Derek Chauvin has been found guilty on all three of the murder charges he faced in the death of George "Dante" Wright. Megyn and her team discuss why they think the process was manipulated by the media, politicians, and the court system itself.
00:32:00.740The American Law Institute has said that.
00:32:03.040And Minnesota should follow that law, that you cannot have felony murder based on an assault,
00:32:08.780which is so in degree related to the death itself that it's not an independent felony.
00:32:14.200Well, I think I agree with you that they did get the causation evidence they needed for a conviction and instruction and jury instruction saying it didn't have hit the knee on the neck or the back, which it was both, did not have to be the sole cause of George Floyd's death.
00:32:29.480And that was that was very key to causation.
00:32:31.900And I agree that the case was overcharged and that the jury was under massive pressure, especially just given how horrific the tape looked to come to, quote, the right, you know, right in quotes, decision to appease their their the people who they live next to their town to save the businesses, to save their homes.
00:32:50.380And that's one of the reasons why it should have been moved.
00:32:52.320But although but let me just ask you, because the argument on the other side is, where could you have moved it that a group of jurors would not have been aware of the tape of the George Floyd protests, of the massive riots, the Black Lives Matter eruptions that we had over the summer, all as a result of this case?
00:33:15.520So might as well just leave it in the town in which it happened.
00:33:18.460No, because the town in which it happened is the town in which the demonstrations, the riots, the violence and the burning would occur.
00:33:25.280If you moved it to a more rural area and you postponed it six months, the passions would have abated somewhat.
00:33:33.220It would have been harder to bring large crowds right outside the courtroom.
00:33:37.460The threats wouldn't have been as immediate to where the jurors live and where they are located.
00:33:43.360You'd never get a perfect jury in a case like this.
00:33:45.620That's why you have to aim not for perfection, but for improvement.
00:33:49.780That's why sequestering the jury was so important.
00:33:52.980And the combination of an anonymous jury telling the jury you have something to worry about, coupled with non sequestration, was, I think, a deadly combination for due process and justice in this case, which is why I think a court should seriously consider whether the trial judge erred, particularly in not sequestering the jury.
00:34:13.700In almost every other case that I know of like this, juries are sequestered.
00:34:18.760Now, it's difficult to sequester a jury.
00:34:40.640And when you have a jury being told that if they come to the correct verdict, manslaughter, there will be riots in the street and it will be their fault.
00:40:15.960And will the argument on getting to, you know, gross negligence to the point of recklessness and getting into manslaughter be she should have realized at some point you have to touch your gun.
00:40:26.540You have to realize there's a difference between the feel of a taser and a gun.
00:40:29.940You presumably had to let the safety, release the safety on the gun.
00:40:34.400I don't know, actually, to tell you the truth, what she had to do to fire.
00:40:36.900But won't that be the argument that it was grossly negligent to the point of recklessness for her to not understand that the weapon in her hand that she was firing repeatedly was, in fact, a firearm?
00:40:46.940That's not the criteria under a manslaughter statute.
00:40:50.220She has to have known, known that what she was doing was reckless.
00:40:55.280If she honestly believed that she was firing a taser and that the firing of a taser was legitimate under the circumstances to stop a fleeing felon, then that's not manslaughter.
00:41:08.020You can't have manslaughter for a mere, mere accident.
00:42:01.080She should have been suspended from the police force.
00:42:03.140She should be required to have extensive training before she's allowed to use a gun again to make sure she never makes a mistake like that again.
00:42:11.460But what she did is simply not criminal.
00:42:14.300I've heard some people, some libertarians I respect, say in the wake of these shootings we've seen, you know, do the cops really need to be arresting so many people?
00:42:26.720Do they need to arrest the guy who passed a $20 counterfeit bill, which is what George Floyd was accused of doing?
00:42:33.980Do they need to, you know, pull over the 20 year old guy who Kim Potter shot, who, you know, may have had some minor violations, at least when they pulled him over.
00:42:47.800We've seen like there was a famous clip of a CVS clerk getting shamed for calling the cops on two black shoplifters.
