(LifeSiteNews) — The attorney for Derek Chauvin – the police officer jailed for the 2020 death of George Floyd – filed a petition asserting that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and state Attorney General Keith Ellison denied his client’s right to due process and violated state law.
“The Amended Complaint signed and filed by the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office that is the subject of the underlying conviction and sentence for which Mr. Chauvin is currently incarcerated, was unlawful, unfounded, and illegitimate ab initio,” asserted Greg Joseph, Chauvin’s attorney. “Because the charges in this document are not now and have never been properly before this Court, it has no jurisdiction over them.”
“The authority under which Governor Walz reassigned prosecution of this matter to Attorney General Ellison only exists in cases where an indictment is required before charges may be brought. But there was no indictment here, nor was there a formal writing as required by law,” Chavin’s attorney explained.
“Because these requirements were not satisfied, the conveyance of authority by Walz to Ellison was unlawful. Making matters worse, the Hennepin County District Court refused to carry out its statutory duty to convene a grand jury to consider the State’s evidence,” he noted.
In a video interview with journalist Liz Collin, Joseph argued that circumventing the grand jury process is “a violation of not only state law; this is a state constitutional violation (and) a federal constitutional violation.”
“What was done here is shocking. It’s inexcusable,” Joseph said.
“If the charges themselves are illegal, as they were in this case, everything that follows from those charges is also illegal, including the trial, which was a fraud,” Chauvin’s attorney said.
According to Joseph, when the charges first brought against Chauvin by the Hennepin were deemed not to be “severe enough for the people who burned down Minneapolis, the governor stepped in and assigned responsibility to Attorney General Ellison.”
“Anything that flows” from the improper conveyance of authority from Hennepin County to the state attorney general “is illegitimate and illegal,” he noted.
“The complaint has to be dismissed in its entirety,” Joseph said.
BOOM 💥
Atty’s for Derek Chauvin say Tim Walz & Keith Ellison violated state law by not submitting the case to a Grand Jury which denied Chauvin his due process
Chauvin didn’t kill George Floyd, the autopsy said Fentynal did and he’s still sitting in prison
Trump can pardon… pic.twitter.com/tpY1LZB4pN
— @Chicago1Ray 🇺🇸 (@Chicago1Ray) August 19, 2026
Elon Musk joined the chorus of those calling for the release of Chauvin, asserting on X that the police officer was “unjustly convicted of murder” and “therefore should be freed.”