A judge's assertion that there's no evidence that four girls were traumatized by witnessing George Floyd's murder last year is being challenged by the Minnesota Attorney General's Office, which prosecuted the case.
Attorney General Keith Ellison filed a letter with the court late Wednesday asking Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill to delete portions of a June 25 document he filed in the case outlining his thought process for giving former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin 22 1/2 years in prison for Floyd's murder.
Jurors convicted Chauvin on April 20 of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for killing Floyd on May 25, 2020. Cahill sentenced him on June 25.
Ellison criticized Cahill for apparently dismissing the trauma suffered by the girls; three were 17 and one was 9 at the time.
"The Court should remove or modify the identified portions of the opinion," Ellison wrote in the letter made public Thursday morning. "Doing so will not, in any way, affect Defendant's 22.5 year sentence but will avoid the risk of sending the message that the pain these young women endured is not real or does not matter, or worse, that it's a product of their own decisions and not a consequence of Defendant's."
Ellison wrote that girls were traumatized even if their behavior at the scene did not appear to indicate trauma, which he said is expressed in a variety of ways.
The girls and many other bystanders watched as Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck for 9 1/2 minutes while he begged for his life. Darnella Frazier, who was 17 at the time, recorded the incident on her cellphone and is credited with sparking the criminal case with her video. Her cousin, Judeah Reynolds, was 9 at the time and also witnessed the murder while walking to Cup Foods to buy candy.
After Chauvin's conviction, Ellison's office asked Cahill to review five proposed aggravating factors that would allow the judge to give Chauvin a higher sentence than the approximately 10 1/2 to 15 years in prison recommended by state sentencing guidelines.
Cahill found in late April that there were four aggravating factors: Chauvin abused a position of trust and authority, he treated Floyd with "particular cruelty," Chauvin committed the crime as a group with others and children were present at the time.
However, Cahill wrote in his June 25 sentencing memo that after a second review he found that the presence of children did not present a "substantial and compelling" reason to give Chauvin a higher sentence. Only one aggravating factor is required for a judge to hand down a higher term.
" … None was a victim in the sense of being physically injured or threatened with injury so long as they remained on the sidewalk and did not physically engage or interfere with Mr. Chauvin and his co-defendant officers," Cahill wrote about the girls. " … Mr. Chauvin is correct that these young women were free to leave the scene whenever they wished, were never coerced or forced by him or any of the other officers to remain a captive presence at the scene …"
Chauvin's attorney, Eric Nelson, had previously filed a memo challenging the proposed aggravating factors and argued that the presence of children typically pertains to children who are trapped in a domestic dispute.
"Although the State contends that all four of these young women were traumatized by witnessing this incident, the evidence at trial did not present any objective incident of trauma," Cahill wrote.
The judge wrote that "to the contrary," Frazier and another 17-year-old girl who also recorded the events, Alyssa Funari, "are observed smiling and occasionally even laughing over the course of several minutes." He also noted that Frazier and Reynolds were "observed smiling for several seconds," were later "laughing" as a male witness verbally confronted the officers and "finally" were "observed laughing out loud" after Floyd was loaded into an ambulance.
Frazier, Reynolds, Funari, and Kaylynn Gilbert, who was also 17 at the time, testified at Chauvin's trial. Many of them broke down into tears on the witness stand; at least one testified that she feared for her safety when Chauvin reached for his mace. Frazier testified that she suffered sleepless nights feeling apologetic to Floyd that she couldn't do more to help him.
Ellison asked Cahill to remove the phrases "were free to leave the scene whenever they wished" and "were never coerced or forced by him or any of the other officers to remain a captive presence at the scene" from his memo. He also asked Cahill to remove the footnote in which he described Frazier's, Reynolds' and Funari's behavior.
Ellison also "vehemently" disagreed with Cahill's characterization of the children's demeanor at the scene, noting that they were emotional at trial and that children exhibit and process trauma in different ways.
"The State is deeply worried about the message sent by suggesting that instead of attempting to intervene in order to stop a crime — which children did in this case — children should simply walk away and ignore their moral compass," Ellison wrote. "Children should never be put in this position."
Chao Xiong • 612-270-4708
Twitter: @ChaoStrib
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July 08, 2021 at 11:19PM
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