Derek Chauvin’s Lawyers Just Found the One Step Minnesota Skipped Before Trial

Derek Chauvin has sat in prison for more than five years over the death of George Floyd.

Now his own attorney says the case against him was never legal in the first place.

One of the country's most quoted legal scholars went silent when asked if Chauvin got a fair trial.

Chauvin's New Filing Says Judge Cahill Never Had Jurisdiction

Attorney Greg Joseph filed a 31-page petition on August 18.

His argument is simple.

Prosecutors charged Derek Chauvin without ever taking the case in front of a grand jury.

Minnesota Statute 609.185 spells out exactly when that step is mandatory, and Joseph says this case never touched it.

Joseph says that single missing step means Judge Peter Cahill never had legal authority to preside over the case at all.

"What was done here is shocking," Joseph said. "It's inexcusable."

He didn't stop there.

"The grand jury is essential, it's fundamental, and this case was never submitted to a grand jury," Joseph said.

His filing goes further than the grand jury issue alone.

It claims Governor Tim Walz illegally handed the prosecution to Attorney General Keith Ellison.

Ellison then added the second-degree murder charge himself.

Hennepin County prosecutor Amy Sweasy disagreed with adding that charge and withdrew from the case rather than sign off on it.

Joseph's petition doesn't mince words about what that means for the trial that followed.

"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!" the filing states.

Turley's Own Words Back Up What Chauvin's Lawyers Are Now Arguing

This isn't the first time a serious legal mind has flagged problems with how Chauvin was tried.

Back in 2021, Jonathan Turley told Fox's MediaBuzz he had "serious problems with the overbroad nature of the trial."

That's not some random law professor.

Turley has spent decades testifying before Congress and has never been mistaken for a Chauvin sympathizer.

Economist Dave Collum says he brought the question back to Turley directly this past week.

According to Collum, he asked Turley point blank whether Chauvin got a fair trial.

Collum says Turley paused before answering, then told him he still had serious problems with how the case was handled.

A legal scholar who's spent his career analyzing high-profile prosecutions doesn't hedge like that by accident.

Chauvin Has Filed Before and Democrats Keep Winning on Paper

This is Chauvin's third attempt at post-conviction relief.

His first petition was dismissed in 2025, and a second was dismissed in May of this year.

That second dismissal is still under appeal, and Joseph is now asking the Minnesota Court of Appeals to pause it so the district court can hear this new grand jury claim first.

Elon Musk weighed in on the latest filing with two words: "Free Chauvin."

Minnesota officials have stayed quiet since the filing dropped, and Walz's office hasn't answered requests for comment.

Silence from the governor who greenlit this prosecution tells you everything about how confident they actually are.

Mississippi Already Showed What Happens When a Broken Process Outlives the Verdict

Here's why this filing isn't just noise from a disgraced ex-cop's legal team.

The Supreme Court ruled in Vasquez v. Hillery that grand jury defects are structural errors, not harmless mistakes a court can wave away after the fact.

Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote that this kind of defect "undermines the structural integrity of the criminal tribunal itself."

Mississippi found out what that looks like in practice.

Mississippi prosecutors tried Curtis Flowers for the same 1996 murders six separate times over more than two decades, and the Supreme Court finally threw out his conviction in 2019 after finding the same prosecutor had spent years stacking the jury pool against him.

Six trials and twenty three years didn't make that conviction legitimate.

Time and repetition don't heal a broken legal process – they just delay the reckoning.

Minnesota rushed George Floyd's case through a mob-pressured legal system in 2020, and now the state may have to answer for cutting the one corner its own statute never let it cut.

If Turley's own doubts and a Supreme Court precedent both point the same direction, Ellison and Walz built their signature prosecution on sand.

Sources:

• Greg Joseph petition as reported in "Chauvin Filing: Grand Jury Should Have Heard Case; AG Illegally Appointed to Oversee Case; Prosecution, Conviction Invalid," The New American, August 20, 2026.
• "Chauvin Seeks Dismissal of Charges in Bombshell Filing Alleging 'Unlawful' and 'Fraudulent' Conduct," AlphaNews, August 2026.
• "Derek Chauvin Seeks Dismissal of All Charges in Bombshell Petition Alleging 'Entire Trial Was a Fraud,'" American Greatness, August 19, 2026.
• "Derek Chauvin Seeks Dismissal of Charges in Death of George Floyd," ZeroHedge, August 2026.
• Jonathan Turley interview, MediaBuzz, Fox News, 2021.
• Flowers v. Mississippi, 588 U.S. ___ (2019), Supreme Court opinion.
• Dave Collum (@DavidBCollum), post on X, August 19, 2026.