Could Derek Chauvin be pardoned? Conservative commentator launches effort to petition Trump

Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is serving concurrent state and federal sentences for his role in the 2020 death of George Floyd. (Court TV via AP/FILE via CNN Newsource)

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro has publicly called for the president to pardon former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for federal crimes related to George Floyd’s 2020 death – drawing derision from the Minnesota attorney general who helped put Chauvin in prison but amplification from one of Trump’s most powerful advisers.

Shapiro’s proposal could spring to mind several questions, including: “Could a president do that?” (Answer: Yes); and, “What would it matter, since Chauvin also is in prison on state charges?” (Answer: It’s complicated).

Shapiro’s effort to solicit a pardon for Chauvin, a White man convicted of murdering a Black man in a case that sparked massive nationwide protests over the way police treat people of color, comes amid the Trump administration’s efforts to push back on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and what some see as gains made toward racial justice since Floyd’s death.

On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump touted his administration’s forceful crackdown on DEI programs, and vowed “our country will be woke no longer.” And a congressman recently introduced a bill that would withhold some federal funding in Washington, DC, if the mayor does not remove the district’s Black Lives Matter mural and rename the eponymous plaza located near the White House.

In an interview with CNN Thursday, one of Floyd’s brothers, Terrence, said the call to pardon Chauvin has been hard for his relatives who have slowly begun to heal five years after George’s death.

“We were supposed to see progress,” Terrence Floyd said. “So many people promised things, especially if we (are) going to go with the DEI, so many things was promised to us as a people – not just to Black and brown people – as a people. And they’re backpedaling.”

Here’s what Shapiro has called for, how some have reacted, and what experts say could come of it:

Shapiro casts Chauvin’s conviction as an injustice

At the end of Tuesday’s episode of his video podcast “The Ben Shapiro Show,” Shapiro called for Trump to pardon Chauvin of his federal conviction, essentially arguing, counter to what a state jury found, that Chauvin wasn’t responsible for Floyd’s death.

The roughly three-minute segment, which Shapiro also posted on X, urges viewers to sign a petition asking Trump to consider a federal pardon.

Elon Musk, the billionaire helping lead Trump’s government efficiency initiatives, later reposted Shapiro’s segment, writing it’s “something to think about.”

Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck and back for more than nine minutes on May 25, 2020, after officers responded to reports suspecting Floyd used a counterfeit $20 at a Minneapolis corner store. Floyd, 46, was handcuffed and lying face down on a street as he repeatedly pleaded, “I can’t breathe.” He was eventually taken away by an ambulance and declared dead at a hospital, authorities said.

A county medical examiner ruled Floyd’s death a homicide and identified the cause as “cardiopulmonary arrest” that occurred during “law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression” – findings he stood by at Chauvin’s trial.

Heart disease and fentanyl use were contributing factors but not the direct cause, the medical examiner testified.

In April 2021, a Minnesota jury found Chauvin guilty on state charges of unintentional murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter. He was sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison on those state charges, and the US Supreme Court later rejected his appeal of the state conviction.

In June 2021, Chauvin was sentenced to 21 years in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to federal charges of depriving Floyd of his civil rights, and also depriving a 14-year-old of his civil rights by using excessive force in a separate 2017 case.

Chauvin is now serving both terms concurrently.

When Shapiro addressed the case in Tuesday’s podcast, he conceded at the outset that pardoning Chauvin would be “incredibly controversial.”

“But I think it’s absolutely necessary,” he said.

Chauvin shouldn’t have been convicted of murder, Shapiro argued, in part asserting some of what Chauvin’s defense attorney had claimed at trial: that Floyd died of factors other than Chauvin’s intervention, including preexisting health conditions.

Shapiro also argued “there was massive overt pressure on the jury to return a guilty verdict regardless of the evidence.” Floyd’s death and Chauvin’s conviction, Shapiro said, “led to vast chaos and it led to the destruction of racial comity in the United States.”

The White House declined to comment Thursday on whether Trump is considering a pardon for Chauvin.

If a president were to pardon Chauvin, what would happen?

Keith Ellison, the Minnesota attorney general whose office prosecuted Chauvin in the state case, told CNN Thursday he feels the effort to pardon Chauvin is “sadly another example of blatant disrespect for the law.”

But, he emphasized, “his state charges, where he got 22.5 years, will remain no matter what Trump does.”

“Those (state) convictions are solid,” Ellison said.

Legal experts who spoke with CNN this week concurred: A pardon from a president would impact only Chauvin’s federal sentence.

“Practically speaking … even if he’s pardoned on the federal conviction, the state conviction continues,” said Alan Rozenshtein, associate professor of law at the University of Minnesota Law School and a senior editor at Lawfare.

However, if Chauvin were to receive a federal pardon, he could end up spending less time incarcerated than he would have, even though the federal sentence was slightly shorter than the state sentence, legal experts told CNN. The reason: Prisoners are often required to serve a greater proportion of federal sentences than state sentences, and prisoners sentenced after 1987 are ineligible for federal parole.

Chauvin’s projected release dates published online reflect this: The projected release for his federal sentence on the Bureau of Prisons site is November 2037, whereas his projected release on the state sentence posted on the Minnesota Department of Corrections site is December 2035.

“If you’re in jail for much of the rest of your natural life, then you care about every month and certainly every year that you effectively get off,” Rozenshtein said.

But Chauvin is “still going to be in prison for the foreseeable future, and there’s nothing that a federal pardon can do about that,” he said.

Using a federal pardon as a basis for a state request

A federal pardon could also impact where Chauvin serves the remainder of his sentence, JaneAnne Murray, a University of Minnesota criminal law associate professor who specializes in sentencing, told CNN.

In 2023, Chauvin was stabbed in a federal prison in Arizona and later transferred to a federal prison in Texas. Were he to be pardoned, he could be remanded to a state prison in Minnesota, Murray said. However, inmates such as Chauvin, who might need additional security, still might be allowed to remain in federal prison to serve a state sentence, she added.

Chauvin could use a federal pardon as the basis to apply for a pardon from the state, but the procedure, Murray said, is long.

In Minnesota, those seeking a pardon must apply to a clemency review commission, which then makes a recommendation to the state board of pardons – comprising state’s governor, attorney general and chief justice.

The governor and at least one of the two other board members must vote in favor of the pardon for it to be granted, according to the state.

In Minnesota, “most pardons are cases where people have been out, have finished their sentence,” Murray said. “There usually isn’t a question about guilt. It’s about the fairness of the punishment and how long that punishment should play a role in impeding their life opportunities.”

The politics of pardons

Shapiro has said he will continue to make his argument for Chauvin’s pardon in the coming weeks. It wasn’t immediately clear how many people supported Shapiro’s online petition, as numbers weren’t published on the petition site.

Ellison said he hopes the president will weigh the consequences of any pardon.

“I hope that Donald Trump has enough humanity to recognize that releasing Derek Chauvin would cause untold injury to George Floyd’s family and the many, many people who feel vulnerable because they share experiences like the one George Floyd experienced,” he said.

The move inevitably would be divisive, as Shapiro conceded, and would likely be cast as political. However, presidential pardons generally are political, Rozenshtein said.

“Political symbolism is, in fact, a large purpose of the (presidential) pardon,” Rozenshtein said. “People who defend Chauvin and think that he was unfairly treated, and think that the police are unfairly treated, will view this as a support of their position.”

“People who think that Chauvin committed murder, or at the very least, deeply reckless manslaughter, will view this as the federal government and the leader of the country essentially saying that treating individuals that way is fine.”

CNN’s Sara Sidner contributed to this report.