A Fair Trial... Jury Impartiality in the Modern Age by Taio Kong and Hasan Fatiwala

"Two students currently studying A-Levels, having just finished the first year, aspiring to do Law at university with interests in both criminal law and commercial law."

The past year has seen the rise of intense demonstrations all around the world ultimately named as part of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. Regarded as the spark of these protests, on the 25th of May 2020 Minneapolis Police Department detained George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man accused of buying cigarettes with a ‘counterfeit’ $20 bill. Derek Chauvin, one of the police officers who was tasked with detaining Floyd, kept his knee on his neck for around nine minutes resulting in unconsciousness and ultimately the death of George Floyd. On April 20th 2021 Mr. Chauvin was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. The case was heavily publicised with a lot of media coverage and many agreed Derek Chauvin received a fair trial yet some argue, due to the heavy media coverage, the trial was ‘influenced’.

But why must a trial be fair? The right to a fair trial is recognised on an international scale, in this case in the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is also part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, further adding to its value and importance. A fair trial is the only plausible way to prevent any miscarriage of ‘justice’ with every accused having their innocence or guilt determed through a fair and impartial legal process. Though this begs the question as to what ‘justice’ actually means. Justice acts as an abstract concept deciding whether an act is right or wrong, whilst providing the idea of people receiving what they deserve - though this can vary on a cultural or religious basis. Victims can feel a sense of ‘justice’ if they see their attacker/ assailant receiving adequate punishment. Taking this into account, in the absence of a fair trial, victims may lack the confidence that justice will be served leading to a collapse of trust in the government as well as the principle rule of law. Choosing the trial of the State v Derek Chauvin as the title of this blog post was a patent decision, considering it’s high-profile nature and general media recognition. It was pertinent to analyse the proceedings of a case so pivotal in order to ensure that in the current day, trials are still held to ensure full fairness and maintain public trust.

There is no such formal definition of a ‘fair trial’ yet many legal experts will agree to certain requirements that determine a legal trial. One of these elements is the rights guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment of which the ‘right to an impartial jury and speedy public trial’ can be considered crucial. In Chauvin’s trial it can be argued that due to the heavy publicity surrounding the crime and the formation of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement it was impossible to have jurors who did not have an opinion before the trial. This was seen with one of the jurors; Brandon Mitchell who did not provide information of his participation in a rally to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have dream speech”. The rally was after Floyd’s death attended by his family and a photograph of Mitchell can be seen wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt. On this basis Chauvin’s lawyer Eric Nelson filed a motion on the grounds of “prosecutorial and jury misconduct”, to an extent this shows how a ‘completely’ fair trial was not conducted with the photograph being evidence for Chauvin not receiving his right to a fair trial. 

As previously mentioned, both the crime and the trial itself received soaring levels of media attention with articles such as the CNN claiming that ‘the Derek Chauvin trial is the biggest courtroom case of the streaming TV age’. The media portrayal provoked emotions to run wild within the public with many taking to social media sites proclaiming their views on racism and that it still takes place in society today at a much higher degree than what people anticipate it to be. One individual claimed that as an immigrant living in America he ‘didn’t realise till later that deep rooted racism would be one of the obstacles I would have to face in the country.’ This is also combined with the popular view that the police are inherently ‘bad people’ with people even classifying policemen as ‘good cops’ and ‘bad cops’. Such emotions had led to almost the entirety of the public already deciding the verdict that Mr. Chauvin was guilty of all charges that were thrown against him. Such pressure on the jury and the judge of the case can almost seemingly bias them towards the guilty decision in fear of provoking something far worse than the previous demonstrations to occur after the trial is concluded. They were fully aware of the uproar that could ensue, where their names could be leaked and the safety compromised. This was further emphasised with Derek Chauvin’s defence witness having his former home vandalised with pig’s blood smeared all over the front of his house and the words ‘Oink, Oink’ written on a sign that was also left behind. Police claimed that ‘the suspects in this vandalism were targeting Mr. Brodd (the defence witness) for his testimony.’

