Mary Moriarty, the former Hennepin County Chief Public Defender, spoke with Chad Hartman today following the verdict in the Derek Chauvin's trial giving perspective on what the prosecutors and defense might be going through.
“Once you’re done actually trying the case, waiting for the verdict, I think, is the hardest thing because you’re done and you don’t have control over anything,” Moriarty said.
When Moriarty was working she would even have a Gameboy in her desk so that she could play Tetris before verdicts were announced.
With a quick turnaround time from the jury, many throughout the state expected the charges to come back guilty. Moriarty even found herself finding this to be the case after closing arguments.
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“The state put on an extremely compelling case,” Moriarty said.
Covering all of its bases, the state had a plethora of witnesses back up its coherent theory, as Moriarty called it, allowing for the jury to need no longer than 11 hours to come to a decision.
“They were able to bring us back to what this case was all about,” Moriarty said. “In fact, the opening of the closing argument was ‘his name was George Perry Floyd Jr.’ that got us back to he was a human being...that is what this case is about.”
Moriarty shared what she thinks could have been done by Chauvin’s defense to make a better argument for the former Minneapolis Police Officer. One thing that she teaches when going over defense is finding a theory and sticking with it. In her opinion the defense never did this, instead, they decided to try and prove that the prosecution’s theory had no evidence.
If she were defending Chauvin she would have stuck with the causation that Floyd died from other causes. One that she called attention to was the carbon monoxide poisoning that was discussed, while she doesn’t believe there was any evidence to back it up, it would have been something they could have stuck with.
“You just have to find a theory, land on one, and really hammer it home and really talk about it in a narrative fashion instead of doing the throw spaghetti on the wall and hope something sticks,” Moriarty said.
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One of the keys to the prosecution's arguments was their bystander witnesses who all gave incredible testimonies, Moriarty said. This allowed the state to continuously have good days where the defense could not cross-examine without hurting their client’s chances.
With the Chauvin Trial coming to a close, sentencing will be in eight weeks, and the prosecution of the other three officers that have been arrested in connection to Floyd’s murder is projected to begin sometime this summer.
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