Jury faced 'enormous among of pressure' to reach right verdict: Miranda Devine
New York Post columnist reacts to guilty verdict in trial of former Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight'
New York Post columnist Miranda Devine told "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Tuesday that the country will have a difficult time unifying around the guilty verdict against former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin because of the "external pressure" surrounding the high-profile conviction.
A panel of jurors found Chauvin guilty of murder and manslaughter charges in connection with the May 2020 death of George Floyd while in police custody.
Devine: You would hope the jury did the right thing and came to the correct verdict ... but there was an enormous amount of pressure on them. You know, a lot of them live in the area, and there were riots, there was violence for days throughout the trial. … There was so much menace and intimidation around that trial, that even the president today, before the jury came back, said that he was praying for the right verdict.
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You had members of Congress like Maxine Waters weighing in and saying that if the verdict wasn't a guilty verdict, that there should be more confrontation by the mob.
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So you have this atmosphere of fear and intimidation, and really, the verdict in this trial ... could have been really unifying for the country, because we can all rally around our justice system and the jury trial and trust it and say that above all else, justice is blind, and that somebody who did the wrong thing was punished.
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But unfortunately, because of all this external pressure on that trial, on the judge, on the witnesses, and on the jurors who are just ordinary men and women, we can't really unify around it because there is so much concern.
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