Commotion: Chauvin Trial Juror's Impartiality

On May 2nd, alt-right activist Jack Posobiec tweeted a picture of a juror from the Derek Chauvin trial. The picture and information were first reported by the International Business Times but Posobiec created a fervor on social media over the image. The trial, which resulted in the verdict that Chauvin is guilty of murdering George Floyd, had been highly publicized. In the image, the juror, Brandon Mitchell, is seen wearing a Black Lives Matter hat and a t-shirt with Martin Luther King’s image and the words, “Get your knee off our necks BLM.”

The picture, taken last August, is controversial because the message on Mitchell’s shirt implies he was not impartial. Jurors are selected after a rigorous testing of impartiality and this raised numerous questions about how Mitchell had originally presented his political views.