00:42:56.300A woman taped him, shaming him, saying, how dare you?
00:42:59.220You're putting their lives at risk by calling the police on these shoplifters.
00:43:03.580Meanwhile, it's like some low level clerk who's just trying to follow CBS policy.
00:43:06.580But what do you make of this growing push of like the responsibility now is on people not to report these lower level crimes and or on police not to arrest folks for committing them?
00:43:20.260Well, for 50 years, maybe 60, I've been pushing for decriminalization and for not arresting people for minor crimes.
00:43:27.120It's obviously George Floyd should never have been arrested.
00:43:29.760He should have been given a ticket and should have been told he has to show up at at court in a month from now, taking his address, taking his I.D.
00:43:37.820The same thing should have happened for the guy who was stopped for having an air freshener in the back of his car or whatever the reason was.
00:45:01.640So, yes, all these reforms are necessary.
00:45:04.160And people like Chauvin should never be on any police force in the United States.
00:45:10.940But there's a big difference between moral guilt and criminal guilt and a big difference between manslaughter guilt and murder guilt.
00:45:18.620And for our criminal justice system to remain the rule of law, we have to make those calibrated differences and not allow outside pressures to be brought into the courtroom.
00:45:29.780You know, criminal defense lawyers always say, if you throw a skunk in the jury box, you can take the skunk out, but you can't remove the smell.
00:45:36.880The air of violence was in that jury room.
00:45:40.900The jury could not escape the fact that they had to know, the president knew, the mayors knew, everybody knew, that if they convicted on anything less than murder,
00:45:50.540they would be causing violence that could come back and affect them, their families, their children, their friends and their businesses.
00:45:58.020That's not the way criminal justice should operate.
00:46:02.060And that dynamic is indeed the fault of these politicians who use these cases to try to gin up resentments for various reasons.
00:46:10.760And it must be said, the media, which runs these tapes on loop as representative of, in this instance, cops writ large in a way that's very misrepresentative of what actually happens on the street with no with impunity.
00:46:25.560Let me tell you, I watched this trial alternately on CNN and Court TV.
00:46:31.480It was like you were watching two different trials.
00:48:29.580He was good the first time Court TV was on, and he's still good.
00:48:32.420And they had some great reporting from the ground there, and I did think it was very fair.
00:48:36.280It was right down the middle, and that's hard to do in a case that's this charged.
00:48:40.940Now, I realize Court TV has got like four viewers, and you and I are two of them, but they did a good job.
00:48:46.860And if you are committed to being fair, it's actually not that hard.
00:48:51.480Well, it's hard if you want to sell soap today.
00:48:53.460And obviously, the networks have made a decision that they don't want to sell their advertising by having fair, neutral assessment because everybody belongs in a silo today, and they want to appeal to the silo.
00:49:09.460They want to appeal to people who want a particular outcome, and that's why CNN has generally been wrong in making predictions about outcomes of cases.
00:49:18.280They were right about this one, but they've been wrong about many, many others because they substitute wishful thinking for careful, objective analysis.
00:49:25.560Mm-hmm, and we do see it on the right, too.
00:49:28.080Certainly, I mean, I've certainly been listening to certain podcasts and others predicting there's no way he could be convicted.
00:49:33.280This is a very uphill battle for the prosecution.
00:49:35.480And I know you and I have been on the same page saying, no, not really.
00:49:40.320This is actually a pretty decent manslaughter conviction, and we've both had reservations about murder, too, but could see it happening.
00:49:46.200Indeed, it has, and now it's where I guess it needs to be, which is in the hands of the appellate courts, or soon will be, who will make a hopefully more reasoned, cooler-headed decision about whether that charge belonged in this case to begin with.
00:50:02.100Alan Dershowitz, I'm so, so grateful to have you in my life on this podcast, and as an advisor, I treasure our conversations.
00:50:13.020You are a real beacon of light in a very, very dark world, and so please keep telling everybody the truth and keep doing what you're doing.
00:50:24.900Our thanks to Professor Alan Dershowitz, and up next, our legal dream team, Mark Eiglarsh and Arthur Aydala.
