Mpls residents demand transparency after police inflate carjacking charges startribune.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from startribune.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Nearly a year after a bystander’s video of George Floyd’s death sent shock waves across the world, prosecutors and defense attorneys face a seemingly insurmountable task in the trial of the officer charged with killing him: choosing an impartial jury.
Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday in the murder and manslaughter case against ex-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill’s 18th-floor courtroom. By the time the prospective jurors arrive for questioning, the state’s prosecutors and defense attorney Eric Nelson will have mined their 14-page questionnaires in search of anything that indicates overt bias.
Of those, only five could be charged.
And of those, none are related to carjacking. All five of the men charged were charged with some form of a drug offense, said retired Judge Daniel Mabley, who is consulting with the Hennepin County Attorney s Office on carjacking cases.
In the criminal complaints filed against those five men, carjacking scenarios are not even mentioned. Three of them were released without bail, one posted bond, and one was bailed out by the Minnesota Freedom Fund. KARE 11 News is unable to check the status of the rest of the 46 arrests, because authorities have not provided a list of all the names.