President Joe Biden announced seven new federal judicial nominees on Wednesday, including Twin Cities attorney Jerry W. Blackwell.
Blackwell was nominated by Biden as a candidate for the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota after being recommended by the judicial selection committee, which was convened by Minnesota Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith.
Blackwell is a founding partner at the law firm Blackwell Burke and has been there since 2006. But Blackwell is more known to Minnesotans as a prominent member of the prosecution team that faced former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in April of 2021 and won.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison had invited Blackwell to the team that shaped the prosecution of Chauvin, and he was selected to give his team's closing argument in the trial.
While serving on the prosecution team, Blackwell also did his work pro bono.
Prior to co-founding his current law firm and the high-profile trial, he was a partner at Blackwell Igbanugo in Minneapolis from 2000 to 2006. From 1996 to 2000 at Nilan Johnson Lewis and from 1987 to 1996 at Robins Kaplan.
Blackwell graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1984 with his B.S. and in 1987 with his J.D.
"Jerry Blackwell is widely respected and loved within the Minnesota legal community. His extensive trial experience – including the successful prosecution of the murder of George Floyd – makes him an excellent choice to be a U.S. District Court Judge," Klobuchar said in a prepared statement.
Blackwell has accomplished much during his time as an attorney, including a posthumous pardon in 2020 for Max Mason, a Black man convicted of raping a white woman in Duluth in 1920, the Associated Press reported.
The rape that Mason was accused of led to three other Black men being lynched by a mob of white people in the northern Minnesota town just over a century ago.
Now Blackwell has the chance to serve as the judge for the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota.
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