Will Derek Chauvin trial have hung jury? Here's what happens if there is no unanimous verdict
Jurors at the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin charged in the death of George Floyd are well aware of how hotly anticipated the verdict is in this case. However, it's quite possible that they may be "deadlocked" and unable to reach a unanimous verdict.
Judge Peter A Cahill asked jurors at the trial's onset to set aside everything they knew about the eyewitness video that went viral online, showing Chauvin kneeling on Floyd for nearly eight minutes. Instead, they were asked to review the case without bias and purely based on the evidence presented in the courtroom, KARE 11 reported.
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Chauvin is currently facing three charges, including second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. The jury will be expected to consider each charge separately, which means Chauvin could be found guilty of one charge but be acquitted of others. At the same time, it is also possible that he's either found guilty or acquitted on all three counts.
Could there be a hung jury?
According to the NBC-affiliated station, it's quite possible that the jury will be unable to come to a unanimous verdict, resulting in what is commonly known as a "hung jury." The legal term for such a situation is a "deadlocked jury," or one for which "the court finds there is no reasonable probability of agreement."
Should this happen, prosecutors would have to decide whether they would want to retry Chauvin. However, this would take a considerable amount of time to prepare from scratch, go through pretrial motions, and then select a whole new jury.
Defense attorney Eric Nelson had asked potential jurors if they were willing to stand their ground when everyone else disagreed with them. And it only takes one person to disagree and change the course of a verdict, thereby causing a hung jury. According to retired judge LaJune Lange, a hung jury is "not that common." While she can't remember it happening to her during her years on the bench, she did have juries return to her for additional instruction when they struggled to reach a unanimous verdict.
"The judge would give them an instruction that they could reconsider their own opinion and all the evidence and return to the jury room to continue their deliberations," Lange told KARE 11. "But that might be several days of deliberation before a jury would be brought into a judge saying that they have not been able to reach a unanimous verdict. That doesn’t happen automatically or right away."
She said that if the judge has to grant further instruction, it will be carefully scripted.
"You have to quote the law," Lange explained. "This is something you absolutely cannot make up. So there are all kinds of legal precedence in terms of limiting the specific language that you can talk to the jury."
That said, there's no time limit for a jury to reach unanimity. "It depends on the volume of evidence, the judge’s experience, and then all other circumstances," Lange said. "So it would not be a short process."
It's worth noting that the judge could still accept a partial verdict if the jury can agree on at least one charge. However, if the jury is deadlocked on the other charges, the state may not be able to retry those as they are all part of a "common scheme." Former Hennepin County Chief Public Defender Mary Moriarty explained to KARE 11 that “the charges all involve different theories about the same acts.”
The Minnesota rules of criminal procedure state that "the court may accept a partial verdict if the jury has reached a verdict on fewer than all of the charges and is unable to reach a verdict on the rest." Furthermore, partial verdicts "may bar further prosecution of any counts over which the jury has deadlocked."
According to Moriarty, a judge could theoretically refuse to accept a partial verdict. However, she said shehas never seen it happen.