WALSH: The Chauvin Trial Has Been Exposed As A Ridiculous Sham. Throw Out The Verdict. 

It was apparent from the beginning that Derek Chauvin was not going to be given a fair trial in front of an impartial jury of his peers. If there was ever a trial that should have been moved to a different location, this was the trial. But it was not moved. And if there was ever a jury that should have been sequestered for the duration, this was that jury. But it was not sequestered. Chauvin was being judged by Minneapolis locals, who lived through the protests and riots, and who were leaving the court each night and returning to that same community, likely driving past the angry crowds threatening to burn the city if a guilty verdict wasn’t returned. 

To make matters worse and the trial an even more blatant sham, George Floyd’s alleged drug dealer, who was present at the scene on the day of Floyd’s death, was not required to testify. Most egregiously, there was no mistrial declared after a prominent congresswoman traveled from DC to Minneapolis to demand a guilty verdict in front of a frothing crowd and call for more “confrontation” should the jury fail to give her what she wants. It is hard to imagine how a deck could be more unfairly stacked against a defendant. And that is before we have taken into account the apparent BLM activist who maneuvered his way onto the jury. 

Juror #52, who we now know as Brandon Mitchell, has been all over the media in recent days. He is eager to tell his story and receive the applause he evidently feels entitled to. But the part of his story that he has not been so eager to discuss is his own recent experience as an activist for the BLM cause. As multiple outlets have reported, Mitchell was photographed in August of 2020 after attending a rally in DC. In the picture, he’s wearing a “Black Lives Matter” hat and a t-shirt that says “Get Your Knee Off Our Necks.” If this is impartiality, I’d hate to see what partiality looks like. 

Mitchell now claims that he doesn’t remember wearing the shirt and that he only attended the rally because he’d “never been to DC” and it was an opportunity “to be around thousands and thousands of black people.” He also claimed on his juror questionnaire that he never participated in any protests against police brutality. What about the event in DC? Well, he says that though he attended it in full BLM attire, and it was held in the middle of a summer when protests against alleged police brutality were raging across the country, and it featured speeches from George Floyd’s family members, and there were people holding signs that literally said “Stop Police Brutality,” still somehow the whole thing had nothing to do with police brutality. It was really just a commemoration and celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr, he claims. Anyone with any level of intelligence might feel that it has been insulted by this excuse. 

Yet even if you buy the excuse, you still have Mitchell’s own words to contend with. In an interview with the “Get Up!” morning show, the former juror #52 seems to admit, repeatedly, that he was far from an objective participant in the trial. Straining credulity, he says that he didn’t know much of anything about the case prior to showing up for jury duty. Apparently he suffers from amnesia — at least amnesia about the George Floyd shirt he was pictured wearing — so perhaps this was another flare up. But he also says that he saw a small portion of the video depicting Floyd’s death and that, after seeing it, he “didn’t need to know much else.” Is that the sort of attitude we want from jurors? How impartial can we expect them to be when they’ve seen only a short sampling of the prosecution’s evidence prior to the trial and have already decided that it’s all they need to see?

Later in the interview, Mitchell confesses that he went into the jury selection process cognizant that it was a “historic moment” and a “chance to make history.” As if that wasn’t clear enough, he says that he “knew from the gate what it was, what it could be.” Offering some closing thoughts to wrap up the conversation, Mitchell advocates jury duty as a chance to “get out there and get into these avenues and get into these rooms to try to spark some change.”

To review, Brandon Mitchell, a juror on Derek Chauvin’s murder trial, had previously attended BLM rallies wearing a George Floyd t-shirt and admits that he saw the jury as a “historic” chance to bring about social change. He is an activist who used the jury as a forum to advance his agenda. In other words, this was not a fair trial. Not close. And that would be the case without the BLM activist on the jury. With the activist, it becomes one of the worst shams in the history of the modern American legal system.

The case for a retrial is overwhelming, which does not mean that one will actually be granted. Chauvin was always going to be a sacrificial goat, made to pay not just for his own sins but for the sins of all of white America. New reports suggest that the Justice Department was standing by, ready to arrest Chauvin in the court room and charge him with civil rights violations should he have been acquitted. Even if you think Chauvin is guilty, how does this rise to the level of a federal crime? What evidence is there to support such a charge? Well, evidence only matters if you care about things like truth, fairness, and justice. This case has never had anything to do with any of those things.

The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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