The Megyn Kelly Show - Chauvin Found Guilty - What it Means, and What Happens Next, with Alan Dershowitz, Arthur Aidala and Mark Eiglarsh | Ep. 92

Episode Date: April 21, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by legal experts Alan Dershowitz, Arthur Aidala and Mark Eiglarsh to discuss the guilty verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial for the death of George Floyd, what the verdict means, what happens next with sentencing and potential appeals, what the case will mean for future police brutality cases, the politicization of the case, the media coverage of the trial and response to the verdict, what prominent public figures said after the verdict, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShowFind out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, it's Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today on the program, Derek Chauvin, guilty on all three charges, guilty on second degree murder and sentencing yet to come. It isn't a complete shock to anybody who's been listening to this program. You know, we've been telling you that this is a very real possibility and not to believe the people telling you that there really was no shot of a conviction and how uphill this battle was going to be for the prosecution. That tape was really tough and in the end, I think, insurmountable for the defense. And the evidence came out pretty well for the prosecution overall. We're going to get into

exactly where we think the best points were scored by the prosecution, but also how the system and the process was manipulated. It was absolutely manipulated by the press, by politicians, from the president and vice president to Maxine Waters, who may very well have given Derek Chauvin his best grounds for appeal. Wouldn't that be ironic, right? If she stepped in in a case that possibly was going the way she wanted it to go anyway and screwed it up for what she actually wanted, you know, for her side. The odds of finding a jury totally untainted by the very biased media coverage of this case from the beginning were nil. But in my view, this judge should have tried harder.

I do agree that this jury, that the trial should have been moved. It should have been moved out of this town. And the jury probably should have been sequestered from the beginning. We're going to talk to Alan Dershowitz about that in one second. I have real problem with some of what I've called the heartstrings evidence that was allowed. Witness after witness who watched the encounter between Chauvin and Floyd, talking about how hard it was on them, how it had changed their lives. I think that was very prejudicial to Derek Chauvin and totally irrelevant to the question of guilt or innocence. I wanted to hear from Derek Chauvin. I wanted to see whether of guilt or innocence. I wanted to hear from Derek

Chauvin. I wanted to see whether there was humanity there, which of course there was at some level, but I understand there were reasons not to do it. We'll talk with our dream team, Mark and Arthur, about that in a minute. And I was moved by the reaction from George Floyd's loved ones. I understand how painful this must have been for them. And there's some measure of comfort seeing them comforted. I don't know. I also felt, I admit, for Derek Chauvin, who sat there alone the entire time in that courtroom, who had, as far as I could see, little to no even familial support behind him. And now as a police officer who served the country for two decades is heading off to prison for possibly as much as two more decades. And I have sympathy for our country,

which I feel has been wrongly and falsely attacked since the day of the George Floyd death. forward. The radical leftist narrative on police and on America doesn't change with the facts. They don't care about the facts. The system can convict Derek Chauvin of the worst possible charge available, murder. And still what we are told is that the system is unjust. The system is. I understand the history. I get it. But it is history. We are not still in the midst of 1950s Jim Crow justice. And the story that we are is not true. Do not listen to AOC and company trying to tell you that we're still back there. Here's just a sampling of what they're saying. I actually always thought that he would be found guilty because it's sort of a cultural makeup call. But I'm not happy. I'm not pleased. I don't have any sense of satisfaction. I don't think this is a system working. I also don't want this moment to be framed as this system working, working, because it's not working.

We have been preparing for the violence of protest. Now we need to prepare for the reaction of the police. True justice means that it would have meant that George Floyd would still be alive. It would mean that Dante Wright would still be alive. It would mean that meant it would mean that Dante Wright would still be alive. It would mean that Michael Brown would still be here. That's what true justice is. Michael Brown. Michael Brown would still be here. Michael Brown would still be here if he hadn't charged a police officer whom he had just assaulted in front of several, at least five black witnesses who testified against Michael Brown to Eric Holder's DOJ, which found that Michael Brown was shot justifiably. And like, they're still bringing

up his name. They're still bringing up the name of Freddie Gray in an attempt to indict, quote, the system. But the system is working. And this is not a larger indictment of policing in America, no matter what the media or these partisan politicians try to tell you. Here is the truth. Police make 10 million arrests a year in the United States. About 1,000 people are killed by cops a year. Okay, about 1,000. The vast majority of those people are armed.

Of the two dozen or so who were unarmed last year, 14 last year were black. 14 out of 10 million arrests. And unarmed, by the way, is a term that's used very loosely, according to the data that tracks all of this. If you have a gun in your glove compartment as you flee away from a police officer, you're considered unarmed. But I think most cops would dispute that. Cops, on the other hand, are being shot. On average, 245 cops get shot a year, 42 fatally. All right. The narrative now out of Minneapolis is still that black lives don't matter, but that this is a start, but that, you know, the country doesn't value black lives because of that 14 black men, the number 14 black men who were killed out of 10 million arrests, 14 unarmed. Okay.

This is a soundbite that I heard on the daily, which is the New York times podcast today. It's a man in Minneapolis reacting to the verdict. Listen. America's tolerance for dead black people has usually been pretty high. Hopefully it'll it'll it'll actually start to resonate a little bit more now that we are actually people. That is just so unfair in response to this case. He's not wrong that there's some evidence black lives don't matter to some people. In particular, the black lives taken by other black people. The vast majority of black people who are murdered are not killed by the police. They are killed by other black people. The vast majority of whites who are killed are killed by other white people. What's happening in cities like Chicago is horrifying, but that's not where the attention is. All of the attention gets placed on this very small number of people who get

killed by the cops. Any number is too high, but let's be real. You're never going to get rid of all inappropriate shootings when it comes to police dealing with felons and suspected felons out there in the streets. The city of Chicago, that man, he's right about what's happening there. If that's what he's talking about, I agree with him. There's absolutely no will to address the systemic criminality on the streets there. You want to know what's happening in Chicago right now? In Chicago, homicides are up over 33% since last year. Shootings are up 40% over what they were last year. Since April 1st, okay, just since April 1st, 40 people have been killed there, including a seven-year-old little

black girl named Jazlyn Adams. She was in a car in a a drive-thru, and at McDonald's, and she was struck by multiple gunshots. The police found 45, 45 spent shell casings outside of her car, 28 from one gun, 17 from another at the scene. I'm sorry, but where are the protests there? Where is the attention there? She's not yet a household name. Why not? In just the first three months of 2021, there have been 706 shooting victims in Chicago and 131 murders in the first three months. Chicago recently had one day of 18 homicides, largest for a city on record.

The cops there have been shot at 21 times so far, just the first three months. It was only nine this time last year. Only nine cops had been shot at in the first three months of last year. Now it's 21 times. Two cops have committed suicide there. Four cops shot in the line of duty. They've had to add clinicians there to help cops on the force because there are so many murders. Their lives are on the line every day. They're seeing little kids like little Jaslyn wind up dead in the drive-thru. And yet they're told by every media outlet, CNN and MSNBC and others, that they're the

bad guys. The cops are the bad guys. And that's where our focus needs to be. And it's not just Chicago, by the way, the major U S cities have seen a 33% rise in homicides over the last year, New York city shootings are up 50%, 50 year over year, LA homicides are up 36%. Houston, Memphis, some of the largest surges in homicides in the country year over year in Baltimore, a crime ridden city. The police commissioner said, Hey, some of the largest surges in homicides in the country year over year. In Baltimore, a crime-ridden city, the police commissioner said, hey, good news. We actually did okay this year in terms of the rise in homicide rate because we didn't have the terrible protests. Our protests here were mostly peaceful. So we didn't have to divert

our law enforcement to go cover rabble-rousers rioting. So they got to cover crime-ridden areas and our homicide rate did not see a spike. The bad news is we still had 335 homicides here in Baltimore last year versus 348 in 2019. You see the problem? You get it? Still, what we're told, it's about bad cops. Bad cops are the problem, a bad justice system. And what happens is race hustlers jump on cases and lie to the public just to advance the narrative that the justice system is broken and America is bad. America is a racist country. Remember Jacob Blake? He was unarmed. That's what the media told us. It was a lie. Jacob Blake had a knife and he admitted it to Michael Strahan on ABC. Go ahead and check the

tape. And now we're seeing the same thing because the media, they don't learn. The people who exploit these criminal cases, which were never going to stop in a free country, you're always going to have criminality. But those who want to exploit them to push their own agendas refuse to learn or get honest. And Benjamin Crump is just the latest example. Right. He's been representing the George Floyd family. And now he's out there tweeting. And I'm going to quote now, as we breathed a collective sigh of relief today, a community in Columbus, referring now to Ohio, a different case, felt the sting of another police shooting as Columbus police killed an unarmed 15-year-old black girl named Micaiah Bryant, another child, another hashtag. Unarmed, he says, trying to gin up racial resentment, hatred for the cops.

