Derek Chauvin (Image via Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office)
Well in Texas, it appears we have a similar statutory framework as in Minnesota. You can have a murder conviction if you intend to cause serious bodily injury, committed in a clear danger to human life, that results in death. Assuming that they have a similar statutory framework in Minnesota, that would be the backing that I would guess [Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison] would go with. I don’t know what that officer meant—it’s nothing good—but what he did was an action that would have caused serious bodily injury. It did. It did result in death. I think the conviction on him is extremely likely.
— Judge Mike Snipes of the First Administrative Judicial Region in Texas, commenting on the likelihood that former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin will be convicted for George Floyd’s death. Chauvin faces second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter charges for kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes until Floyd died. Snipes is one of the few former prosecutors in the country to have successfully prosecuted a murder case against a police officer.
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.