Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin will be sentenced Friday for the murder of George Floyd, and in the interim Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison spoke with News Talk 830 WCCO’s Jearlyn Steele about sentencing and the trial’s aftermath.
Chauvin was found guilty of all three charges brought against him; second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter in mid-April. He faces a maximum of 40 years in prison.
In a separate interview with "60 Minutes," Ellison said he felt sympathy for the convicted murderer.
"I spent 16 years as a criminal defense lawyer. So, I will admit, I felt a little bad for the defendant. I think he deserved to be convicted. But he's a human being,' Ellison told Scott Pelley on the CBS show.
"I'm not in any way wavering from my responsibility. But I hope we never forget that people who are defendants in our criminal justice system, that they're human beings. They're people. I mean, George Floyd was a human being. And so I'm not going to ever forget that everybody in this process is a person,' the AG added.
Ellison was the main prosecutor working to put Chauvin behind bars and took over the case shortly after the death of Floyd last summer. Since then, he and his team have been working to find justice for Floyd and his family.
“My attitude this the whole time has been, ‘We’re going to pursue justice, not revenge,’” Ellison said with Steele. “We’re gonna pursue what is just and what is fair, what honors the dignity of George Floyd and his family, and we are going to seek a sentence that fits the offense.”
Ellison shared that he is concerned for those who had to watch as Floyd was pinned to the ground and subsequently murdered under the knee of Chauvin. He brought up the 9-year-old girl, the cousin of Darnella Frazier, who was a witness to the incident and testified in Chauvin’s trial.
“What is her attitude going to be about police and policing,” Ellison said. “There are a lot of good officers out there who want to do the right thing for the community, but are they going to be saddled with what Derek Chauvin did? Are they going to be marked by his conduct and judged by it?”
Ellison added that he does believe legislation needs to be passed that both changes and reorders policing. For him, this case and this verdict do not do enough.
“It is one case,” Ellison said. “There are some people saying, ‘See, he was convicted the system works.’ Well, there were a lot of things that were out of the normal course of events, including the appointment of my office, the fact that I had to recruit people who were not even regular members of my staff to participate.”
Reform has begun, he said, with Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo and the Minneapolis City Council working to create a better relationship between police and citizens.
Ellison wants there to be justice in standard everyday cases, not just the high-profile ones, which require more effort to get a conviction, he said. Ellison also sees a goal where simple actions like Chief Arrandondo being able to fire someone for doing something wrong can happen.
“I guess what I am saying is that I am looking to a thorough response, not just one case,” Ellison said.
Sentencing for Chauvin is scheduled for Friday, June 25, at 1:30 p.m. and will be available live on News Talk 830 WCCO.