But it's a lie. It's a lie. It's not true. And the police in Columbus released a tape showing what happened in that case. And you can see Micaiah Bryant with a knife in her right hand attacking another young woman. The police officer there shot her in defense of others, in defense of the other young woman who was about to get stabbed. So you can see the pattern of deception about Michael Brown, about Freddie Gray. By the way, all officers there exonerated or charges dropped by black law enforcement agents. All right. So they lie about Brown. They lie about Gray. They lie about

Micaiah Bryant. They lie about Jacob Blake because the narrative must be supported no matter how many facts disprove it. What's happening in this country right now is about more than the criminal justice system, which is not in the midst of an epidemic of killing unarmed Black men. It is about political power. These agenda-driven far-left Democrats see a chance to stoke racial division and get votes, votes in cities that have been Democratic-run for decades, and many of which are in shambles politically and have homicide rates that cannot be explained without some accountability. Identity politics proponents and these dishonest woke warriors see a chance to assign victimhood and oppressor status on sweeping, totally unfair, and unfactual levels. Cops are bad. Defendants, black defendants

in particular, good. Whites, bad. BIPOC, right, but black indigenous people of color, good. Without looking into the facts, it's absurd. They can be good, they can be bad, all of them. Cops, defendants, what have you. Right now, we have a debt that's skyrocketing. We have a crisis at the southern border. We have unemployment at 6%, and they're debating reparations so that one generation that had nothing to do with slavery can pay reparations to a generation that may or may not be descended from slaves at all. We have critical race theory infiltrating the schools, and a great detriment to young minds and young friendships that are blossoming in a very natural and holistic and beautiful way between kids of all races, but it's being interrupted.

We've got pushes still to defund the police. Defund the police when the polls show that 81% of black people want more or the same level of police in their communities, not less, not less. My only comfort in all of this is people like Charles Barkley, right? Remember Charles Barkley saying the other day that these politicians, he sees how they exploit the news. They want to divide us by skin color. They want to race war. People get it. Despite a manipulative, deceptive media and people who are in front of the microphones who shouldn't be like Maxine Waters. People get it.

And I think that's why support for groups like Black Lives Matter is down. Support for law enforcement is up. It's up since George Floyd. Americans are smart. They will figure it out. The system's not perfect, but it's the best we have. And it is working.

It is working. You just have to believe in it. And you have to have a healthy dose of skepticism and taking in your information from what you know are biased, unfair sources. All right, we're going to get to Alan Dershowitz and to our legal dream team, Mark Eichlarge and Arthur Aydala in one second. But first this. Professor, good morning. How are you? Very good, Megan. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. So I've been listening to your podcast and I have a general feel for your reaction to this verdict. But now with a day or so, half a day behind us,

how do you see what happened yesterday in Minneapolis? Well, I agree with the president of the United States when he said that the jury, I'm quoting him, the jury who heard the evidence carried out their civic duty in the midst of an extraordinary moment under extraordinary pressure. Those are the words of the president of the United States. And he was right. Every single mayor, every single police chief knew that if there were a verdict other than murder in this case, there would be riots, there would be burning, and there would probably be deaths. The trial judge recognized that when he condemned Congresswoman Waters for intruding onto the trial and saying that it would give appellate issues to the defense. We cannot be confident that these jurors

were not influenced by the fear of riots and violence on the street. This verdict has been tainted by outside influence and by the threat and fear that what went on outside the courtroom may have seeped into the courtroom. So I believe that ultimately the Supreme Court of the United States may well take this case as an important once a decade or once a generation case to set out the rules for what must happen when you have very, very racially divided and emotional and charged cases with a lot of demonstrations outside of the courtroom. The judge in this case refused to isolate the jury, and he made a big mistake by doing that. He refused to move the case out of Minneapolis. He refused to postpone the case. So I think there is a chance, significant in my view, but not certain, that the conviction in this case ultimately will be reversed by an appellate court, probably the United States Supreme Court, unlikely the Minnesota state appellate courts. Wow. And just to fill in the blank there, we talked about this another

time you were on the show. The city announced that it had entered into a settlement agreement with George Floyd's family for $27 million on the eve of trial. So, I mean, that was yet another reason why Derek Chauvin's lawyer had said, I want to mistrial or I certainly want to change of venue. They wanted the jury sequestered, none of which was allowed. The jury was anonymous, which sent the message to them, you have something to be afraid of. And then on the eve of their deliberations, profiles of them were published in local newspapers without their names. But anybody could easily identify them if they knew them. That added to the pressure of the jurors. So it's inconceivable to me that at least some jurors didn't know that their verdict might

influence what went on outside the courtroom after their verdict was delivered. And their own safety might be endangered if they came to a verdict other than the one that Congresswoman Waters wanted, that is, for the top count of second-degree murder. The thumb of outside influence may well have been on the scales of justice in this case. We cannot be confident that this verdict was untainted by outside influences. What she did, what Maxine Waters did was disgusting. And it was a complete travesty of her obligation as a sitting U.S. congresswoman. It's it comes on the heels of a long line of inappropriate comments by her stirring up violence, which she and her buddy Nancy Pelosi now just dismiss as, oh, you know, we were just talking about

confrontation and confrontation is a good thing. And it's American as apple pie. And, you know, it's what we use in the civil rights movement. It depends. Right, Maxine? Because some of those people who went who stormed the Capitol used words like that. You had a very different reaction. But let's just for people who didn't actually hear the Maxine Waters statement, let's play it so people know what we're talking about. What should protesters do? Well, we've got to stay on the street and we've got to get more active. We've got to get more confrontational.

We've got to make sure that they know that we mean business. Make sure they know we mean business and get confrontational. This is before the verdict came out. It was obviously an attempt to influence. And she wants to see she wanted to see riots in the street if she didn't get just the right verdict, murder, a guilty verdict on murder. And she got what she wanted. Well, the important thing is not how I interpret it, you interpret it, or even Nancy Pelosi

interpret it. The important thing is how the police chiefs interpreted it. And the police chiefs clearly understood the message for what it was. If there is a verdict other than murder, there will be riots and violence. And that's why police chiefs all over the United States were standing ready. That's why the president prayed for the right verdict, because he wanted to make sure there were no riots and no demonstrations. That's why the president said the jury performed under extraordinary pressure, pressure from people like Maxine Waters. And let's remember the playbook from which she was borrowing. Look, Maxine Waters wants justice. She's not the

