A Minnesota judge has postponed the trial of two former Minneapolis police officers, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng, who have been charged with the murder of George Floyd.
The judge noted the need to guarantee an impartial process.
Hennepin County District Court Judge Peter Cahill judged that the trial, which was set to start this month, is now scheduled for January 5, 2023.
The two officers are accused of aiding and abetting second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
Cahill rejected a motion by the defense to change the trial location due to the vast pretrial publicity covering the case.
He stated that media coverage and recent circumstances surrounding related cases have produced “a reasonable likelihood of an unfair trial” if it were to start on Monday.
The judge also said that delaying the trial should “diminish the impact of this publicity on the defendants’ right and ability to receive a fair trial from an impartial and unbiased jury.”
Cahill noted the significance of the May 18 guilty plea by Thao and Keung’s co-defendant, former Officer Thomas Lane, on his decision.
He also mentioned that the convictions of Thao, Kueng, and Lane on federal civil rights charges in a federal court in February could also influence the present trial.
Those events and the publicity surrounding them, the judge said, could make it problematic for jurors to come to a fair ruling for the defendants over the state charges against them. Therefore, Cahill ruled that a seven-month delay would lessen the influence of that publicity.
In May 2020, Kueng, Thao, and Lane did not stop fellow officer Derek Chauvin from kneeling on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes, which resulted in his death.
Derek Chauvin was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, second-degree manslaughter, and third-degree murder.