Minnesota Indictment Twist Stuns Court

Derek Chauvin’s attorney is telling a Minnesota court that Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison broke state law to convict him of murdering George Floyd, and now he wants that conviction wiped out.

Story Snapshot

Chauvin’s legal team filed a new petition arguing his 2021 murder conviction is void due to procedural violations.
The petition claims Minnesota never convened a required grand jury and lacked probable cause to charge him.
Lawyers also argue the transfer of prosecutorial power to Attorney General Keith Ellison was illegitimate.
Governor Walz and Ellison’s office have publicly praised the conviction and prosecution as lawful and successful.
A judge already rejected an earlier Chauvin petition this year, and that denial is now under appeal.

New Petition Challenges the Legal Foundation of the Case

Court documents filed in Minnesota show Chauvin is again asking a judge to throw out his state murder conviction in George Floyd’s 2020 death. CBS News Minnesota reported the petition asks the court to declare the transfer of prosecutorial authority to Attorney General Keith Ellison “illegitimate”. The filing also claims the state skipped a required grand jury process, which Chauvin’s lawyers say makes the entire case legally invalid from the start.

This is not Chauvin’s first attempt this year. A separate petition filed in November 2025 argued that national outrage over Floyd’s death led to prosecutorial misconduct and false testimony at trial. A judge rejected that entire petition roughly five months later, and Chauvin has since appealed that ruling to a higher court. The new filing raises a different, narrower legal argument focused on charging procedure rather than trial conduct.

What Minnesota Law Requires for an Indictment

Minnesota law defines an indictment as a written accusation presented by a grand jury to a court, charging someone with a public offense. State court rules say a grand jury can issue an indictment only if evidence shows probable cause that a crime happened and the accused person did it. Chauvin’s attorneys argue the state never followed this path before pursuing murder charges, a claim that goes to whether the case was built on proper legal footing from day one.

Legal experts note this type of challenge is different from arguing someone is innocent. It instead questions whether the charging process itself followed the rules, a claim courts sometimes take seriously even years after a conviction because it touches on due process rather than the facts of the crime.

Governor Walz and Attorney General Ellison’s Public Record

Public statements from Minnesota’s top officials describe the Chauvin case as a standard, successful prosecution. After the 2021 verdict, Governor Walz said Chauvin had “been found guilty of murder and faces years behind bars”. He also thanked Attorney General Ellison and his legal team for what he called their “successful prosecution” of the case. The Attorney General’s office had publicly identified Ellison as leading the prosecution back in 2020.

Those statements do not directly answer Chauvin’s new procedural claim about the grand jury or the transfer of authority. They show state leaders treated the case as legitimate at every public stage, but they do not contain a legal rebuttal to the specific charging-process argument now before the court. That leaves the dispute to be resolved through the pending petition rather than through prior political statements.

A Case That Keeps Testing the System’s Finality

This is not the first time a high-profile conviction has faced a late procedural challenge instead of a dispute over guilt. Courts generally value finality in criminal cases, but Minnesota law still allows post-conviction claims when a defendant argues the charging process itself broke state rules. That legal path is exactly what Chauvin’s attorneys are now using, regardless of how the underlying facts of Floyd’s death were viewed at trial.

The outcome will not reopen questions about what happened on the street in Minneapolis in 2020. Instead, it will test whether Minnesota’s charging process for one of the most watched criminal cases in recent American history held up to the state’s own legal requirements, a question now sitting with the courts rather than with public opinion.

Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is making another attempt to overturn his state conviction in the murder of George Floyd. His attorneys have asked a Minnesota appeals court to pause his current appeal so they can pursue new claims alleging his prosecution was…

— Erik Hoffmann (@TheErikHoffmann) August 19, 2026

A ruling on the latest petition has not yet been issued, and Chauvin’s earlier appeal over the denied November 2025 petition also remains active. Both cases continue to move through Minnesota’s court system at the same time.