00:50:42.340It was a little nauseating watching TV last night, but, you know, all of a sudden, George Floyd is the greatest hero that's ever walked the planet Earth.
00:51:21.780Why must we hold up people who find themselves in these situations and lionize them as though there's in any way representative of the black community?
00:51:51.420You're a part of George Floyd's legacy and you need to honor him.
00:51:55.580Listen, you know who I honored last night?
00:51:57.260I left my office in Midtown Manhattan late last night and there was literally two police officers on every corner of Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
00:52:05.260And I honored every one of those police officers.
00:52:57.420I think that they could make the finding that when he continued to kneel on his neck, he was committing an assault and he was clearly the substantial cause of that death.
00:53:08.960And, Megan, I you know, the question is why?
00:53:11.420You know, I had this discussion with my 14 year old son.
00:53:13.620Well, dad, do you think that he meant to kill him?
00:54:40.740And, you know, they kicked off the trial with an argument the lawyers did, really, about whether the bystanders were heroes or zeros to take a page out of Mark's Mark's book.
00:54:50.660And not to blame them at all, but I do think that the crowd was ultimately not a force for good.
00:54:56.980Yes, having the videotape probably changed the outcome of this.
00:55:00.340I don't think we would have seen a conviction of Derek Chauvin without that tape.
00:55:04.080But I also think having them there shouting at him and upping the ante and creating more tension on the scene ultimately proved very dangerous and very detrimental for George Floyd.
00:55:50.560I would like to think that if you have all of those witnesses, including a nine-year-old girl, if they could validate her ability to testify, you know, you have eight people, nine people testifying.
00:56:03.000An EMS worker, a woman who actually did testify, if they're all going in front of a jury saying, you know, I don't know how long it was exactly, but it was forever.
00:57:01.700I don't think there would have been a conviction without the tape.
00:57:03.800And so and I do not mean to blame the crowd.
00:57:06.200I'm just talking about the dynamic, the realistic dynamic of how police react when confronted with angry mobs, even whether the whether the anger is justifiable or not.
00:57:17.080And then I do think there was ego involved in there.
00:57:51.060In other words, there's four minutes where George Floyd is struggling.
00:57:53.680And then there's four minutes where he's absolutely motionless.
00:57:56.480And I think that's the four minutes that it goes from being a reasonable police officer acting reasonably under the circumstances to he now,
00:58:08.720And now it's just a straight up assault.
00:58:10.500He's straight up just hurting someone.
00:58:12.520I think from a legal legal point of view, the murder three, which was the charge that the trial judge threw out because he said that's not applicable here.
00:58:20.680And then the appellate court basically shoved back down his throat is the one that's a little bit more sketchy because the typical example of that is someone driving a car into Times Square on New Year's Eve.
00:58:33.420It's supposed to be something even though you're not trying to kill an individual, you know, it could cause the death of another.
00:58:39.560That's why the trial judge said, no, this isn't a murder three case.
00:58:43.420But the appellate court said, no, we allowed it to be used against another police officer.
00:58:47.340So you have to allow it to be used against this.
00:58:49.420Well, that's why they're not that if you're Eric Nelson, you're not feeling real good about appealing your murder three conviction because the appellate court has already said, yep, that charge applies here.
00:58:57.920And so now that the jury has said and he's guilty of it, I feel like they have the lowest chance of reversing the conviction on that.
00:59:05.780You know, they're there with his main grounds.
00:59:07.960You tell me, I think it's going to be the it's going to be you didn't sequester the jury.
00:59:12.720You had loudmouths like Maxine Waters coming out there, you know, basically suggesting that there should and would be violence if the jury didn't come to what she viewed as the right decision.
00:59:21.980And that he he was unfairly prejudiced as a result of all that.
00:59:28.360I mean, their best argument is that right, that you you equate it to the Tsarnaev, I can't pronounce his name, but the Boston bombing case where a federal appeals court overturned the dead sentence ruling that there was just an avalanche of pretrial publicity and the judge didn't do what he was supposed to.