Ku Klux Klan. She's the opposite of the Ku Klux Klan. But in the 1920s and 30s, we saw demonstrations like this outside of courtrooms in the Deep South with political leaders, congresspeople, mayors, ministers standing in front of courthouses demanding that black defendants be convicted and white defendants be acquitted, threatening violence unless that result was occurred. And the Supreme Court of the United States and other courts reversed convictions. The Supreme Court reversed the conviction in the famous Shepard case, argued by F. Lee Bailey, his first case, the case that led to the TV series The Fugitive. So the Supreme Court, every few generations, steps in and says, enough's enough. And I think

the Supreme Court should step into this case when it gets to it and say, enough's enough. And I think the Supreme Court should step into this case when it gets to it and say, look, when you have a situation like this, the Constitution requires sequestration of juries. The Constitution requires that the case be moved out of urban centers where the violence could occur. The Constitution requires that it be postponed until the passions have cooled. There are constitutional limits because the last thing we want are jury verdicts influenced by outside sources, where the thumb of the crowd, in this case the elbow, is on the scales of justice. And it's spreading. The demonstrations yesterday moved to Brooklyn Center, where there are efforts to try to railroad Kim Potter. She is totally innocent. She did nothing that is

criminal at all. She's the woman who accidentally pulled out her revolver instead of the taser and shot somebody. Now, that's an accident. Accidents are not criminal if they're honest mistakes. And yet there will be pressure to convict her of manslaughter. And if she's not convicted, which she probably won't be if there's a fair jury, there will again be threats of violence and demonstrations. Our jury system is under siege by identity politicians and by people who see the jury system as part and parcel of a referendum on whether there's racial justice in America. That's not the appropriate function of the jury in American jurisprudence. That is so well said. That's what's so infuriating about what she did before the jury went in. They absolutely had access to what she said and the implicit threat

in there. And it's one of the reasons why Andy McCarthy is saying she doesn't have immunity against Minnesota's criminal laws against obstruction of justice. She ought to be under investigation. And he doesn't think that President Biden was OK making his what he called stunning public statement that he's praying for Chauvin to be convicted just because the jury had gone into sequestration for its deliberations by the time Biden got Biden basically said, I can make my statement now the jury is sequestered. But still, it is a thumb or an elbow on the scale. And the thought that the jury may have absolutely no access to their phones or to any outside information. We don't know whether or not that's true. It's there was no need for Biden to do it.

There certainly was no need for Maxine Waters to do it. But what do you make of Annie McCarthy's thought that Maxine Waters should not be given a pass for this? She ought to be under investigation. I don't agree. I think that she had a First Amendment right to say what she did, just as the president, President Trump, had the First Amendment right to say what he did. I don't think we want criminal- Well, but he thinks obstruction of justice. That's what he's saying. But I don't think that obstruction of justice trumps the First Amendment. She had the right to say what she did, and she was wrong to exercise that right. We don't have to make something criminal or an obstruction of justice to criticize it. I criticize very strongly what

Maxine Waters said. I don't have the same level of criticism against President it. I criticized very strongly what Maxine Waters said. I don't have the same level of criticism against President Biden. He was careful to make sure that he didn't say it until the jury was sequestered. Now, remember, the jury not only was not sequestered when Maxine Waters made her statement, they weren't even adequately cautioned. They were told not to watch the news. Well, nobody watches the news anymore. That's not where people get their news or information. They're on social media. They hear TV shows that are not the news, commentary shows. They speak to their friends. They speak to their family. There is no way of assuring that this jury, at least some of them, did not learn about Maxine Waters' threats, the threats of Al Sharpton, the threats of lawyer Crump, the threats of other people,

that there will be violence, threats that were taken seriously by police chiefs and mayors all over the country. The very idea that mayors understood the threat, that police chiefs understood the threat, but that jurors somehow did not, just belies reality. And so I do not have confidence that this verdict represented merely an assessment of the law and the facts. It may have, but I have no confidence that it necessarily did and that outside influences didn't influence the jury, if not on guilt and innocence, on the level of guilt. After all, the charges of second-degree murder and third-degree murder were very questionable in this case. And manslaughter was a very strong case. But remember, they didn't convict only of

manslaughter. They convicted of the very questionable offenses of second- and third-degree murder under pressure, the president said, under extraordinary pressure from outside sources. And so I think this verdict is subject to very much being challenged on appeal, as the trial judge said himself. So let me ask you about that. And by the way, before we talk about the judge's comment on that, not only was the jury seeing this stuff, of course, on Twitter and elsewhere, but there was news that a pig's head had been thrown at the former home of one of the defense witnesses, a guy who had testified on use of force. A pig's head, a severed pig's head had been thrown, right? This is what's in the news and threats of violence in the town in which these jurors live.

So I thought it was fascinating that Judge Cahill, you know, known as a fair, pretty fair shooter, straight shooter, comes out and says, you know what, Maxine Waters may have just given you grounds for appeal to, you know, to get this verdict thrown out, he says to the defense lawyer, Nelson. But he wouldn't do it. But he didn't declare a mistrial. So, I mean, realistically, will appellate court have the spine that this judge didn't? Well, remember, it'll be months from now. This judge, if he had granted a mistrial, he would have been subject to all kinds of criticism. They would have blamed the riots on him.

There would have been riots. They would have blamed the riots on him instead of on Waters. So he didn't have the guts to do it. But he did have the guts to send the message. If I were the appellate lawyer in this case, I would start my brief with the statement by the trial judge, because when the trial judge says they've given you appellate issues, that's pretty powerful. I do not think the Minnesota courts will have the courage to reverse this conviction, but I do think this is one of these one-in-a-generation cases that the Supreme Court may say, look, we have to give direction to the lower courts,

the state courts, the federal courts, about how to deal with these racially charged cases, because more and more of them are going to come up and more and more defendants are going to be placed in a situation where they're going to be tried not in the courtroom, but outside the courtroom. And we have to make sure that our system of justice is not compromised by threats from outside the courthouse. Exactly. Like what, what was Derek Chauvin being judged on? Was he being judged on what happened in that nine minute tape? Or was he being judged for past sins of America and old Jim Crow justice that existed prior to the 1960s. You know, I mean, you could easily make the case that that nine minute tape did it. I understand that argument.

I watched enough of the trial to say, I get it. I get the jury's verdict and I accept the jury's verdict. But I think we all have reason to believe that there was more going against him than the actual evidence submitted before those jurors? Well, the lawyer for the family said this is a referendum on the history of American injustice toward African Americans. Trials should not be referendum. The jury has one job, to consider the admissible evidence, follow the judge's instructions, apply the law to the facts, and decide whether every element of each offense was established beyond a reasonable doubt. And they have to do that without the thumb on the scale of justice. And here we had

a big, big thumb, maybe even an elbow, on the scale of justice that influenced, or at least may have influenced, the jury verdict, not necessarily on guilt and innocence. That issue was pretty well established by the prosecution. I think they did prove causation beyond a reasonable doubt. I don't think that will be an issue on appeal. But second degree murder is simply not applicable in this case. Can I explain that why? Yeah. Let me explain why. Second degree murder in Minnesota is felony murder. Now, what the court said is the underlying felony in this case could be assault. Now, think about the implications of that. It means that every killing, every unintended killing

automatically becomes felony murder because virtually every killing involves an assault. You shoot somebody. You first pointed the gun at them. That is an assault. You then pulled the trigger. That constitutes a battery. And that's why virtually every court in the United States has ruled that assault cannot be an underlying felony for felony murder. They've developed something called the merger rule. If the felony itself merges into the killing the way assault always merges into killing, that's not felony murder. For felony murder, you need an independent felony. You're robbing a bank. The gun drops on the floor. It shoots. It kills somebody. That's felony murder. Somebody's trying to engage in a rape,

puts his hands around the woman's throat. He inadvertently strangles her to death. That's felony murder. But assault is not the basis for felony murder in most jurisdictions. Academics have been teaching that. Courts have been ruling that. The American Law Institute has said that. And Minnesota should follow that law, that you cannot have felony murder based on an assault, which is so integrally related to the death itself, that it's not an independent felony. Well, I think I agree with you that they did get the causation evidence they needed for a conviction and instruction and jury instruction saying it didn't have hit the knee on the neck

or the back, which it was both, did not have to be the sole cause of George Floyd's death. And that was that was very key to causation. And I agree that the case was overcharged and that the jury was under massive pressure, especially just given how horrific the tape looked to come to, quote, the right, you know, right in quotes, decision to appease their their the people who they live next to their town to save the businesses, to save their homes. And that's one of the reasons why it should have been moved. Although. But let me just ask you, because the argument on the other side is, where could you have moved it that a group of jurors would not have been aware of the tape of the George Floyd protests of the massive riots, the Black Lives Matter eruptions that we had over the summer, all as a result of this case. You couldn't find a jury not tainted, so might as well just leave it in the town in which it happened. No, because the town in which it happened is the town in which the demonstrations, the riots, the violence, and the burning would occur. If you moved it to a more rural area and you postponed it six months, the passions would have abated somewhat. It would have been harder to bring large crowds right outside the courtroom.

