Derek Chauvin Files Third Petition To Overturn George Floyd Murder Conviction

(KNSI) – Derek Chauvin is making a third attempt to throw out his state murder conviction in the death of George Floyd.

Attorney Gregory Joseph filed a petition for postconviction relief Tuesday, August 18th, asking Hennepin County District Court to vacate the conviction and dismiss the charges. Joseph also asked the Minnesota Court of Appeals to pause a separate appeal already pending there so the district court can take up the new claims first.

The petition does not challenge the trial evidence. It argues the case should never have been charged the way it was.

Joseph contends Governor Tim Walz acted unlawfully in referring the prosecution to Attorney General Keith Ellison, calling the assignment illegitimate and a violation of Chauvin’s due process rights. The filing says Ellison then added the second-degree murder count in response to public pressure rather than the facts. It also faults the district court for never convening a grand jury and prosecutors for never securing an indictment, arguing that let prosecutors push charges unsupported by probable cause.

Joseph frames all of it as structural error, a defect he says cannot be waived and would strip the courts of jurisdiction, requiring immediate dismissal.

The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office has not commented.

Chauvin’s previous efforts have all failed. A Hennepin County jury convicted him in April 2021 of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter, and he was sentenced to 22 and a half years. The Court of Appeals affirmed in April 2023, and both the Minnesota Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the case. A first postconviction petition was dismissed in 2025 and a second in May, and that dismissal is under appeal.

Chauvin is also serving a concurrent 21-year federal sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rights. He is held at a federal prison in Big Spring, Texas.

Floyd died on May 25th, 2020, after Chauvin knelt on his neck for roughly nine and a half minutes during an arrest in south Minneapolis.

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