Ramsey County Law Library Blog

This informational post contains links to resources relating to the Derek Chauvin Trial.

Links to all the Court documents relating to the Derek Chauvin trial.  This page will link to trial information for the other defendants (see section for related cases). 

Links to a live feed of the trial can be found on Court TV, as well as on various news pages, such as MSBNC, CBS Minnesota, YouTube, and many other sites.

The City of Minneapolis has a page that lists street closures, trial updates, and a link to report suspicious activity. 

Links to the statutes for the charges:

• Count 1: Second Degree Murder – Unintentional – While Committing A Felony (MN Stat. 609.19)
• Count 2: Third Degree Murder – Perpetrating Eminently Dangerous Act and Evincing Depraved Mind  (MN Stat 609.195)
• Count 3: Second Degree Manslaughter – Culpable Negligence Creating Unreasonable Risk (MN Stat 609.205)

Link to Court’s profile of the judge for this case, Judge Peter A. Cahill.

Brief description of the judge, defendants, and attorneys involved with the case, article from Minnesota Public Radio.

The Court created a Media Guidance document that provides information for working reporters and court personnel to address and/or resolve logistical questions regarding media coverage of the trial.

You can find updates about other cases occurring in Hennepin County during the trial. 

During the trial, the Hennepin County Law Library will continue to provide reference services to patrons by phone (612-348-2903) and email ([email protected]).  You are also welcome to visit, call, or email, the Ramsey County Law Library for help.

You might have missed it, but county law libraries made a surprise appearance in the Minnesota legislative session this spring.  You can read the original Senate File 1113 here, which would have allowed for the diversion of county law library funds for construction of a courthouse.  This legislation passed both the Senate and the House, but was vetoed by Governor Dayton.  But bills  concerning county law libraries could always come up again at the capitol.

Without examining now-vetoed bill, this occurrence presents an opportunity to consider some history behind county law libraries in Minnesota. Their modern incarnation formally came into existence with what became Minnesota Statute §134A.  You can read in the 1949 Session Laws wherein the Legislature laid out the specifics for the establishment, operation, and function of county law libraries.  This original text reveals that amazingly little has changed to the county law library statute over the years, such as which sectors must be represented on governing boards, how funding is to be provided, and who must be allowed to use the libraries.  Keep in mind that this was all back in 1949, predating modern “access to justice” efforts.  Of course, what might have been casually called a “county law library” existed in Minnesota prior to this statute, often growing from local bar association libraries.  (This was how the Hennepin County Law Library got its start way back in 1883.)  But the original statute overwhelmingly set the standards for our modern county law libraries.

Today you can find county law libraries throughout the state, and this brochure from the Minnesota Coalition of County Law Libraries (MCCLL) lists those which offer professional staff to assist users.  But history-wise, its not easy to determine when Minnesota’s various county law libraries come to be.  Public law libraries existed in St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Duluth back in 1955, as evidenced in this article in the Law Library Journal about the founding of the Minnesota Association of Law Libraries (MALL).  Since this sort of historical information can be elusive, we would like to know more about the history of your county law library (including this library).  If you have any such  inside knowledge, please share it with us.  And- if you have found the services and resources of your county law library helpful, by all means tell your legislator!

We are proud of our local involvement with local criminal expungement resources, but expungement is not the last word in “second chances.” For instance, you may have recently watched HBO’s Rock and a Hard Place, a documentary about Miami-Dade County offenders facing long prison sentences who get the chance to participate in a 16-week bootcamp-style regimen instead.  Each of the cadets on this show has been given a choice by their judge: incarceration or rehabilitation. From crew-cuts to pushups, this correction program is modeled on a tough, military-style code of discipline and order, which later includes anger-management instruction and vocational skills training. Creator Dwayne Johnson based this documentary on his own run-ins with the law as a youth.  See this excellent review of the show.

We are sometimes asked if Minnesota has such a boot camp-inspired penal model, and he answer is yes! Minnesota’s Challenge Incarceration Program (CIP) provides a similar military-style boot camp experience for offenders, which can potentially shave years from total time to be served.  Unlike the Miami model, the state Commissioner of Corrections selects these offenders, not all of which are eligible.   A 2006 evaluation showed Minnesota’ CIP to reduce an offender’s chance of reoffending with a new crime by 35%, and also to have reduced costs by over $18 million.

A similar but simpler “second chance” program was featured in last week’s news, this one meant for those with suspended drivers licenses due to unpaid tickets. In these cases, the offenders cannot afford to pay their traffic tickets, which leads to revocation or suspension of licenses. Faced with the choice of not being able to get to work or driving illegally in order to put food on the table, many offenders predictably choose the latter.  This Driver Diversion Pilot Program allows offenders to take special driving classes and schedule a payoff for their fines. In return they get their drivers license and insurance reinstated. This pilot program was launched by the legislature for selected cities in 2008, and there is currently a movement to get this program statewide and permanent. The hope is to keep a single traffic infraction from being the factor that ultimately pulls a person down to the point that they no longer have a job and now have a court record to hold them back. This kind of downward spiral is a significant problem, and was considered a major source of the tension behind the Ferguson riots.