The threats wouldn't have been as immediate to where the jurors live and where they are located. You'd never get a perfect jury in a case like this. That's why you have to aim not for perfection, but for improvement. That's why sequestering the jury was so important. And the combination of an anonymous jury telling the jury, you have something to worry about, coupled with non-sequestration was, I think, a deadly combination for due process and justice in this case, which is why I think the court should seriously consider whether the trial judge erred, particularly in not sequestering the jury. In almost every other case that I know

of like this, juries are sequestered. Now, it's difficult to sequester a jury. It's expensive. It's cumbersome, etc. And look, I agree with you, too. I have no brief for Derek Chauvin. What he did was unacceptable. What he did was wrong. What he did was morally obnoxious, terrible, and probably criminal. But it was not second-degree murder, and it was not third-degree murder. It was almost certainly manslaughter. And when you have a jury being told that if they come to the correct verdict, manslaughter, there will be riots in the street, and it will be their fault, that's not justice. That's submission to crowd passion. And that's the opposite of the rule of law.

Let's talk now about what happens to him next, because he's been found guilty of all three charges. So what does that mean in terms of sentencing? What kind of sentence he'll be facing? faces the maximum sentence for the highest charge, which is 40 years. But under the guidelines, he would probably get less because he hasn't been previously convicted. But there is a concept in Minnesota law called aggravation. And if the judge finds that he engaged in aggravating circumstances, he could raise it above the presumptive sentence. So I suspect he'll get a sentence in the range of 25 years, and the sentences will be concurrent. That is, he'll get three sentences, one on each. The reason they give him three separate sentences is if the conviction is reversed on the murder charge or on the other charge, then at least it will be upheld on the manslaughter charge. And if he gets a concurrent sentence on the manslaughter charge, now the sentence on manslaughter can't be more than 10 years, at least that sentence will survive.

So he'll probably get something like a 20 or 25 year sentence for the top charge, maybe a 15 year sentence for the third degree murder and a 10 year sentence for the manslaughter. And that will all be challenged on appeal. And I predict that the courts will take seriously some of the issues on this appeal. This case is not over. Andrew McCarthy is absolutely right that people like Congresswoman Waters created, exacerbated, increased the chances of appellate reversal in this case. So I think we're going to see and hear more. And if the case is reversed a year from now, eight months from now, in the Supreme Court, two years from now, there'll still be passions and there'll still be demonstrations, but not as extreme as there would have been had there been a verdict other than murder last night in this case. Do you know, like historically, Alan, would he go, would Chauvin go into Gen Pop, into the Gen Pop prison population, you know, a cop in this kind of circumstance?

No, no, he'll be put in a special isolation. Cops get special isolation. It's not the solitary confinement, but there are special areas in most prisons for cops, for informers, for people who committed certain kinds of crimes. He will not be put in the general population. He may want to be in the general population because you get more exercise, you get more visiting time, et cetera, but he'll be treated specially because of his status as a policeman and because of the profile of his case. And now what happens, in your view, to the other cops, the other three cops who have been charged similarly with aiding and abetting murder? They have yet to be tried. Now, you know, this isn't a good omen, but what do you think happens to them?

Well, I think that their lawyers will make motions to delay and to move the case. Their lawyers will make a motion for a sequestered jury. It'd be interesting to see if the trial judge in this second case sequesters the jury. That will send a very interesting message about what the first judge did. What I don't know, I'm not sure, is whether the case will be tried in front of the same judge or whether it'll be a different judge, probably a different judge, but whether that judge will follow the sequestration decision of the first judge. Judges tend to kind of cover each other's backs and don't want to create appellate issues. So maybe the judge will rule in the same way.

Don't know. But there will be a trial. And what worries me very much, even more than that is, as I've mentioned, the Kim Potter case where she did absolutely nothing criminal and she's already been railroaded by being charged by a highly politicized attorney general in the state of Minnesota. And she will be a scapegoat for other things. Here's a woman with a 20s... Let's just remind the audience what she did, that case, if they haven't been paying attention to that. Yeah, the guy who was stopped,

we're not sure of the circumstances. He was under indictment for a serious attempted robbery, armed robbery. And we don't know how much she knew about the circumstances, but he was trying to get back in the car to run away, which he did, succeeded in starting the car and driving away, even though he was shot. And she pulled out what she thought was her taser, and she yelled three times, taser, taser, taser, fired it. Then she said, holy SH, I shot him. The evidence seems overwhelming and indisputable that she made an honest,

tragic, horrible, horrible mistake. The manslaughter statute simply doesn't cover that kind of conduct. And yet the crowd is pressuring for a conviction in this case, and they're not going to let up until they get one. And this is going to be a test case, because unlike Chauvin, where there was evidence of a manslaughter here, there is no evidence whatsoever of any criminal conduct. And yet, let me ask you about that. Let me ask you. So that, so the argument on her, cause I am interested in that case. It's all on camera. You can see her horror as she realizes she's fired a gun instead of a taser. She'd been on the force 20 plus years. This is not some newbie.

And will the argument on getting to gross negligence to the point of recklessness and getting into manslaughter be she should have realized at some point you have to touch your gun. You have to realize there's a difference between the feel of a taser and a gun. You presumably had to let the safety release the safety on the gun. I don't, actually, to tell you the truth, what she had to do to fire. But won't that be the argument that it was grossly negligent to the point of recklessness for her to not understand that the weapon in her hand that she was firing repeatedly was, in fact, a firearm? That's not the criteria under a manslaughter statute.

She has to have known, known that what she was doing was reckless. If she honestly believed that she was firing a taser and that the firing of a taser was legitimate under the circumstances to stop a fleeing felon, then that's not manslaughter. You can't have manslaughter for a mere, mere accident. That's just not criminal. There has to be culpability. And the level of negligence required requires a knowledge of facts, which would lead you to know that what you were doing was reckless. And if she honestly believed that she was pulling out her taser, that's simply not a crime in any jurisdiction and any Western democracy. You just don't make things like that a crime. You have to know what you're doing. You have to get behind the seat of a car

knowing you're drunk. You don't intend to kill, but you know you're drunk. You know you've had too much to drink. You have to know something that would lead you to conclude that what you're doing is reckless. In her own mind, what she was doing was exactly what she was supposed to do under good police practice. She made a tragic mistake. She should have been suspended from the police force. She should be required to have extensive training before she's allowed to use a gun again to make sure she never makes a mistake like that again. But what she did is simply not criminal. I've heard some people, some libertarians I respect, say in the wake of these shootings we've seen, you know,

do the cops really need to be arresting so many people? Do they do they need to arrest the guy who passed a $20 counterfeit bill, which is what George Floyd was accused of doing. Do they need to, you know, pull over the 20 year old guy who Kim Potter shot, who, you know, may have had some minor violations, at least when they pulled him over. That's what they thought. There's a push now. We've seen it on tape. We've seen like there was a famous clip of a CBS clerk getting shamed for calling the cops on two black shoplifters. A woman taped him shaming him, saying, how dare you? You're putting their lives at risk by calling the police on these shoplifters. Meanwhile, it's like some low level clerk who's just trying to follow CVS policy. But what do you make of this growing push of like the responsibility now is on people not

to report these lower level crimes and or on police not to arrest folks for committing them. Well, for 50 years, maybe 60, I've been pushing for decriminalization and for not arresting people for minor crimes. Obviously, George Floyd should never have been arrested. He should have been given a ticket and should have been told he has to show up at court in a month from now, taking his address, taking his ID. The same thing should have happened for the guy who was stopped for having an air refreshener in the back of his car or whatever the reason was. Absolutely correct. We should be arresting fewer people. We should be having fewer police confrontations.