Despite the high-profile nature of this case, Judge Peter Cahill spent more time in selecting the jurors by picking them from a larger pool of “326 people”. “The judge, prosecution and defence spent about two weeks whittling the pool down to a dozen jurors and three alternates, using questionnaires and interviews to determine who would hear the case”. This suggests Judge Cahill attempted to make the trial as fair as possible because the defence attorneys were also given fifteen peremptory strikes from the typical five and not even one strike was used. Ron Sullivan, a Harvard Professor said; “the judge bent over backwards to give the defence more opportunities to exclude potentially bad jurors even if the juror didn’t meet the technical criteria for a challenge”. This further reinforces the advantage the defence had which was not used thus implying a ‘fair’ trial. Moreover, the jurors during the case were escorted from a secure car park to their homes to prevent interactions with the media and were fully supervised inside the courthouse to prevent any misconduct occurring. The jury were able to go home at night which raised questions as to why they were not fully sequestered from the start of the trial, one reason for this may be that jury sequestration would not have been effective due to media presence in the case before the trial even started. Ultimately, during the deliberation period the judge did sequester the jury at an undisclosed hotel telling them to “disregard anything you may have heard or seen elsewhere about this case”. All of this together suggests Chauvin did in fact receive a clean fair trial and his right to an impartial jury. 

It is important to highlight that we do not believe that Derek Chauvin was innocent for the charges he was convicted of. We strongly agree that he is guilty of the crimes he committed resulting in the death of George Floyd. When considering the nature of the trial and as to whether it was indeed fair, we also believe so. Though there are many views that could suggest otherwise, it is in the best interest of the United States that government officials follow fair procedures before depriving a person of their life, liberty or property as part of the procedural due process legal doctrine. It is required by the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Additionally, Judge Cahill ensured to give the defence more advantage when deciding the jurors as they were given fifteen peremptory strikes, ten more than usual, implying the leverage they received. When picking the jury many interviews were performed to ensure no racially biased jury was created with six of the jurors white, four black and two multi racial. Seven of the jurors were women and five were men suggesting all together a neutral jury. All of these factors together suggest Derek Chauvin did receive a fair trial. 

Sources:

• Rouan Rick, ‘The claim: Derek Chauvin did not get a fair trial for the killing of George Floyd’ (USA  Today)<https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/04/21/did-derek-chauvin-receive-fair-trial-killing-george-floyd/7324749002/> accessed 7th November 2021
• Sabur Rozina, ‘Derek Chauvin's lawyer requests retrial after claiming former officer did not receive fair hearing, (The Telegraph, 4th May 2021)<https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/04/juror-derek-chauvin-trial-defends-attending-protest-amid-speculation/> accessed 7th November 2021=
• Evan Hill, 'How George Floyd Was Killed in Police Custody' (New York Times, 31st May 2020)<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/george-floyd-investigation.html > accessed 5th November 2021
• CNN, 'The Derek Chauvin trial is the biggest courtroom case of the streaming TV age' (CNN Business, 29 March 2021) <https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/28/media/derek-chauvin-trial-reliable-sources/index.html> accessed 7 November 2021
• Bicviews, 'As a Haitian immigrant In America I believe that anything is achievable as long as you work hard and never give But I didn’t realize till later that deep rooted racism would be one of the obstacles I would have to face in the country' (Twitter, 1 July 2020) <https://twitter.com/bicviews/status/1278109423794368513> accessed 7 November 2021
• Daily Beast, 'Severed Pig’s Head Left Outside Former Home of Chauvin Defense Witness' (The Daily Beast, 18 April 2021) <https://www.thedailybeast.com/severed-pigs-head-left-outside-former-home-of-derek-chauvin-defense-witness-in-george-floyd-trial>accessed 7 November 2021

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