The request was filed Wednesday in Hennepin County District Court by a range of media companies that include the local public radio affiliate, NBC, The Minneapolis Star Tribune and USA Today. They noted that in spite of the national attention the trial garnered, the verdict didn't spark civil unrest in Minneapolis as feared by public safety officials, who had fortified the courthouse with concertina wire, concrete barricades and fencing.
Instead, after the guilty verdict, the streets of Minneapolis were a site of celebration, even "catharsis," according to the New York Times, which also signed onto the media coalition's request. That community response signaled that it's both safe and vital to unmask the jurors who decided one of the most-watched trials in American history, the news outlets said.
"The public interest in this case, and the national reckoning to which it gave rise, make transparency regarding the identities, backgrounds, and predilections of the people who handed down the verdict more important, not less," they wrote.
The murder charges against Chauvin, who's serving a 22.5-year sentence, became international news in summer 2020, after millions of people viewed a bystander's video of Floyd's arrest and death. The footage showed Chauvin pinning Floyd's neck down for about nine minutes, as Floyd — who was suspected of using a counterfeit $20 bill — begged him to stop, said he couldn't breathe and eventually lost consciousness. The image of a Black man gasping for breath under the knee of a white police officer rekindled a nationwide racial justice movement.
Because of the national reckoning the case had created and the limitations on people in the courtroom due to coronavirus protocols, both jury selection and the entire three-week trial were broadcast live last spring.
But Hennepin County District Court Judge Peter Cahill took pains to keep jurors anonymous. During voir dire, potential jurors weren't shown on camera and were only referred to by juror number. The judge and attorneys were careful to keep any sensitive or potentially identifying information from being broadcast, though the court did release basic demographic information about each juror.
Keeping jurors anonymous is unusual, according to Jill Huntley Taylor of Taylor Trial Consulting.
"My sense is that it's becoming more common," she told Law360, "but it's not at all common."
Courts might find confidentiality worth it, especially when it comes to having more potential jurors to choose from, she said.
"There's a concern that you're not going to get a good jury pool when there's fear of retribution," she said. "There's also the argument that people may serve, but they may reach a particular verdict that comes with less risk."
Judge Cahill has said he will make jurors' names and possibly even email addresses available once he deems it "safe to do so."
Still, during jury selection in March, potential jurors talked about how divisive the case was, and said they feared violence. Several were concerned for their family. One man said he worried about people trying to intimidate him by breaking a window in his home or threatening his wife and children. And while some found courthouse security measures and the promise of temporary anonymity comforting, others worried about their safety returning home each night during the trial and about their names being made public after the case ended.
Learning she'd been summoned for the high-profile case was "terrifying," said Juror #44, a white woman in her 50s who works for a health care nonprofit, and one of the 12 jurors who ended up rendering the verdict. She said that the potential of having her name eventually released was a concern.
"I think anyone that said they wouldn't be concerned [about being harassed] would be lying," she said while being interviewed during jury selection. "You have people that are very much wanting a verdict one way or the other, and they may not accept what verdict comes out. I think there's a very real potential of that. Look at what happened with our election, that's how people respond when they're very emotional."
A combination of those emotions and the ease with which people's personal information can be tracked down on social media might be the reason courts are more open to considering confidentiality for jurors, Taylor said.
"These days, I think that concerns about safety and access to people's information via social media ... that's always going to be a legitimate concern," she said. "It's a very divided country on a lot of issues, and it's not just divided — it's pretty inflammatory. I think those concerns are real and ongoing."
Days after jurors convicted Chauvin of all the charges brought against him — second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second degree manslaughter — Judge Cahill issued an order keeping the jurors' identities secret. Noting that attorneys in the case had received "incendiary, inflammatory, and threatening" emails, and citing the need to "protect jurors desiring to remain anonymous from unwanted publicity or harassment," he maintained a seal on juror information, resolving not to revisit the confidentiality issue until Oct. 20.
That order came down without briefing or a hearing, the media coalition said in Wednesday's filings.
Neither Chauvin's attorney, Eric Nelson of Halberg Criminal Defense, nor the Minnesota Attorney General's Office, which prosecuted the case, would comment on the media coalition's request. They have until Aug. 15 to respond to the motion.
Two jurors, as well as an alternate who sat through the trial but didn't render the final verdict have already come forward voluntarily, the media coalition noted, adding it was "not aware that any of them has been threatened, harassed, or otherwise made to fear for their safety since coming forward."
The coalition argued that being publicly accountable for a verdict is one of the central responsibilities of serving on a jury, essential to bedrock constitutional principles like the First Amendment right of public access. The media outlets quoted U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's concurring opinion in the 2010 Doe v. Reed
case, which said that facing harsh criticism "is a price our people have traditionally been willing to pay for self-governance … without which democracy is doomed."Scrutinizing the verdict was not only important to freedom of the press, but also to the integrity of the court system, the media coalition argued.
"To ensure confidence in not only this particular verdict but also the criminal justice system writ large — and to continue to improve that system, including by understanding and addressing the sort of implicit biases that many feared might play an outsized role in this very case — the public must be able to scrutinize jurors' answers to the questionnaires, ask them to share their insights into the prosecution, consider what mattered to them, and yes, even decide whether the jury reached the right verdict for the right reasons," the motion said.
The news outlets said Minnesota law, too, supported releasing the jurors' names and information. The state's statutes say jurors can only remain anonymous when there's a "strong reason" to do so. Fear of media inquiries and public criticism don't rise to that level, the coalition said, noting the case law supporting the juror anonymity involved extreme threats of retaliation, like prosecutions involving organized crime in which police informants had been killed.
The media companies also noted that Brandon Mitchell, one of the three jurors who came forward, has revealed "incredibly illuminating" details about how the jury deliberated and what evidence it found persuasive.
But Taylor wonders if releasing jurors' names will reveal anything more about the case. Judge Cahill told the former jurors that after rendering the verdict, they could come forward publicly if they wanted to. Only two jurors and an alternate have, Taylor noted.
"You can expose their names," she said, "but you can't make them talk."
--Editing by Nicole Bleier.
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