Chauvin judge declines state's request to revise memo about young eyewitnesses to Floyd's murder

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://www.startribune.com/chauvin-judge-declines-state-s-request-to-revise-memo-about-young-eyewitnesses-to-floyd-s-murder/600077621/

The Hennepin County judge who oversaw the trial of ex-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd rebuffed on Tuesday the state's request to delete comments from his sentencing memorandum about whether four young eyewitnesses were traumatized at the murder scene.

Judge Peter Cahill opened his 10-page response by saying he no longer has jurisdiction over the Chauvin case, having sentenced him last month to 22½ years for Floyd's murder. But the judge wrote that the "tone and substance" of the letter from Attorney General Keith Ellison's office "necessitate a response."

The judge said the state "misperceives" what should be its focus: Chauvin's conduct toward Floyd on May 25, 2020, that resulted in convictions of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. Cahill also noted that he "neither found nor wrote" that the four minor girls who witnessed Floyd's murder "were not traumatized. What the court wrote is that 'the evidence at trial did not present any objective indicia of trauma.'?"

Last week, Ellison's office filed a letter asking Cahill to delete portions of his sentencing memorandum. The attorney general criticized Cahill for apparently dismissing the trauma endured by the four.

This stems from Ellison's request for a longer sentence; he cited the presence of kids as one of the four factors that necessitated a prison term longer than the state guidelines. Cahill agreed on the other three, but not this one, because, as he said in his sentencing memo, Darnella Frazier and Alyssa Funari "are observed smiling and occasionally even laughing over the course of several minutes."

[WhiskeyGrinder]

1. Kick.