And if that kind of reform grows out of this case, it would be a major development. We ought to be decriminalizing a lot of things that are now criminal. Look, it started with that terrible case in Staten Island where a person died having been arrested for selling untaxed cigarettes. Whoever gets arrested for that, you get arrested for that if you're African-American. There is this system. People who look like me and you don't get arrested for minor offenses. We get tickets, we get warned, we get, if we're young, our parents get called. And if you're black, the most, you're much more likely to get arrested, much more likely to be treated improperly. All of those are proper, proper issues to be raised, but you cannot raise them inside a jury room in a particular case involving a particular defendant standing trial for a particular crime. To everything, there's a season, and we must reform the criminal law. We must make police better. We must give them more non-lethal weapons. That's what's so wrong with the Kim Potter case. She

thought she was using the non-lethal weapon. That's what we want them to do. And yet she made a tragic mistake. So yes, all these reforms are necessary. And people like, people like Chauvin should never be on any police force in the United States. But there's a big difference between moral guilt and criminal guilt, and a big difference between moral guilt and criminal guilt and a big difference between manslaughter guilt and murder guilt. And for our criminal justice system to remain the rule of law, we have to make those calibrated differences and not allow outside pressures to be brought into the courtroom. You know, criminal defense lawyers always say, if you throw a skunk in the jury box, you can take the skunk out, but you can't remove the smell.

The air of violence was in that jury room. The jury could not escape the fact that they had to know, the president knew, the mayors knew, everybody knew, that if they convicted on anything less than murder, they would be causing violence that could come back and affect them, their families, their children, their friends these tapes on loop as representative of, in this instance, cops writ large in a way that's very misrepresentative of what actually happens on the street with impunity. Let me tell you, I watched this trial alternately on CNN and Court TV. It was like you were watching two different trials. CNN didn't do the trial. They were cheerleaders. They were cheerleaders. They had everybody cheering and cheering. Their

legal analysts didn't know what they were talking about. Their legal analysts were not analysts. They were totally cheerleaders with one or two exceptions. Court TV, on the other hand, reported it relatively straight. If you watched it on CNN, you would think this was an open and shut case. There's no issue. There's no possible appellate issues. There's no, that's the difference between second degree, third degree. All they were doing was cheering for the right verdict, the way they were cheering for the impeachment of Donald Trump, cheering for many other things. CNN has stopped being a news center. It's become a cheerleader center. And it's too bad because they have some very good journalists, but the journalists have been told in no uncertain terms that they have a mission, they have a mandate.

And so when you watch CNN, you don't get an analysis out of the facts. You get a result oriented cheerleader squad for a particular result. And that's really hurting America. You know, Walter Cronkite couldn't get a job today on a major network because he's too fair. He's too objective. He's not one sided enough. He's not a cheerleader. And there's something terribly wrong with the way the media reports these trials. And it could leave if there had been a verdict less than murder.

CNN would be partly responsible for the violence that ensued because the viewers of CNN would say, oh, my God, this was such a miscarriage of justice to get a conviction on manslaughter. It would have been a just result, but not if you watch CNN. It's so true. I'm so glad to hear you say that about Court TV, because I confess to you, that's where I went for my information on this. I couldn't find anybody on television that I felt was nonpartisan. They all had something they were rooting for. And I like that guy, Vinny Palatine. He was good the first time Court TV was on, and he's still good. And they had some great reporting from the ground there. And I did think it was very fair. It was right down the middle. And that's hard to do in a case that's this charged. Now, I realize Court TV's got like four viewers and you and I

are two of them, but they did a good job. And if you are committed to being fair, it's actually not that hard. Well, it's hard if you want to sell soap today. And obviously, the networks have made a decision that they don't want to sell their advertising by having fair, neutral assessment, because everybody belongs in a silo today, and they want to appeal to the silo. They want to appeal to people who want a particular outcome. And that's why CNN has generally been wrong in making predictions about outcomes of cases. They were right about this one, but they've been wrong about many, many others because they substitute wishful thinking for careful, objective analysis. And we do see it on the right, too. I mean, I've certainly been listening to certain

podcasts and others predicting there's no way he could be convicted. This is a very uphill battle for the prosecution. And I know you and I have I've been on the same page saying it. No, not not really. This is actually a pretty decent manslaughter conviction. And we both had reservations about murder, too, but could see it happening. Indeed, it has. And now it's where I guess it needs to be, which is in the hands of the appellate courts, or soon will be, who will make a hopefully more reasoned, cooler-headed decision about whether that charge belonged in this case to begin with. Alan Dershowitz, I'm so, so grateful to have you in my life on this podcast. And as an advisor, I treasure our conversations. Thank you for being here.

Well, I do too. Thank you so much. You are a real beacon of light in a very, very dark world. And so please keep telling everybody the truth and keep doing what you're doing. Our thanks to Professor Alan Dershowitz. And up next, our legal dream team, Mark Eichlarsch and Arthur Aydala. They got a lot of thoughts. Gets a little feisty in a great way. Love these guys. They're next.

Hey, guys. How's it going? It's going well. I was a little nauseating watching TV last night, but, you know, all of a sudden, George Floyd is the greatest hero that's ever walked the planet Earth. Right? Easy. Easy, Arthur.

Easy. Yeah, I know. I know. Everyone forgot he put a gun to a pregnant woman, but that's what's cool. No, it's true. The fact that they're naming a square after George Floyd's square. They're naming legislation after him. They're naming all kinds of stuff.

I mean, 100 years from now, he's going to be the next Rosa Parks. It's ridiculous. I mean, honestly, no one's defending what Derek Chauvin did to George Floyd, no one other than Eric Nelson, his defense lawyer. But this is what Candace Owens has been complaining about. She's like, why must we hold up people who find themselves in these situations and lionize them as though there's in any way representative of the black community, right? And it wasn't, here's, do we have this? We have the Kamala Harris soundbite, guys, we have this. We are all a part of George Floyd's legacy. And our job now is to honor it and to honor him.

Got it, Arthur? You're a part of George Floyd's legacy and you need to honor him. Listen, you know who I honored last night, Megan? I left my office in Midtown Manhattan late last night, and there was literally two police officers on every corner of Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. And I honored every one of those police officers. Every block I walked, I went to each corner. The majority of them were African-American police officers. And I think the majority of them were women. And I went over, I was like, thank you.

Hey guys, thank you. Thank you for what you do. Cause I know last night was a really rough night for them all over the television. It made it seem like every police officer on the planet earth is, is Derek Chauvin, who look, it was the right verdict. It's a good thing that he's going to jail period. Amen. But this is not, in my opinion,

it's not an indictment on every single police officer in the United States of America. Of course not. And most of them really were repulsed by his actions. And so this was, this is what they wanted as well. Makes them look bad. What do you think, Mark? I mean, what do you think of the second degree murder conviction? I think that it was appropriate. I think that they could make the finding that when he continued to kneel on his neck, he was committing an assault and he was clearly the, uh, a substantial cause of that death. And, and Megan, I, you know, the question is why, you know, I had this discussion with my 14 year old son. Well, dad, do you think that he meant to kill him? And I said, no. And the jury didn't find that,

that it wasn't his intent to do so. So then we analyzed it. And I really don't think this is being talked about as much. I believe that it was all about ego. I believe that he stayed on the neck because people told him to get off. If they had said to him, keep kneeling on his neck, you're killing him. Please do so. Please kill that guy. I think his ego would have done the opposite. I agree with Mark a hundred percent. The prosecutor said that in, I don't remember if it was the initial summation or the rebuttal summation, but when he said it, I was like, you know what? That's it. I didn't really, I didn't put it together, but I'm said it he's like you know what that's it i didn't really i didn't put it together but i'm like that's it he has all of these people in his mind civilians pedestrians

whatever you want to call them telling him what to do and hey i'm a cop for all these years screw you you kids aren't going to tell me what the hell to do and how to do my job and i agree with mark 100 obviously not blaming thestanders, but I think if they weren't there, if that was in an isolated alleyway, George Floyd would be alive today. He would have gotten him down, calmed him down and he would have gotten off his neck. I said it before, I'll say it again. Chauvin's ego was not his amigo. It had a bigger wind up. I thought it was going to be more profound than that. That's good.

