Finally, A Serious Challenge To Derek Chauvin’s Conviction

Good news: five years after George Floyd’s death, and four years after the civil rights dumpster fire trial that Judge Peter Cahill oversaw—a trial that led to the convictions of Officers Derek Chauvin, Tou Thao, Thomas Lane, and J. Alexander Kueng—there is finally a serious, well-constructed challenge to the verdicts in those cases. Attorney Greg Joseph has filed an appeal that directly confronts what he argues were grave judicial and prosecutorial abuses, as well as violations of the officers’ civil rights. One can only hope that justice will be served.

According to Alpha News, which is currently the only major conservative news outlet in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, Joseph has filed a petition for post-conviction relief in the Minnesota appellate courts. The petition seeks to vacate Chauvin’s conviction and obtain a new trial in connection with Floyd’s death during his 2020 arrest. If that conviction is overturned, it’s to be hoped that the other defendants’ convictions can be reviewed and overturned as well.

Joseph’s petition builds on the work of attorney Chris Madel, who in the past year exposed sworn testimony from Minneapolis Police Department officials that there was false testimony about the restraint technique used on Floyd. Joseph’s filing also challenges what he describes as abusive prosecutorial conduct and the presentation of misleading or false testimony during Chauvin’s trial.

Since 2021, in multiple articles for American Thinker, I presented facts indicating that the prosecutors, Judge Cahill, several medical experts, and Hennepin County Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker engaged in conduct that allowed a murder wrongful murder charge to proceed to trial and end with Chauvin’s conviction. I have personally demonstrated on two videos why the restraint Chauvin used is considered safe under MPD policy and training. I offered to testify to that effect at Chauvin’s trial, but his defense counsel, Eric Nelson, declined the offer.

The prosecution was driven by public pressure, a hostile political environment, and an aggressive team led by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, whom I contend is an Islamic radical, and who rounded up more than a dozen politically zealous prosecutors, including several attorneys volunteering pro bono from major Minneapolis law firms.

Judge Cahill joined the circus. Instead of imposing discipline or ensuring fairness, he ran with the poisonous, anti-law enforcement atmosphere in the city (and the nation), permitting trial tactics that placed the defense at a severe disadvantage. Because Minneapolis was the epicenter of the war on cops in 2020 and 2021, his rulings, combined with the broader socialist and racist climate—marked by unrest, arson, and the destruction of the Third Precinct station—made an impartial proceeding nearly impossible.

Cahill’s many erroneous rulings, while disastrous for the defendants, created a target-rich environment for Greg Joseph to challenge. Central to the petition is the conduct of Medical Examiner Andrew Baker, whose early assessment—documented in prosecutors’ own memoranda—was that Floyd showed no evidence of homicide and no lethal injuries. Baker initially attributed Floyd’s death to cardiac arrest tied to underlying heart disease, physical struggle, agitation, and methamphetamine intoxication.

However, as later documented in a November 2020 memo of the state and local prosecutors, Baker changed his position after phone calls from Washington, D.C., pathologist Dr. Roger Mitchell, who warned Baker in two phone calls that he would publicly accuse him of misconduct unless neck compression appeared in the autopsy report. (See my discussion here.) Within days, the final autopsy did include “neck compression.”

The memorandum documenting Mitchell’s influence was created six months before Chauvin’s trial but was filed with the court only in July 2021 during Tou Thao’s proceedings. A central question is whether Judge Cahill or Chauvin’s defense was ever informed of this exculpatory evidence—and, if not, why not, given prosecutors’ obligations under Brady.

Joseph’s petition also details testimony from MPD officials. Joseph argues that this testimony falsely claimed the restraint used on Floyd was neither taught nor approved under MPD policy. I was aware these statements were untrue in 2021 because I had personally reviewed the MPD training manual, which included exactly these restraints. Copies of the manual were publicly visible during the trial, including one held by Chauvin’s mother in the courtroom. Both prosecutors and Judge Cahill knew the manual’s contents, yet permitted testimony that contradicted it.

A major development occurred in 2024, when District Judge Wahl dismissed former MPD training official Katie Blackwell’s defamation lawsuit against Alpha News and its reporters for challenging the accuracy of his testimony. Defense attorney Chris Madel submitted extensive affidavits and evidence demonstrating that Blackwell’s prior statements about the restraint method were false.

Judge Wahl didn’t stop with ruling in Alpha News’s favor. He also dismissed the case with prejudice, required Blackwell to acknowledge the inaccuracy of her statements, and ordered her to pay the defendants’ legal fees. This outcome strongly reinforces the claim that Blackwell’s testimony should not have been relied on during Chauvin’s trial, and that any other testimony in line with hers was inaccurate, too, as well as being incredibly harmful to Chauvin’s case.

The petition raises the fundamental question of whether judges, prosecutors, law-enforcement officials, and medical professionals may be permitted to offer or tolerate false testimony in a criminal trial—especially one conducted under intense public pressure. Joseph argues that the Floyd prosecutions were tainted at every stage by political considerations and by a willingness among key actors to distort facts in pursuit of a preconceived narrative.

According to Joseph’s petition, sworn officials—including police leaders, medical experts, the medical examiner, and prosecutors—violated their oaths and, in doing so, violated the civil rights of the officers on trial. That’s how the Floyd prosecutions were corrupted from beginning to end.

If, as Joseph asserts, all these law officers and officers of the court violated either their sworn oaths to testify truthfully or to impose the law honestly, these acts grossly violated the defendants’ civil rights. Not only should the convictions be cleared, but, if the charges are true, the miscreants should be punished.

One hopes that appellate judges will confront the full record and not shield misconduct, wherever it occurred.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/11/finally_a_serious_challenge_to_derek_chauvin_s_conviction.html