Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson weighed in on the guilty verdict in the trial against former police officer Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd.
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According to the host, the jury was intimidated into finding Chauvin guilty by Black Lives Matter protests that occurred throughout the year.
“The jurors in the Derek Chauvin trial came to a unanimous and unequivocal verdict this afternoon: ‘Please don’t hurt us,’” Carlson said on his broadcast Tucker Carlson Tonight on Tuesday.” He continued, “Everyone understood perfectly well the consequences of an acquittal in this case. After nearly a year of burning and looting and murder by BLM, that was never in doubt.”
“Last night, 2,000 miles from Minneapolis, police in Los Angeles preemptively blocked roads. Why? They knew what would happen if Derek Chauvin got off,” he added. “No mob has the right to destroy our cities. Not under any circumstances, not for any reason. No politician or media figure has the right to intimidate a jury, and no political party has the right to impose a different standard of justice on its own supporters.”
Carlson has previously accused Black Lives Matter demonstrators of wrongdoing. According to CHRON., in February, the Fox News host claimed BLM spread lies about Floyd and compared the incident to the January riots at the U.S. Capitol. While discussing the second day of the second impeachment trial against former President Donald Trump he claimed Democrats of lying about the facts surrounding both events.
“Beginning of Memorial Day, BLM and their sponsors in corporate completely changed this country,” he said. “They changed this country more in five months than it had changed in the previous 50 years. How’d they do that? They used the sad death of a man called George Floyd to upend our society.”
He continued, “there was no physical evidence that George Floyd was murdered by a cop. The autopsy showed that George Floyd almost certainly died of a drug overdose, Fentanyl.”
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The jury came to a different conclusion after viewing evidence, hearing the prosecution and defense, expert testimony, eye witness accounts. theGrio reported Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter in the death of Floyd.
Chauvin faces up to 12 and a half years on either second-degree unintentional murder or third-degree murder according to sentencing guidelines. Second-degree manslaughter has a maximum four-year sentence. Aggravating factors could determine a longer sentence of up to 40 years.
According to The Guardian, most of the protestors arrested for the initial demonstrations in the spring of 2020 have had their charges dropped. The outlet reported a majority of citations and charges were ultimately dropped, dismissed, or otherwise not filed. Concluded from an analysis of reports various cities across the country, excluding federal charges, at least 90% of cases were dropped or dismissed. In cities such as Dallas and Philadelphia, as many as 95% of citations were dropped or not prosecuted.
“Police were making arrests as a form of crowd control, so in many instances there were no criminal charges to file,” said Jane Roh, a spokesperson for the Philadelpha district attorney, Larry Krasner according to The Guardian. “In other instances, there was simply not enough information to proceed on opening a criminal case.”
Former President Barack Obama has called for protests to continue, even after the guilty verdict. theGrio reported in a signed statement by him and his wife Michelle Obama the couple declared that “we cannot rest.”
They wrote: “For almost a year, George Floyd’s death under the knee of a police officer has reverberated around the world — inspiring murals and marches, sparking conversations in living rooms and new legislation. But a more basic question has always remained: would justice be done?” The statement continued, “We will need to follow through with the concrete reforms that will reduce and ultimately eliminate racial bias in our criminal justice system. We will need to redouble efforts to expand economic opportunity for those communities that have been too long marginalized.”
Congress will soon vote on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would prohibit racial and religious profiling, ban chokeholds, carotid holds and no-knock warrants, all of which are disproportionately used against Black people.
This article contains additional reporting from theGrio’s Biba Adams.
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