I like it. But I think you're right. And, you know, they kicked off the trial with an argument the lawyers did really about whether the bystanders were heroes or zeros to take a page out of Mark's book. And not to blame them at all, but I do think that the crowd was ultimately not a force for good. Yes, having the videotape probably changed the outcome of this. I don't think we would have seen a conviction of Derek Chauvin without that tape. But I also think having them there shouting at him and upping the ante and creating more tension on the scene ultimately proved very dangerous and very detrimental for George

Floyd. Yes, Megan, but that's not, I'm not, I don't think that you're saying this, but that's not on them. They're doing what humans do. This is all on his ego. In other words, you can't in any way blame or suggest that they did anything improper. It was his reaction to them that determined his fate and the fate of Floyd. They didn't do anything wrong. And don't dismiss the value of that videotape. Absent that videotape, attorneys like Arthur would have had an acquittal across the board. You know, I would love to disagree with both of you. I hope you're both wrong. I would like to think that if you have all of those witnesses, including a nine-year-old girl, if they could validate her ability to testify, you have eight people, nine people testifying, an EMS worker, a woman who actually did testify.

If they're all going in front of a jury saying, I don't know how long it was exactly, but it was forever. It seemed like it was forever. I would love to think that there would be a conviction here. And this isn't just because you're a phenomenal lawyer, Arthur, without that video, I think even a mediocre lawyer can create reasonable doubt. Look at the statistics on how rare it is to convict a white cop who is, you know, who murdered, a black or a person of color. It's never happened. This is the first time in Minnesota history

a white cop was convicted of killing a black civilian on the job. And Megan, it's also the first time I think we've ever seen a video of a cop literally ending the life of someone before our eyes. That's what it takes. Unfortunately, that's not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. That's like beyond all doubt because you're seeing it with your own eyes. Well, I agree with you. I don't think there would have been a conviction without the tape. And so and I do not mean to blame the crowd. I'm just talking about the dynamic, the realistic dynamic of how police react when confronted with angry mobs, even whether the

whether the anger is justifiable or not. And then I do think there was ego involved in there. I think you're right. I think, uh, the more they told him what they wanted him to do. And you know, the EMT lady is one of the best examples. Like I'm an EMT, let me in there. He doesn't know who she is. He's not going to be bossed around by this civilian. As far as he knows, he's like, step back or you're about to get maced lady. Um, but I don't know, guys, I have to tell you, I have real questions about the second degree. I just think that that required a level of proof. I just don't think we got there. I do think it was criminal recklessness. I don't know about it. I don't know about second degree.

It's the second four minutes. In other words, there's four minutes where George Floyd is struggling. And then there's four minutes where he's absolutely motionless. And I think that's the four minutes that it goes from being a reasonable police officer acting reasonably under the circumstances to he now has breached his duty. He's going against the policy. And now it's just a straight up assault. He's straight up just hurting someone. I think from a legal legal point of view, the murder three, which was the charge that the trial judge threw out because he said that's not applicable here. And then the appellate court basically shoved back down his throat is the one that's

a little bit more sketchy because the typical example of that is someone driving a car into Times Square on New Year's Eve. It's supposed to be something, even though you're not trying to kill an individual, you know it could cause the death of another. That's why the trial judge said, no, this isn't a murder three case. But the appellate court said, no, we allowed it to be used against another police officer. So you have to allow it to be used against this police officer. Well, that's why they're not, if you're Eric Nelson, you're not feeling real good about appealing your murder three conviction because the appellate court has already said, yep, that charge applies here. And so now that the jury has said and he's guilty of it, I feel like they have the lowest chance of reversing the conviction on that. You know, his main grounds, you tell me, I think it's going to be the it's going to be you didn't sequester the jury.

You didn't move the jury. You had loudmouths like Maxine Waters coming out there, you know, basically suggesting that there should and would be violence if the jury didn't come to what she viewed as the right decision and that he was unfairly prejudiced as a result of all that. Yeah, that's going to go nowhere. I mean, their best argument is that, right, that you you equate it to that. Sarnavia, as I can't pronounce his name, but the Boston bombing case where a federal appeals court overturned the death sentence ruling that there was just an avalanche of pretrial publicity and the judge didn't do what he was supposed to. But that didn't happen here. You know, jurors are allowed to be exposed prior to the jury trial beginning to an avalanche of pretrial publicity. They can even have publicity

in their faces, people with pitchforks outside. But if their decision is made exclusively based upon the evidence, and Lord knows with that video, there's enough for the appellate court to say, yeah, they made it based upon the evidence. I don't think it goes anywhere. Yeah, I agree, Megan. I think it's got to be more like a Bill Cosby situation, where a judge let in so much evidence that it was think, I think it's gotta be more like a Bill Cosby situation where a judge let in so much evidence that it was very questionable about whether it's, you know, evidence that should have been heard here. The judge did just the opposite. You know, I, I, I heard it was on television last time.

And someone was saying, Oh, I don't know about this judge. He seems very conservative. He wouldn't let in all these prior bad acts by the police officer. Well, guess what? That's the evidence. Like you're not supposed to bring in prior bad acts unless they're under certain circumstances, specific circumstances. So, you know, I, I, I didn't watch every second of the trial, but I did see a lot of it.

And I thought judge Cahill, I think he did a very good job. I think he was, he set a good example for the country of what a judge should be, how a judge should interfere when the judge should back off. He basically let both sides try their case. I was surprised, Mark, by the lack of objections on both sides. They were far and few between. Put it that way.

I think the defense attorney knew where this is headed. But, Megan, it'll bother me if I don't try to help you out with one of the issues you raised. OK, so let's go back. You're you are you're you're out with one of the issues you raised. Okay, so let's go back. No, you are. You're a little troubled with the second degree murder. And I just want to talk about it with you for just one second. Okay, let's talk it out.

Okay. Okay. So I know in your numerous hours on TV and radio that you've spoken about murder cases where you've told people, look, premeditation, for example, can be formed in an instant, right? Where somebody maybe didn't want to kill someone, but then in aitation, for example, can be formed in an instant, right? Where somebody, you know, maybe didn't want to kill someone, but then in a second they go, you know, I'm going to reach in over there for that gun and I'm going to walk across the house maybe and get that knife and I'm going to now going to kill someone. So now you've got premeditation, right? So similarly, assault, the mindset, the mens rea of, do I want to commit an assault on

this person? That could be formed in an instant, right? In this case, you actually had minutes where it was brought to his attention. You're kneeling on this man. He's not resisting. And then he makes the conscious intent to continue to remain on his neck. He is committing an assault. It's either lawful or it's not. It's either justified or it's not. And if it's not, He is committing an assault. It's either lawful or it's not. It's either justified or it's not. And if it's not, you are committing an assault on this man. And in doing so, OK, I now I appreciate that perspective, but I think there was evidence and I accept the jury's verdict. I don't like when people you're allowed to have your thoughts about the jury's verdict,

but I don't like when people disparage the jury as, you know, being dishonest or whatever. I think the jury came to it. That's not what you're doing. Yeah. No, no, not at all. So I accept their verdict, but I just have questions with that charge because I do think there was enough evidence to show that Derek Chauvin, even on, in those last four minutes, um, was not intending to hurt George Floyd that, that he had a guy who had been resisting arrest. He had a guy who was much, much larger than he was. He had a guy who was kicking, even once he was down on the ground, a position that he had requested the police place him in. He had a crowd that he didn't trust

yelling him things about the man who was under his knee. He had a somewhat chaotic situation, and he knew that the EMTs were about to get there. I think you can make a reasonable case that it was not an intent to hurt him in those last few minutes. It was an intent to keep the situation stable until medical professionals got unseen. And I think Eric Nelson did that. I think he did that. I mean, I think he, look, you know, I know it sounds crazy for me to say this, but in my eyes, that guy's a little bit of a hero, Eric Nelson. That was not a cool job to have in the United States of America the last month. That was not a lot of fun.

