA wasn’t talking just about the cops, she was talking about the whole damned system, including them.
Will the Minnesota appellate judges feel the same way? That even though there is overwhelming factual evidence, the Derek Chauvin jury must have been swayed by an emotional appeal regarding George Floyd’s basic humanity—and therefore didn’t do its presumed duty to put aside facts and exonerate a corrupt and violent cop?
