Musk drops bomb into George Floyd case: ‘Derek Chauvin was unjustly convicted’ and should go free

BS BULLETIN

Elon Musk says Derek Chauvin was “unjustly convicted of murder” and should be released, declaring that Chauvin “is not a murderer.”
Chauvin has launched another attempt to overturn his Minnesota conviction, alleging structural due-process violations involving Attorney General Keith Ellison’s appointment and the lack of a grand-jury indictment.
Chauvin’s lawyers want his pending appeal paused so they can return to the trial court with the new constitutional claims.

Elon Musk has just kicked open one of the most emotionally and politically explosive doors in America.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO publicly called for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin to be freed Wednesday, declaring that the man convicted of murdering George Floyd was unjustly convicted and flatly rejecting the central conclusion of the case that helped ignite America’s 2020 racial upheaval.

Musk wrote on X:

“Derek Chauvin was unjustly convicted of murder, therefore he should be freed.”

Then he went considerably further:

“The facts show that he was not the cause of death, nor did he at any time intend for a death to occur. Whatever else he may be, he is not a murderer.”

And Musk finished with three words guaranteed to restart an argument America never really stopped having:

“That is the truth.”

Musk’s intervention comes at an important moment. Chauvin’s lawyers filed a new motion Tuesday asking the Minnesota Court of Appeals to pause his current appeal so they can pursue a new effort to vacate his state conviction and have the charges dismissed. The new argument isn’t primarily a re-litigation of whether Chauvin’s restraint caused Floyd’s death.

Instead, his attorneys are attacking the legality of the prosecution itself. They argue that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s assignment of prosecutorial authority to Attorney General Keith Ellison was “illegitimate” and violated Chauvin’s due-process rights. They also contend that the failure to convene a grand jury before charging Chauvin — and the absence of a grand-jury indictment — deprived the trial court of jurisdiction.

Chauvin’s lawyers put their requested remedy bluntly:

“It must be dismissed immediately.”

The Minnesota Court of Appeals previously upheld Chauvin’s conviction in 2023, rejecting arguments that intense pretrial publicity and other circumstances deprived him of a fair trial. The U.S. Supreme Court later declined to hear his appeal. This latest maneuver seeks to open another route. Chauvin wants his currently pending appeal of a post-conviction ruling stayed so that he can return to Hennepin County District Court and present what his attorneys characterize as newly raised structural constitutional defects in the original prosecution.

In other words, Chauvin isn’t merely saying the jury reached the wrong conclusion. He’s now arguing that the machinery used to put him before that jury was itself unlawfully assembled.

But it is still a long legal shot. Chauvin has repeatedly challenged his conviction, and Minnesota courts have repeatedly rejected those challenges. Musk’s intervention, however, guarantees that this newest attempt isn’t going to disappear quietly into a court docket. The world’s richest man has now publicly declared that the most notorious police defendant of the last decade should be released.

And Musk isn’t hedging.

He isn’t saying Chauvin deserves another hearing. He isn’t saying the trial should be reviewed. He’s saying Chauvin “is not a murderer.” That’s an extraordinary statement considering what happened in the courtroom.

A Minnesota jury convicted Chauvin in April 2021 of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. The Minnesota Court of Appeals later affirmed that conviction, concluding among other things that the trial court took sufficient precautions to ensure the jury could decide the case fairly despite the enormous publicity surrounding it.

Chauvin is serving a 22½-year Minnesota sentence concurrently with a 21-year federal sentence after pleading guilty to violating Floyd’s federal civil rights. He is currently incarcerated at a federal prison in Texas. His time behind bars has already nearly cost him his life. In November 2023, another inmate stabbed Chauvin 22 times at a federal prison in Tucson. Federal prosecutors said the attacker told investigators he would have killed Chauvin if correctional officers hadn’t intervened.

Now comes the question Musk has resurrected: Was the murder conviction itself just? That immediately brings everyone back to George Floyd’s cause of death. And this is where both sides need to get the facts straight.

The official Hennepin County autopsy did note that Floyd had serious underlying health problems and drugs in his system, including fentanyl and methamphetamine. Medical examiner Dr. Andrew Baker also testified that had Floyd been found dead alone at home with the same fentanyl concentration and no other circumstances, fentanyl toxicity could potentially have been certified as the cause of death.

But that’s not how Baker ultimately ruled Floyd’s death. His official determination was homicide.

The cause was listed as:

“Cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.”

Baker testified that fentanyl intoxication and Floyd’s heart disease contributed to his death but weren’t the direct cause. That medical conclusion became important evidence in the prosecution’s case against Chauvin.

So Musk’s declaration that “the facts show” Chauvin didn’t cause Floyd’s death isn’t merely contradicting liberal commentators. It contradicts the official medical examiner’s ultimate conclusion and the verdict returned by the jury. Musk is certainly free to argue those conclusions were wrong. But that’s the actual dispute.

And there is plenty else about the Chauvin prosecution that has remained controversial. His defense argued that Minneapolis had become an impossible venue for a fair trial following months of riots, demonstrations, media coverage and political pressure after Floyd’s death. Chauvin unsuccessfully sought a change of venue.

The Minnesota Court of Appeals ultimately concluded that the trial judge had adequately screened jurors and taken steps to ensure impartiality. But those arguments haven’t disappeared from the political debate.

Neither have questions about politicians’ rhetoric surrounding the trial, the massive civil settlement Minneapolis announced before jury selection was complete, security concerns surrounding jurors and the atmosphere in the city as the verdict approached. To Chauvin’s supporters, all of it contributes to the belief that he never had a realistic chance at an ordinary trial. To his critics, those issues have already been litigated and rejected by appellate courts.

And now Chauvin is trying another argument. His latest filing contends that Walz’s transfer of authority to Ellison’s office was legally defective from the beginning. Chauvin’s lawyers argue that several alleged procedural violations weren’t harmless mistakes but structural errors that deprived the court itself of authority over the prosecution.

Minnesota courts will decide whether that theory has any merit. But politically, Musk has already ensured that Americans are going to revisit the whole case. And this isn’t Musk’s first trip into the controversy.

Last year, he backed Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro’s call for President Trump to pardon Chauvin on his federal conviction.

A presidential pardon couldn’t erase Chauvin’s Minnesota conviction because presidents possess pardon authority over federal crimes, not state crimes. That’s why the newest state-court fight matters enormously if Chauvin is ever going to get out of prison substantially earlier. Even a federal pardon wouldn’t make the Minnesota sentence vanish.

Chauvin needs relief from Minnesota’s courts or Minnesota’s clemency system for that. And now he has perhaps the most powerful megaphone on the planet arguing publicly that he deserves it.

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