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The jury found Derek Chauvin guilty of all three counts he was facing — second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter — for the same crime: pinning George Floyd’s neck to the asphalt with his knee until he stopped breathing.
When juries can choose among different counts and instead pick “all of the above,” it raises questions of how one act can meet the definition of three separate crimes. In this case, Mr. Chauvin was found guilty of:
1) causing the death of a human being, without intent, while committing or attempting to commit an assault (second-degree murder);
2) unintentionally causing a death by committing an act that is eminently dangerous to other persons while exhibiting a depraved mind, with reckless disregard for human life (third-degree murder);
3) and creating an unreasonable risk, by consciously taking the chance of causing death or great bodily harm to someone else (manslaughter).
Neither murder charge required the jury to find that Mr. Chavin intended to kill Mr. Floyd. Nor did the manslaughter charge. So the jury could have determined a state of mind for Mr. Chauvin (the legal term of art is “mens rea”) that would cover all three charges.
The separate acts the jury had to find Mr. Chauvin committed also seem compatible with one another. To streamline the language a bit, “committing an assault” and “committing an act that is eminently dangerous to other persons” and “creating an unreasonable risk” can all go together.
In fact, “eminently dangerous” is a synonym for unreasonably risky. And both coexist easily with committing an assault.
An appeals court could disagree with this analysis and throw out one or more of the counts.
Whether that affects Mr. Chauvin’s sentence depends on how Judge Peter A. Cahill parses it. Because Mr. Chauvin has no criminal history, he would receive a 12.5-year sentence for the top charge if the judge followed Minnesota’s sentencing guidelines. The maximum charge for second-degree murder, however, is 40 years.
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