Judge Peter Cahill, the proceeding judge in the case of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, is being challenged by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison for his assertion that there was no evidence four girls were traumatized when they witnessed the death of George Floyd.
Ellison filed a letter with the court on Wednesday asking Hennepin County District Judge Cahill to delete the portions of the document he filed in the case on June 25, which outlined his thought process for sentencing Chauvin to 22 ½ years in prison for murdering Floyd.
Chauvin was convicted on April 20 of all three charges against him, second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter, for killing Floyd on May 25, 2020. He was sentenced on June 25.
Three days after the sentencing, Ellison spoke with News Talk 830 WCCO's Chad Hartman and told him that he is not double guessing the decision made by Cahill.
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Now, in his letter, Ellison is criticizing Cahill for apparently dismissing the trauma suffered by the girls who watched Floyd die, the Star Tribune reported.
"The Court should remove or modify the identified portions of the opinion," Ellison wrote in the letter made public Thursday morning. "Doing so will not, in any way, affect Defendant's 22.5 year sentence but will avoid the risk of sending the message that the pain these young women endured is not real or does not matter, or worse, that it's a product of their own decisions and not a consequence of Defendant's."
Cahill wrote in his sentencing memorandum that three of the girls smiled and laughed during the encounter, one of which was 9 at the time.
"Although the State contends that all four of these young women were traumatized by witnessing this incident, the evidence at trial did not present any objective incident of trauma," Cahill wrote.
Ellison made the point in his letter that just because their behavior did not appear to indicate trauma, they were traumatized. Ellison also said that research shows a bias that casts Black girls in a more adult light. Two of the girls present, Darnella Frazier and Judeah Reynolds, are Black.
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In his letter, Ellison included a letter of support from Dr. Sarah Vinson, a child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist from Atlanta.
"As a Black girl, [Frazier] is at risk of having her actions interpreted through a lens that denies her vulnerability and attributes more advanced motives to her actions," Vinson said in the letter. "With adultification bias, there is a risk of minimizing the emotional and developmental vulnerability of [Frazier] and [Reynolds]. … Furthermore, [Frazier's] ostensibly mature actions can be understood as an empathetically driven response to a tragic situation in which the youth should never have been placed."
Ellison and his office asked Cahill to review five proposed aggravating factors once Chauvin was convicted. This would allow Cahill to serve Chauvin a prison term of more than 10 ½ to 15 years, which is recommended under state sentencing guidelines.
In late April, Cahill stated that he had found four aggravating factors. These included the fact that Chauvin abused a position of trust and authority; he treated Floyd with "particular cruelty"; Chauvin committed the crime as a group with others, and children were present at the time.
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Still, Cahill wrote in his sentencing memo that after a second review, children being present did not present a "substantial and compelling" reason for Chauvin to receive a longer sentence than state guidelines recommend. But only one aggravating factor is required for a judge to hand down a longer sentence.
"None was a victim in the sense of being physically injured or threatened with injury so long as they remained on the sidewalk and did not physically engage or interfere with Mr. Chauvin and his co-defendant officers," Cahill wrote about the girls. "Mr. Chauvin is correct that these young women were free to leave the scene whenever they wished, were never coerced or forced by him or any of the other officers to remain a captive presence at the scene."
Despite Cahill's explanation for his decision Ellison has "vehemently" disagreed with how the judge characterized the children's demeanor at the scene.
"The State is deeply worried about the message sent by suggesting that instead of attempting to intervene in order to stop a crime — which children did in this case — children should simply walk away and ignore their moral compass," Ellison wrote. "Children should never be put in this position."