Biden DOJ wants judge to walk back Derek Chauvin legal victory

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Federal prosecutors are asking U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson to reconsider his decision that may help Derek Chauvin’s appeal.

Chauvin was convicted in the death of George Floyd, which sparked widespread protests and riots across the United States, but some say he wasn’t given a fair trial due to the massive publicity and anger. On Monday, Judge Magnuson ordered that Chauvin’s legal team be allowed to access the heart tissue, histology slides, and photographs of Floyd’s heart as well as samples of other tissues. Chauvin’s legal team is hoping to appeal his sentence, claiming that Floyd potentially died from a heart condition rather than Chauvin’s actions.

Shockingly, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has stepped in to ask Judge Magnuson to reconsider allowing this action. On Tuesday, federal prosecutors filed a motion in which they argued that the former police officer has “no legal basis for [his] discovery requests, all of which stem solely from an email he received from an unvetted doctor offering a weaker version of the medical defense than the version that the jury had previously rejected at his state trial.”

They further argued that any claim that Chauvin’s previous legal defense made had been ineffective because they had not examined Floyd’s heart was a “strategic decision that courts have recognized as ‘virtually unchallengeable.’”

The judge, however, claimed the medical information would aid the defense in investigating the information provided to Chauvin by Dr. William Schaetzel, who had previously argued to the first defense team that Floyd had experienced a certain type of heart attack that ended his life.

“Given the significant nature of the criminal case that Mr. Chauvin was convicted of, and given that the discovery that Mr. Chauvin seeks could support Dr. Schaetzel’s opinion of how Mr. Floyd died, the Court finds that there is good cause to allow Mr. Chauvin to take the discovery that he seeks,” the judge said on Monday.