Steve Karnowski, Associated Press Published Monday, April 11, 2022, 8:45 PM EDT Last Updated on Monday, April 11, 2022, 10:38 PM EDT
MINEAPOLIS (AP) – Prosecutors revealed on Monday night that they had offered deals to plead guilty to three former Minneapolis police officers accused of aiding and abetting the murder of George Floyd, but said at a hearing that the defendants had rejected them.
Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill held the hearing mainly to assess whether he has the authority to allow live video coverage of the upcoming trial, which will begin in June for former officers Tu Tao, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Queng. They are accused of aiding and abetting both manslaughter and murder when former officer Derek Chauvin used his knee to nail Floyd, a black man, to the sidewalk for 9 1/2 minutes on May 25, 2020. Queng knelt on Floyd’s back, Lane holding his legs and Tao holding passers-by back.
Leading prosecutor Matthew Frank did not disclose details of the motions for a guilty plea in open court, but said they were identical and were made on March 22 after a jury convicted the three in a separate trial in February on federal civil rights charges stemming from Floyd’s death, according to pool court reports.
Lane’s lawyer, Earl Gray, said it was difficult for the defense to negotiate when the three still did not know what their federal sentences would be. The judge in this case has not set a date for the verdict and the three remain on bail.
Cahill told Frank to submit the bids for the minutes after the jury sat down for the upcoming trial, which is expected to take about eight weeks, including three to select a jury.
Cahill took the rare step of allowing live audiovisual coverage of the Chauvin murder trial last year, by making an exception to the normal rules of Minnesota courts. He cited the mitigating circumstance of the need to balance the protection of COVID-19 participants against the constitutional requirement of a public trial.
Now that the United States is entering a new phase of life with the coronavirus, Cahill must decide whether to allow the same type of access to the trial against Tao, Lane and Queng. He did not comment during their preliminary hearing and said he would not do so until the Minnesota Judicial Council, made up of leading judges and court administrators, met Thursday to discuss the issue.
Lawyer Leita Walker, who represents a coalition of media organizations, including the Associated Press, called on Cahill to allow video coverage again, saying it was the most sensible way to make the process available to the public and the media. She said the public should watch the trial against Chauvin and that interest remained high because both included Floyd’s death. The murder, which was recorded on video, sparked protests around the world and a national account of race.
“The public just won’t understand why they have to watch this hammer, and they won’t be able to watch this one,” Walker said.
But Cahill questioned Walker’s claims that he had a right to make another exception and that the pandemic was still a mitigating circumstance.
“COVID-19 is now less of a pandemic and more of an endemic problem,” Cahill said.
Cahill noted that while he had publicly said he now believed the legal presumption should be to allow television trials, he said that was not the rule. “I still swore to obey the law,” he said.
Defense attorneys said they still oppose audiovisual coverage of the upcoming trial and reiterated concerns about witnesses’ willingness to testify.
Minnesota court rules usually require the consent of all parties to audiovisually cover trials, with fewer restrictions on sentencing. The trial against Chauvin was the first in Minnesota to be entirely televised, from the selection of jurors to his conviction for murder to his sentence of 22 1/2 years in prison. People from all over the world took part in the live broadcasts.
“I think the live broadcast of this test gave people here and around the world the insight into a system that handled one of the most important tests of our time,” said Suki Dardaryan, senior managing editor and vice president of Star Tribune. of Minneapolis, which is part of the media coalition, said before the hearing.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office initially opposed the presence of cameras in court for the Chauvin trial, but now supports them for the upcoming trial of other officials.
“The Schoven trial demonstrates the benefits of stable public access to this important case and has shown that the Court can successfully address the concerns by stimulating the state’s initial opposition to audio and video coverage,” prosecutors wrote last week. “The Court’s laudable transparency has inspired public confidence in the proceedings and helped ensure peace in Minneapolis and across the country.
Due to federal court rules, live video coverage was not allowed for the first trial against Tao, Lane and Queng this year, when all three were convicted of violating Floyd’s civil rights. Chauvin’s federal case, in which he pleaded guilty to civil rights violations, was also not resolved. But that was allowed in the December trial in the state court against the former employee of the center in Brooklyn Kim Potter for the death of Down Wright, who was killed a year ago on Monday.
An advisory committee to the Minnesota Supreme Court is considering allowing more video coverage of criminal proceedings. The report must be published by July 1.
Cahill, in a letter to the commission, said he had opposed the cameras in criminal cases before, but that his experience in Chauvin’s case had changed his mind and he now believed they should be resolved presumably at the discretion of the judge.
Hennep County Judge Regina Chu, who presided over the Potter trial, told the Star Tribune in an interview that both the Potter and Chauvin trials convinced her that the cameras could be present without interference.
“I forgot they were even there,” Chu told the newspaper.
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