00:59:46.260You know, jurors are allowed to to be exposed prior to the jury trial beginning to an avalanche of pretrial publicity.
00:59:54.520They can even have publicity in their faces, people with pitchforks outside.
00:59:59.440But if their decision is made exclusively based upon the evidence that Lord knows with that video, there's enough for the appellate court to say, yeah, they made it based upon the evidence.
01:00:10.920I think I think it's got to be more like a Bill Cosby situation where a judge let in so much evidence that is very questionable about whether it's evidence that should have been heard here.
01:00:33.420That's the evidence like you're not supposed to bring in prior bad acts unless they're under certain circumstances, right, specific circumstances.
01:00:41.220So, you know, I didn't watch every second of the trial, but I did see a lot of it.
01:00:46.620And I thought Judge Cahill, I think he did a very good job.
01:00:50.340I think he was he set a good example for the country of what a judge should be, how a judge should interfere when the judge should back off.
01:00:57.120He basically let both sides try their case.
01:00:59.280I was surprised, Mark, by the lack of objections on both sides.
01:01:23.300So I know in your numerous hours on TV and radio that you've spoken about murder cases where you've told people, look, premeditation, for example, can be formed in an instant.
01:01:35.420Where somebody maybe didn't want to kill someone.
01:01:37.860But then in a second they go, you know, I'm going to reach over there for that gun and I'm going to walk across the house maybe and get that that knife.
01:01:44.200And I'm going to now going to kill someone.
01:02:17.200And if it's not, you are committing an assault on this man.
01:02:20.240And in doing so, no, I know I appreciate that perspective, but I think there was evidence and I accept the jury's verdict.
01:02:28.160I'm I don't like when people you're allowed to have your thoughts about the jury's verdict, but I don't like when people disparage the jury as being dishonest or whatever.
01:02:39.120So I accept their verdict, but I just have questions with that charge because I do think there was enough evidence to show that Derek Chauvin, even in those last four minutes, was not intending to hurt George Floyd.
01:02:51.320That that he had a guy who had been resisting arrest.
01:02:54.660He had a guy who was much, much larger than he than he was.
01:02:57.800He had a guy who was kicking even once he was down on the ground, a position that he had requested the police place him in.
01:03:03.880He had a crowd that he didn't trust, yelling him things about the man who was under his knee.
01:03:08.200He had a somewhat chaotic situation and he knew that the EMTs were about to get there.
01:03:12.880I think you can make a reasonable case that it was not an intent to hurt him in those last few minutes.
01:03:18.780It was an intent to keep the situation stable until medical professionals got on scene.
01:03:27.280I mean, I think he look, you know, I know it sounds crazy for me to say this, but in my eyes, that guy's a little bit of a hero, Eric Nelson.
01:03:35.000That was not a cool job to have in the United States of America the last month.
01:03:51.300They called in all of these private practitioners to come in and help the whole office against Eric Nelson, where the evidence is overwhelming anyway.
01:04:13.120Let me ask you guys this, because you've both been on both sides of it, criminal prosecutors and defense attorneys.
01:04:18.940What do you think the odds are that right from the get go, Eric Nelson and Derek Chauvin had a conversation in which they agreed, dude, your goose is cooked.
01:04:29.320But this is a huge, huge uphill battle.
01:04:32.720Well, well, well, that's that's evidenced by the fact that he went over to the prosecutor and said, we'll plead guilty to I heard I think was Trace Gallagher say it was to the third degree murder.
01:04:43.300So, of course, you don't have three days, three days after it happened, three days after it happened.
01:04:48.800He said, I'll do 10 years in jail, but I want you to get me transferred to a federal prison, which is almost impossible.
01:04:56.000I want you to get me transferred to a federal prison where I could do my time, at least live through it.
01:05:02.080And what I read yesterday in the paper was that Attorney General William Barr said, no, we're not going to house him in a federal prison.
01:08:25.880But number two, they don't get enough paid enough money to raise a family.
01:08:28.940They should have higher educational standards.
01:08:31.580He said they are lowering the standards because they can't recruit enough people.
01:08:34.880And thirdly, and most importantly, the way lawyers have to do continuing legal education training every year.
