Alan Dershowitz says Chauvin verdict was influenced by outside ‘threats and intimidation,’ says ‘should be reversed’
Lawyer Alan Dershowitz said that the guilty verdict in the Derek Chauvin case “should be reversed on appeal” due to threats from outside parties such as Rep. Maxine Waters.
“Well, first, what was done to George Floyd by officer Chauvin was inexcusable, morally, but the verdict is very questionable because of the outside influences of people like Al Sharpton and people like Maxine Waters,” Dershowitz told Newsmax in a Tuesday interview.
Dershowitz pointed at outside political forces for threatening violence and destruction if the verdict was not guilty.
“Their threats and intimidation and hanging the Sword of Damocles over the jury and basically saying, ‘If you don’t convict on the murder charge and all the charges, the cities will burn, the country will be destroyed,’ seeped into the jury room because the judge made a terrible mistake by not sequestering the jury,” he continued.
He continued, “So the judge himself said this case may be reversed on appeal. And I think it might be reversed on appeal. I think it should be reversed on appeal.”
“I think the American Civil Liberties Union, which would be all over this case if it weren’t a racially charged case, all Americans who care about due process and liberty should be concerned that the jury verdict may have been influenced by, if not the thumb, maybe even the elbow of the outside pressures, the fears, the threats.”
Rep. Waters visited Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, last week, telling protesters, “we’re looking for a guilty verdict.”
“I hope that we are going to get a verdict that will say, ‘Guilty, guilty, guilty,'” she said. “And if we don’t, we cannot go away… We’ve got to get more confrontational.”
In an interview from last week, Dershowitz said that Rep. Waters should “ashamed of herself” for attempting to intimidate the jury, likening her tactics to the Ku Klux Klan.
“The irony of what congresswoman Waters did. She borrowed the playbook of the Ku Klux Klan from the 1920s and 1930s. They would stand outside of courtrooms, and they would threaten violence,” he explained.
Chauvin was found guilty on Tuesday for charges of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter.