Comments that Rep. Maxine Waters made shortly before a Minneapolis jury convicted Derek Chauvin of murdering George Floyd may help the former police officer in an appeal.
Waters, speaking to reporters over the weekend, said that protesters should “stay on the street” and “get more confrontational” if Chauvin were acquitted. The comments from the California Democrat provoked widespread controversy at the time, as well as a rebuke from Peter Cahill, the judge in the case.
MINNESOTA DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS RELEASES BOOKING PHOTO OF CHAUVIN POST-TRIAL
“I’ll give you that Congresswoman Waters may have given you something on appeal that may result in this whole trial being overturned,” Cahill on Monday told Eric Nelson, one of Chauvin’s defense attorneys.
The defense on Monday submitted a motion for a mistrial, citing Waters’s comments as potential jury intimidation. President Joe Biden that same day said he was “praying that verdict is the right verdict,” a remark that also drew criticism from many people watching the trial.
And when the jury delivered a guilty verdict, many critics of the decision pointed again to Waters’s and Biden’s comments, saying that they could become evidence of jury intimidation.
“Joe Biden decides that Maxine Waters shouldn’t be the only politician foolishly providing grounds for a mistrial or a possible basis on appeal to challenge any guilty conviction,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted on Tuesday.
Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor who served as a legal adviser to former President Donald Trump, also weighed in on Tuesday, telling Newsmax that the verdict should “be reversed on appeal” because of “threats” from Waters and others.
“The judge himself said this case may be reversed on appeal,” Dershowitz said. “And I think it might be reversed on appeal. I think it should be reversed on appeal.”
Dershowitz accused Waters of using tactics similar to the Ku Klux Klan, saying that the white supremacist group at its height in the 1920s would stand outside of courthouses to intimidate juries. What happened in the Chauvin trial was roughly similar, he added.
“I have no real confidence that this verdict, which may be correct in some ways, but I have no confidence that this verdict was produced by due process and the rule of law rather than the influence of the crowd,” he said.
Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, writing in the New York Post on Tuesday, offered a similar perspective, writing that “Waters’ inflammatory language offered Chauvin grounds for appeal.”
“Because of her, this isn’t over,” he wrote.
McCarthy added that Waters “checked every box” to qualify for jury intimidation. Waters left Washington, D.C., to speak at a rally in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. She violated that city’s curfew when giving her remarks. And those remarks, especially when taken in the context of the riots that erupted last year after Floyd’s death, could be interpreted as incitement to violence.
“Her remarks can only be interpreted as an incitement to violence — one less ambiguously provocative than the one over which she and other House Democrats impeached Trump,” McCarthy wrote.
Cahill on Monday said that Waters’s comments over the weekend were “disrespectful to the rule of law and to the judicial branch and our function.” At the same time, however, he cautioned people following the trial that he did not think they would prejudice the jury because “a congresswoman’s opinion really doesn’t matter a whole lot.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The White House on Tuesday defended Biden’s comments, saying that the president had waited to weigh until the jury was sequestered.
“I don’t think he would see it as weighing in on the verdict,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said. “He also noted, the jury is sequestered.”
