I want to add a few footnotes in the form of bullet points to our coverage of the trial of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin for the death of George Floyd:
• The thirteenth and fourteenth seated jurors served as alternates and were released at the end of the trial. Juror number 96 — Lisa Christensen — was the thirteenth seated juror. She made the media rounds last week in the aftermath of the verdict.
KARE 11’s Lou Raguse interviewed Christensen in “‘I wish it didn’t have to happen’: Alternate juror reflects on Derek Chauvin trial.” Christensen lives in Brooklyn Center and had to navigate her way home through the crowds blocking intersections to protest the death of Daunte Wright.
Quotable quote:
Raguse: Did you want to be a juror?
Christensen: I had mixed feelings. There was a question on the questionnaire about it and I put I did not know. The reason, at that time, was I did not know what the outcome was going to be, so I felt like either way you are going to disappoint one group or the other. I did not want to go through rioting and destruction again and I was concerned about people coming to my house if they were not happy with the verdict.
• The Biden-Harris Department of Justice announced an investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department the day following the verdict. They are from the federal government and they are here to help us. NR’s Andrew McCarthy explains in the Corner post “Obama Encore: Biden Justice Department Announces Investigation of Minneapolis Police Department.”
• The Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald said everything I would have said if I had “the necessities” in “A troubled rule of law.” Heather’s column is the best thing I have read since the jury handed down the verdicts in the Chauvin trial.
• Alan Dershowitz takes up a theme that has preoccupied me in my own comments on the case in the Gatestone column “A Long and Sordid History of Crowds Threatening Violence in the Event of a Jury Acquittal.”
• As I noted last week, I spoke with Spectator editor Freddy Gray on the Friday before the jury heard closing arguments and retired to deliberate (podcast below). The Spectator also posted the column I wrote immediately following the jury’s return of the verdicts on Tuesday under the headline “How fair was the Derek Chauvin trial?” Working on the column put me in mind of Robert Bly’s beautiful poem “Driving toward the Lac Qui Parle River.”
• Friends sent me the BBC clips below.
— NTB Media (@itsNTBmedia) April 24, 2021
— NTB Media (@itsNTBmedia) April 24, 2021
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