01:08:41.500He said police officers should have to do continuing training every year with new techniques, using the new technology to try to protect and serve to the best way they can.
01:08:51.120They need more money, not less money, right?
01:08:54.220The more you take money from the police, it's not like they say, all right, let's turn in our guns, right?
01:09:55.000It stands for the proposition that there is a strong likelihood that when there's a video of the entire crime being committed, that that likely the person, the cop may get convicted.
01:10:12.320The video, the video in and of itself, the video in and of itself really illustrates and brings to reality in the forefront that these things do happen.
01:10:32.800The next cop who goes on trial, people will think, hey, the way Chauvin did this horrible thing, that maybe this cop who I'm judging did a horrible thing as well.
01:11:06.940But the video, I think, for a decent officer is their friend.
01:11:11.380And that's that's what we're seeing in this case out of Columbus, Ohio, with this this young woman, 15 year old Micaiah Bryant, who we're being told by people like Ben Crump was unarmed and shot by cops.
01:11:23.100And the cops went out yesterday and released the slow frame by frame.
01:11:29.660And you very clearly see a knife in Micaiah Bryant's hand as she tries to attack another young woman, at which point the police officer fired.
01:11:38.700I'm in favor of more body cams, more evidence, more visuals.
01:11:42.960If you're a bad cop, you shouldn't you shouldn't worry about that.
01:12:23.660We have seen Rodney King, Abner Louima, Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Laquan McDonald, Stefan Clark, Atiana Jefferson, Anton Black, Brianna Taylor, and now Dante Wright and Adam Toledo.
01:12:43.720Well, this has to end the work of our generation is to put an end to the vestiges of Jim Crow and the centuries of trauma and finally put an end to racism.
01:13:00.580Ten million arrests a year by the cops.
01:13:03.260At best, a thousand people killed a year by police, the vast, vast majority of whom are armed, are armed.
01:13:09.340Only a handful of unarmed defendants lose their lives to police officers.
01:13:15.260And the number last year was 14 of those were black.
01:13:18.380To suggest and to list Michael Brown and Freddie Gray as examples of how how bad the system is and how it all needs to be reformed, that he's a dishonest broker and no one in the mainstream media will call him out on it.
01:13:33.820Hmm. Well, well, Alan Dershowitz said he was going to resign from the Democratic Party if he was if he was elected the head of the National Democratic Party.
01:13:41.860So Alan's been been complaining about this guy forever.
01:13:46.180And it was the last thing he mentioned.
01:13:48.020Was that the 13 year old in Chicago who was killed last week?
01:13:53.840But, you know, how about we have a conversation about we have a conversation about number one, why is a 13 year old out in the streets at three o'clock in the morning?
01:14:02.300Can we start there and then let's take this huge leap?
01:14:05.620Why is a 13 year old at three o'clock in the morning out with a gun?
01:14:08.880I mean, can we reverse and start at the beginning?
01:14:13.240Why is this child not being supervised?
01:14:15.040He's a child and a child who shouldn't be dead.
01:14:17.880But you know what? If he was home in bed sleeping as he should have been, he'd be alive and going to school.
01:14:22.900And Dante Wright, Dante Wright is the one who was shot accidentally by this police officer, Kim Potter, who's now been charged with manslaughter.
01:14:31.960In all these cases, they push a race narrative when there's zero evidence that any that Kim Potter's accident was because of the race of Dante Wright or that race played any role.
01:14:42.600In most of those cases, there's zero evidence of that.
01:14:45.340And in some of those cases, like Michael Brown and Freddie Gray, you had exonerations by either jurors or attorney generals or other finders of fact who were black.
01:15:06.720You know, if you're a if you're a black mother and you've got a black child, whether they're out and they shouldn't be out in the street or not, there is a number of injustices occurring.
01:15:19.200And I'm going to give him a little bit more leeway than you guys are because of the pain and the suffering and because we know racism is still alive.
01:15:25.960And we know that while it might be a small percentage, as you suggest, it's still alive and well.
01:15:31.820And I understand the thought behind what he was saying.
