Derek Chauvin is Trying to Get a New Trial So the Truth — and Real Justice — Can Finally Prevail
Back in the spring of 2020, Minneapolis became ground zero for a national firestorm. George Floyd, a 46-year-old man with a troubled past, ended up dead during an arrest gone wrong—or so the story went. The ex-cop at the center of it all, Derek Chauvin, knelt on Floyd’s back for over nine minutes as bystanders filmed and shouted. What followed wasn’t just a trial, but a spectacle that tore through the city, sparked riots across the country, and left businesses in ashes. Five years on, Chauvin sits in a federal prison in Texas, serving time on state and federal charges. But now, he’s fighting back with a new petition that could crack open the whole narrative.
Filed last month in Hennepin County District Court, the 71-page document from Chauvin’s lawyer, Gregory Joseph, demands his second-degree murder conviction be thrown out. It calls for a new trial or, at minimum, a hearing to dig into the evidence again.
“While the postconviction relief stage of many criminal cases is generally something of an afterthought, this Court is removed from the hysteria of the day and can finally look at the facts and evidence through a clear lens,” Joseph wrote.
The core of the argument? Flawed expert testimony on how Floyd actually died. The Hennepin County medical examiner, Dr. Andrew Baker, ruled it a homicide despite heart disease, fentanyl, and methamphetamine in Floyd’s system—and no clear signs of asphyxiation from the restraint. Yet four prosecution doctors leaned hard on bystander video to push a different story: that Chauvin’s knee caused low oxygen levels leading straight to death. Chauvin’s team says that’s junk science, cooked up to fit the moment. They point to autopsy records ignored by prosecutors, records that paint a picture of a man already in cardiac arrest before things escalated.
Add to that the police training angle. Three Minneapolis officers took the stand and swore Chauvin’s knee-on-neck hold broke department rules. But since then, at least 34 current and former cops have come forward with sworn statements saying the department taught exactly that technique for certain situations.
The petition ties this directly to the 2022 book *They’re Lying: The Media, the Left, and the Death of George Floyd* by journalist Liz Collin and Dr. J.C. Chaix, which first aired those claims. It’s the kind of detail that makes you wonder: Were witnesses coached, or just scared of the mob outside the courthouse?
Jury instructions come under fire too. Chauvin’s lawyers argue Judge Peter Cahill botched them, feeding the panel a version of the law that boxed them into guilt. All this, they say, stripped Chauvin of due process under the 14th Amendment. It’s not the first swing—Chauvin lost appeals in 2023, including one shot down by the Supreme Court. His federal civil rights plea deal sticks, landing him 21 years concurrent with the 22.5-year state sentence. Release? Not till 2037 or 2038, depending on good behavior. He even survived a brutal stabbing in Arizona’s federal lockup back in 2023, stabbed 22 times by another inmate.
The case reeks of a rush to judgment, fueled by streets on fire and a media blitz that turned Floyd into a symbol overnight. Riots cost billions, lives were lost in the chaos, and cops nationwide pulled back, letting crime spike in the years after.
Floyd’s toxicology report showed fentanyl levels that could fell an elephant—3.0 nanograms per milliliter in his blood, per the autopsy—right alongside meth. Baker himself noted in testimony that those drugs and Floyd’s enlarged heart were “major” factors. Yet the trial zeroed in on that video clip, looped endlessly, as if nine minutes of restraint erased everything else.
Whispers persist that the fix was in from the start. Why else would top brass flip on their own training manual? Or why did Baker hedge on asphyxia until the pressure mounted? The Fall of Minneapolis, Collin’s documentary, lays it out cold: suppressed bodycam footage, overlooked evidence of Floyd’s resistance, and a narrative steamrolled by activists. It’s easy to see a setup—sacrifice one cop to douse the flames, damn the facts. If even half of Chauvin’s claims hold water, it wasn’t murder; it was a man with a badge doing his job in a split-second call, amid a suspect high as a kite and fighting back.
The Minnesota AG’s office has until January to respond. No ruling yet from the court, but the stakes couldn’t be higher. A new trial wouldn’t just free Chauvin; it’d force a reckoning on how far the justice system bent to appease the crowd. Families still grieve, communities still heal unevenly, but truth doesn’t bend to timelines or torches. If Chauvin gets his day in court away from the frenzy, maybe we’ll finally get answers that stick. Until then, the doubts hang heavy, a reminder that justice rushed is justice half-done.