Prosecutors urge rejection of ex-cop’s bid to dismiss civil rights conviction in George Floyd murder

MINNEAPOLIS– Federal prosecutors urged a judge on Friday to reject former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s attempt to overturn his civil rights conviction in the 2020 killing of George Floyd.

Chauvin filed his request in federal court in November, saying new evidence shows he did not cause Floyd’s death and claiming his attorney was given ineffective counsel. He said he would never have pleaded guilty to the charge in 2021 if his attorney had told him about the idea of ​​two doctors, not involved in the case, who theorized that Floyd did not die from Chauvin’s actions, but from complications of his illness. a rare tumor.

Floyd, who was Black, died on May 25, 2020, after Chauvin, who is white, knelt on his neck for 9 1/2 minutes on the street outside a convenience store where Floyd tried to pass a counterfeit $20 bill. Bystander video captured Floyd’s fading cries: “I can’t breathe.” Floyd’s death sparked protests worldwide, some of which turned violent, and forced a national reckoning with police brutality and racism.

Chauvin asked U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson, who presided over the federal case, to throw out his conviction and order a new trial, or at least an evidentiary hearing. Chauvin filed the motion from jail without an attorney.

In a response filed Friday, attorneys from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division urged Magnuson to deny the request without a hearing.

They pointed out that Chauvin knowingly waived his right to appeal when he changed his plea to guilty. And they said he failed to show that his attorney’s performance was flawed, even if the outside doctors had contacted him and even if the attorney had not told Chauvin. They said the evidence showed Chauvin caused Floyd’s death.

“Defendant’s claims that counsel failed to raise are without merit, and counsel cannot be ineffective by failing to raise unsubstantiated claims,” they wrote.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Chauvin’s appeal of his state murder conviction in November, a few days after Chauvin filed his motion to overturn his federal conviction. He is recovering from a 22-fold stabbing by a fellow inmate at the federal prison in Tucson, Arizona, in late November. He is serving his 20-year federal civil rights sentence and 22 1/2-year state murder sentence concurrently.