01:15:36.620I think it's exploitative and it's just it's deliberately deceptive because that's the way he's lived his life.
01:15:43.640To elaborate on Mark's comments, I think what the idea is, I recently read Johnny Cochran's autobiography, which was fantastic, by the way.
01:15:55.100And, you know, but things were very different when he was doing things in the 60s, in the 70s than they are today on so many levels.
01:16:01.060But I think the point is, is that if this young man was in Johnny's book is driving while black, like that was a crime, like you would just get pulled over because you were a black person.
01:16:11.080But so they're saying that they're being harassed merely because of the color of their skin.
01:16:16.380However, the reason why I don't go for that argument is because of technology.
01:16:20.380They ran someone's license plate and they saw that there was a warrant out for that person's arrest and therefore or the registration was expired or whatever it was.
01:16:30.880And that's why the person was pulled over, not because of the color of their skin, because of what the computer said that that license plate came up with.
01:16:38.280I'm not I'm not denying that there's there's no that there's racism in the United States or that there that some cops are racist.
01:16:54.400And there is not an epidemic of cops shooting unarmed black men, not not even anything close.
01:17:01.580There is an epidemic of black on black violence in major cities like Chicago that continues to go unaddressed.
01:17:10.300And you and of course, a double standard.
01:17:12.720You know, you've got people saying the most inane, ridiculous things about the Michael Brown verdict that if the shoe were on the other foot, if it were said by a Fox News anchor, let's say, or or a Republican politician, the left would be losing its mind.
01:17:24.920And I give you, as example of that, Nancy Pelosi for the win.
01:17:45.700But because of you and because of thousands, millions of people around the world who came out for justice, your name will always be synonymous.
01:18:41.200At least I didn't say a filthy word, Megan.
01:18:43.880But, you know, I just the politicians, the president, the United States, the vice president, the fact that the president, the United States, while the jury's deliberating or before they deliberated, said I'm praying for the right outcome.
01:18:56.920I mean, that's not the that's not how the system is supposed to work.
01:19:03.240Cahill said it about Maxine Waters that basically referring to the separation of powers and that this is not, you know, a congressperson's purview to start, you know, mouthing off.
01:20:43.480All right. So before we go, I like I like where you went with it, Mark, with like your overall thought on it is your overall thought on what we take away from this horrible case in this horrible year that we've had in its wake.
01:20:59.660Yeah. Unfortunately, it's going to be a skeptical point of view.
01:21:03.440And that is I don't think that anything changed from this case from one last week or the week before or a year before, except that when there's a video showing somebody taking the life of somebody, then, yeah, you have a better chance of convicting someone.
01:21:19.500I don't think that this means anything in terms of of changing in the jury system about how cops are going to be convicted when they harm people.
01:21:27.640And the other thing I said was Chauvin's ego is not his amigo. Thank you.
01:21:32.500And I respectfully disagree, Your Honor.
01:21:35.020I do think what we saw last night and what we saw last May and the whole year in between, I think there's going to be there.
01:21:42.580There already has been fundamental policy changes within the police departments, as well as an overall feeling of cops aren't invincible when they walk into a courtroom.
01:21:54.000Always a pleasure chatting, my friends, but all good segments must come to an end.
01:21:59.660And why should you mount that with soap, Megan?
01:22:06.060Thanks for listening, you guys. What a show and what a year, right?
01:22:10.860Just the whole thing is just let's be thankful that this piece of it is over.
01:22:14.600OK, let's just be thankful for that today.
01:22:16.460And say a prayer, say a prayer for the family of George Floyd, for Derek Chauvin, for those who love him.
01:22:25.880If there are, they weren't present at all throughout this process, for the lawyers, for everybody who put it on the line in this process.
01:22:33.040My heart goes out to those who are on the streets protesting, and I understand why this is so charged.
01:22:39.060But it's also with our country and its soul and what it stands for and what it's actually about today.
01:22:46.400Anyway, I'm glad to have you guys here sharing the moments with me and working it out with me.
01:22:51.560And I'm really glad about what's going to happen on this program on Friday.