A second juror in the trial of former cop Derek Chauvin, who was convicted of “murder” in the death of drug addict George Floyd, has spoken. Only this one admitted that he didn’t tell the whole truth during voir dire when he said he could impartially weight the evidence.
Brandon Mitchell, the Post Millennial reported, claimed that he knew little, if anything, about the Floyd case. Yet he is also a Black Lives Matter activist who believes juries must be instruments of social “change.”
Three days after the unjust verdict, an alternate juror confessed that she was terrified that the “wrong verdict” might bring a mob of Black Lives Matter terrorists to her home.
The two admissions suggest that Chauvin did not receive a fair trial, an argument that leftist law professor Alan Dershowitz advanced after U.S. Representative Maxine Waters of California threatened mob violence unless the jury returned a guilty verdict.
The question now is whether Chauvin can reverse the verdict on appeal, or whether judges in higher courts fear for their lives, too. Or maybe judges now believe, like Mitchell, they must catalyze social “progress.”
Background on Juror
The jury convicted Chauvin on April 20 despite evidence that Floyd was largely responsible for his own death by ingesting an overdose of the powerful opioid fentanyl. The autopsy did not show life-threatening injuries, but did reveal that Floyd was a very sick man. He had serious cardiovascular problems and was infected with the China Virus.
Those facts didn’t move the jury, least of all Mitchell, despite what he said during voir dire.
On March 15, reporting on jury selection, Paul Blume of Fox9 tweeted that Mitchell, known as Juror 52, knew little about the civil case that had awarded Floyd’s family $27 million. Mitchell said he could be an impartial juror.
“Judge Cahill asked Juror #52, whether he heard anything about the #GeorgeFloyd civil case,” Blume tweeted:
He says, no. He explained hearing some basic info about trial dates, etc from the news in recent months, but nothing that would keep him from serving as impartial juror. #ChauvinTrial.
Juror #52 wrote in his jury questionnaire that he wondered why other police officers at the scene did not intervene in #GeorgeFloyd deadly arrest. He recognizes the historic nature of the case. Defense says he is an acceptable juror. So state’s turn to question.
But the defense might have been unaware that Mitchell was a big BLM fan.
In a Facebook post dated August 31, 2020, Brandon Mitchell was pictured … wearing a shirt with the words “Get your knee off our necks” and “BLM,” which is short for Black Lives Matter. This would directly contradict his claim that he had no prior knowledge of the case.
But even if Mitchell’s connection to BLM didn’t influence him, his view of what a juror should do, relative to what he said during voir dire, clearly indicates that he was a biased juror.
He admitted that he thinks anti-black discrimination among cops is even worse than what leftist media routinely show. “It’s well beyond what the media can even report, and sometimes there’s no way for it all to be covered,” he said.
Thus does Mitchell believe, as P.M. reported of his remarks during a recent interview, that juries must instead help change society:
I mean it’s important if we wanna see some change, we wanna see some things going different, we gotta into these avenues, get into these rooms to try to spark some change. Jury duty is one of those things. Jury duty. Voting. All of those things we gotta do.
Where facts and evidence fit into that role for a jury Mitchell left unsaid. If the jury’s job is pushing “change,” perhaps it might convict an obviously innocent white cop, or acquit an obviously guilty black defendant. The scales, after all, must balance.
Feared Violence
Lisa Christensen, an alternate juror, confessed last week that she worried BLM terrorists would attack her home and family.
Though she would have voted to convict Chauvin, Christensen knew what would happen if the jury acquitted the veteran cop: “I was concerned about people coming to my house if they were not happy with the verdict.”
She should have been, given what happened in Brooklyn Center, where Christensen lives. After a cop shot and killed thug Daunte Wright, a fugitive wanted for armed robbery, Maxine Waters showed up at protest and warned the jury that it had better return the right verdict.
“Guilty, guilty, guilty” is what Waters wanted, or “we’ve got to get more confrontational.”
Dershowitz said the threat of violence tainted the verdict and that a higher court must overturn it.
