Minnesota Judge Peter Cahill has dismissed a third-degree murder charge from the case against Derek Chauvin, the former cop accused of killing of George Floyd.
While that charge was dropped, many questioned what kind of justice will be had for Floyd, the 6’4 rapper from Texas who was murdered by suffocation earlier this summer on May 25th after Chauvin kneeled on his victim’s neck for almost nine minutes.
The Hennepin County justice says that Chauvin will not be let off so easily. He will have to face the second-degree unintentional murder and a second-degree manslaughter charge.
The Hon. Peter Cahill, the judge at the helm of the case, denied motions to drop charges against Tou Thao, Thomas Lane, and J. Alexander Kueng.
The other ex-cops who were videotaped by a bystander watched Big Floyd die.
What does this all mean? Judge Cahill’s decision states the jury should decide whether or not the state of Minnesota has met the “burden of probable cause” to reach a conviction for all of the officers — excluding Chauvin.
“Third-degree in Minnesota is meant to be someone firing a gun into a crowd with no specific target or driving down the wrong side of the road,” Laura Coates from CNN said. “You mean to harm or know that you could harm someone, but you don’t have a particular person in mind or a personal vendetta.”
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, the person appointed to lead the prosecution of Floyd’s police-involved death, said of the decision that it is a “positive step forward in the path toward justice for George Floyd, his family, our community, and Minnesota.”
“The court has sustained eight out of nine charges against the defendants in the murder of George Floyd, including the most serious charges against all four defendants,” Ellison shared. “We look forward to presenting the prosecution’s case to a jury in Hennepin County.”
Ellison is optimistic but many are not.
Rapper DNA released a song, “Once Upon a Time in America” that reimagined justice for not just George Floyd, but Sandra Bland, Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and Breonna Taylor.