Right? There was like 16 prosecutors. They called in people who are not prosecutors. They call in Mark Iglesias, a special assistant, a special assistant. They did. They called in all of these private practitioners to come in and help the whole office against Eric Nelson, where the evidence is overwhelming anyway. I mean, I got

to be honest with you. If I was an assistant in that office, I'd be pissed off. I'd be like, hold on. We're not good enough. Mr. Attorney General, you got to call in outsiders. But I think Eric Nelson did the best that he could with what he had. Well, and let me ask you this. Let me ask you guys this, because you've both been on both sides of it, criminal prosecutors and defense attorneys. What do you think the odds are that right from the get go, Eric Nelson and Derek Chauvin had a conversation in which they agreed, dude, your goose is cooked. I'll do the best I can. But this is a huge, huge uphill battle. Well, well, well, that's that's evidenced by the fact that he went over to the prosecutor and said, we'll plead guilty to, I heard, I think it was Trace Gallagher say it was to the third degree murder.

So of course, you don't have- Three days after it happened. Right. Three days after it happened, he said, I'll do 10 years in jail, but I want you to get me transferred to a federal prison, which is almost impossible. I want you to get me transferred to a federal prison where I could do my time, at least live through it. And what I read yesterday in the paper was that attorney general William Barr said, no, we're not going to house him in a federal prison. And that doesn't surprise

me. It's a jurisdictional thing. But so from, from the day, he we wanted to go in. And yesterday, before the verdict was read, he wrote down Eric Nelson Chauvin wrote down Eric Nelson's phone number on his hand. So when he went to jail, he knew what number to call his lawyer. Oh, wow. Yeah. So maybe you don't have those conversations days after an arrest, unless you know your goose is cooked. The only question was, could we possibly hang it up, meaning get one juror who might not find him guilty, or a lesser charge? Could we possibly fight for that? And I think the defense lawyer, with what he had, he did. He did a valiant job. I admire him. And the system, by the way, for those who point their finger at him,

for those who are happy that Chauvin's convicted, you can thank that defense lawyer. You must have competent counsel by his side so that there's no appeal. So you needed him to make those arguments on his behalf. verdict from people like Nancy Pelosi. I mean, it's really hard to pick who had the absolute worst reaction. But there was a sleeper candidate who I think really took the prize, who's out in California. That's all I'm going to say for now. You got to stay tuned for one more minute and we'll get to it with the guys. I'm so disgusted by the system. The system's broken. The system isn't working. The system did work. The system's working just fine. It's not perfect and it never will be, but it's damn well better than anything else that's out there. There's no improvement over what we have right now in terms of overall systems, but people never miss an opportunity to push their own agendas. And I'll give you as one example, my favorite. There's so many to choose from.

Here's my favorite. Because who we really needed to hear from was the first lady of California, the woman married to Gavin Newsom. Everyone was asking themselves, what does Jennifer Newsom think? What does this nitwit have to say about it? Does she have any background whatsoever that would make me want to hear from her? Oh, well, in case you didn't know how badly you want to hear from her, here's how she sees it. Today's verdict offers a retribution on toxic masculinity and a ray of light in the fight for racial justice. Jennifer,

shut the fuck up. That's what I have to say to Jennifer. This has nothing to do with toxic masculinity, you asshole, and you're not helping. I'm sorry, but I can't stand these people who mouth off without knowing anything in a way that's not only moronic, but just unhelpful. Well, there was a lot of that yesterday on television, a lot of that. And as I said, it was like an indictment of everything we do. Meanwhile, the system worked. I mean, I understand what Mark cited earlier about the conviction rate of police officers. Bill Bratton was on the, he was, so he was the commissioner of New York twice, Boston and LA. And thank God, because, you know, he kind of came to the defense of policing overall, but he brought up two points. And I agree with both of them. Number one, guess what, folks, we got to pay police officers more. The biggest issue is recruitment. He was telling us, he was saying it last night, they can't get people to be police officers. Number one, because look at them now, the crosshairs are

on them. But number two, they don't get enough paid enough money to raise a family. They should have higher educational standards. He said they are lowering the standards because they can't recruit enough people. And thirdly, and most importantly, the way lawyers have to do continuing legal education training every year. He said police officers should have to do continuing training every year with new techniques, using the new technology to try to protect and serve to the best way they can. They need more money, not less money, right? You take money from the police. It's not like they say, all right, let's turn in our guns, right? It's like they take away training. That's where it goes. They're not going to take away the people's weapons. And they're

going to remove police from the places that need them most, the inner cities where the crime rate is highest. You know, I was sitting here reflecting. I don't think I heard a damn thing either of you said in the last minute because I was still reflecting on what does this mean, right? Well, we should talk about Gavin Newsom's wife because that was an important one for you to hear. I didn't hear anything after you cursed twice. I just – but once I heard that, I was like, wow. That kind of changed the rules of the game for me, but okay. Right.

I know where we stand now. The greatest podcast ever. Okay. So, right? I've heard Megyn Kelly talk a long time. I've never heard those bombs. Anyway. All right. So let me get back to why I was dozing off because not dozing off, but thinking, okay. So people are saying this shows that we've got justice and the system works. And here's what, here's what's only changed. Okay. We now know this is what this case stands for

really. And I'm sorry to bum people out it stands for the proposition that there is a strong likelihood that when there's a video of the entire crime being committed that that likely the person the cop may get convicted that's it absent of video no i disagree with you mark i i disagree with you i I disagree with you. The video in and of itself, the video in and of itself really illustrates and brings to reality and the forefront

that these things do happen. And this does happen out there. And police officers do make mistakes. And there are some bad apples in the apple cart. And therefore, the next cop who goes on trial, people will think, hey, the way Chauvin

did this horrible thing, that maybe this cop who I'm judging did a horrible thing as well. I disagree. I'm going to say there's no video. There's no video. This is not like Chauvin's case you all saw. There's no video. There's no this, there's no that. And thus, there's reasonable doubt. Okay. So the videos, I think, overall are a force for good when used appropriately by the media. But they're not. They're not. They're used to exploit a narrative of the system's bad. Cops are bad. Everybody's racist. But the video, I think, for a decent officer is their friend. And that's what we're seeing in this case out of Columbus, Ohio, with this young woman, 15-year-old Micaiah Bryant, who we're being told by people like Ben Crump was unarmed and shot

by cops. And the cops went out yesterday and released the slow frame by frame. They walked us through it. And you very clearly see a knife in Micaiah Bryant's hand as she tries to attack another young woman, at which point the police officer fired. I'm in favor of more body cams, more evidence, more visuals. If you're a bad cop, you shouldn't worry about that, right? Most police commissioners are in favor of more body cams, but most police commissioners want them. They think it's best for their officers because they have the confidence in their officers' ability and their officers' integrity. And they think the body cameras are going to help them, not hurt them. Yeah. If you're a good cop, you shouldn't worry. But wait, now listen, because I want to get back to some of the reactions, which are just so absurd

and infuriating. Of course, the attorney general of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, this is not an honest broker. And he never has been. He wasn't when he was in the U.S. Congress. He isn't now. He's ultimately in charge of this case. And this this is what he had to say in the wake of yesterday's verdict. Listen to him. We have seen Rodney King, Abner Luima, Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Laquan McDonald, Stephon Clark, Atiana Jefferson, Anton Black, Breonna Taylor, and now Dante Wright and Adam Toledo.

This has to end. The work of our generation is to put an end to the vestiges of Jim Crow and the centuries of trauma and finally put an end to the vestiges of Jim Crow and the centuries of trauma and finally put an end to racism. So dishonest. So dishonest. Ten million arrests a year by the cops. At best, a thousand people killed a year by police, the vast, vast majority of whom are armed, are armed. Only a handful of unarmed defendants lose their lives to police officers. And the number last year was 14 of those were black to suggest and to list Michael Brown and Freddie Gray as examples of how how bad the system is and how it all needs to be reformed that he's a dishonest broker and no one in the

mainstream media will call him out on it. Well, well, Alan Dershowitz said he was going to resign from the Democratic Party if he was if he was elected the head of the National Democratic Party. So Alan's been been complaining about this guy forever. And it was the last thing he mentioned. Was that the 13 year old in Chicago who was killed last week, Toledo? I don't remember. But, you know, how about we have a conversation? How about we have a conversation about, number one, why is a 13-year-old out in the streets at 3 o'clock in the morning? Can we start there? And then let's take this huge leap.

Why is a 13-year-old at 3 o'clock in the morning out with a gun? I mean, can we reverse and start at the beginning? Why is this child not being supervised? He's a child, a child who shouldn't be dead. But you know what? If he was home in bed sleeping as he should have been, he'd be alive and going to school. And Dante Wright. Dante Wright is the one who was shot accidentally by this police officer, Kim Potter, who's

now been charged with manslaughter. You could see the accident unfold. In all these cases, they push a race narrative when there's zero evidence that any that Kim Potter's accident was because of the race of Dante Wright or that race played any role. In most of those cases, there's zero evidence of that. And in some of those cases, like Michael Brown and Freddie Gray, you had exonerations by either jurors or attorney generals or other finders of fact who were black. And yet the narrative must

survive. The narrative must survive. I'm not going to defend every case because they're all, you know, so different. I was going to ask you which ones you took exception to. But I get the concept. You know, if you're a if you're a black mother and you've got a black child, whether they're out and they shouldn't be out in the street or not, there is a number of injustices occurring. And I get the concept and I'm going to give him a little bit more leeway than you guys are because of the pain and the suffering. And because we know racism is still alive and we know that while it might be a small percentage, as you suggest, it's still alive and well. And I understand the thought behind what he was saying. I think it's exploitative and it's deliberately deceptive because that's the way he's lived

his life. But go ahead, Arthur. To elaborate on Mark's comments, I think what the idea is, I recently read Johnny Cochran's autobiography, which was fantastic, by the way. And, you know, but things were very different when he was doing things in the 60s and the 70s than they are today on so many levels. But I think the point is, is that if this young man was in Johnny's book is driving while black, like that was a crime, like you would just get pulled over because you were a black person.

But so they're saying that they're being harassed merely because of the color of their skin. However, the reason why I don't go for that argument is because of technology. They ran someone's license plate and they saw that there was a warrant after that person's arrest and therefore, or the registration was expired or whatever it was, but there was a legitimate violation. And that's why the person was pulled over, not because of the color of their skin, because of what the computer said that that license plate came up with. I'm not denying that there's racism in the United States

or that some cops are racist. Obviously, they're humans. We're never gonna be perfect in these regards, but the numbers don't lie. The numbers tell the story. And there is not an epidemic of cops shooting unarmed black men. Not even anything close. There is an epidemic of black-on-black violence in major cities like Chicago that continues

to go unaddressed. And of course, a double standard. You know, you've got people saying the most inane, ridiculous things about the Michael Brown verdict that if the shoe were on the other foot, if it were said by a Fox News anchor, let's say, or a Republican politician, the left would be losing its mind. And I give you as example of that, Nancy Pelosi for the win. Listen to her. So again, thank you, George Floyd, for sacrificing your life for justice, for being there to call out to your mom. How heartbreaking was that? Call out for your mom. I can't breathe. But because of you and because of thousands, millions of people around the world who came out for justice, your name will always be synonymous. Oh my God. Thanks for dying. Thanks so much for dying. Hey, as my people would say,

George Floyd is a victim. There's no doubt he's a victim period. Amen. He shouldn't have died. He shouldn't have been killed, but you know, that's, that's not, you know, he's, but he's not a hero in my opinion that's author's opinion there may be someone else who feels differently but he's a victim the guy who who victimized him is going to go to jail for a long time probably have a rough time in there you know how they're going to protect him megan they're going to make him be all alone and you know they're passing laws all over the country about them how cruel uh solitary confinement. So he's going to get his coming up. I mean, it's that that's the whatever that word is. At least I'm not cursed. At least I didn't

say a filthy word, Megan. But, you know, I just the politicians, the president, United States, the vice president, the fact that the president, United States, while the jury's deliberating or before they deliberated, said I'm praying for the right outcome. I mean, that's not how the system is supposed to work. And the judge said it. The trial judge, Cahill, said it about Maxine Waters, that basically referring to the separation of powers and that this is not a congressperson's purview to start mouthing off. Of course. But that's what Maxine Waters does. But wait, I've got to ask you about the other defendants. What do you think is going to happen now to the other cops who have been charged? I mean, does this increase the likelihood of

conviction or no? Are those still just totally separate? It certainly, first of all, increases the likelihood of them taking a plea. They are crapping right now because they see the atmosphere. They see how easy it is to convict. And they're scared. If they let them take a plea, though, Mark, they may say, nope, we want to do this whole thing again. I mean, they shouldn't if the guy is willing to admit his guilt

and serve some serious jail time. But I think each one of those is going to be... Look, there's no case that we've known of, all of us have spoken about that has had more video that have taken inches away than this case. So I think each defense attorney is going to have to look at what his client did, break it down second by second and say, look, this is a paramilitary organization. These rookies that are on the force, they can't tell a 20 year veteran, don't do this or don't do that. They'll get in trouble. So I don't know what defense is going to do. convicted the way that Chauvin was. I think that the evidence needs to be applied specifically to them and they need to get a fair trial. It's just, it's not the same. It's just not the same as Chauvin. All right. So before we go, I like where you went with it, Mark, with like your overall

thought on it. Is your overall thought on what we take away from this horrible case and this horrible year that we've had in its wake is I'll let you sum it up. Go ahead. Yeah. Unfortunately, it's going to be a skeptical point of view. And that is I don't think that anything changed from this case from one last week or the week before or a year before, except that when there's a video showing somebody taking the life of somebody, then, yeah, you have a better chance of convicting someone. I don't think that this means anything in terms of of changing in the jury system about how cops are going to be convicted when they harm people. And the other thing I said was Chauvin's ego is not his amigo. Thank you. And I respectfully disagree, Your Honor. I do think what we saw last night and what we saw

last May and the whole year in between, I think there's going to be there already has been fundamental policy changes within the police departments as well as an overall feeling of, oh, cops aren't invincible when they walk into a courtroom.

Always a pleasure chatting, my friends, but all good segments must come to an end. And wash your mouth out with soap, Megan. Thanks for listening, you guys. What a show and what a year, right? Just the whole thing is just, let's be thankful that this piece of it is over. Okay. Let's just be thankful for that today. And, and say a prayer, say a prayer for the family of George Floyd, for Derek Chauvin, for those who love him. If there are, they weren't present at

all throughout this process for the lawyers, for everybody who put it on the line in this process. I, my heart goes out to those who are on the streets protesting, and I understand why this is so charged. But it's also with our country and its soul and what it stands for and what it's actually about today. Anyway, I'm glad to have you guys here sharing the moments with me and working it out with me. And I'm really glad about what's going to happen on this program on Friday.

I'm honored to bring you Paul Rossi. He is the math teacher at Grace Church School here in New York City who has made national headlines this week after he took a stand against the indoctrination that his school was forcing down the throats of the teachers and the students there. At great risk to himself and his career. And sure enough, he's been removed from his teaching duties for simply saying, I have questions about you making me and my students see everything through a racial lens. I mean, truly, that's all he said. His entire world has fallen apart now. They've gone after him. He taped the head of school and you will hear those tapes right here on the program in his first long form sit down interview. So that's Friday. Please don't

miss it. And be sure to subscribe to the show so that you don't subscribe, download, rate five stars, please. And give me a review. Let me know what you think of today's show in the review section. Still read them all and really appreciate your thoughts. Talk to you Friday. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures. you