Gag order on George Floyd murder case should be scaled back, media argues

A coalition of news organizations asked a Minnesota judge on Friday to scale back the gag order he imposed in the case of four former Minneapolis police officers who are charged in the death of George Floyd.

The July 9 gag order is overly broad and restricts a “staggering number” of individuals not directly involved in the case — not just defence layers and prosecutors — attorneys for the Media Coalition said in filings in Hennepin County District Court. And it was imposed without the opportunity for comment, they said.

“Newsgathering is protected by the First Amendment, and a reporter’s First Amendment right to publish is meaningless if it is prevented from gathering news in the first instance,” they wrote.

Defence attorneys have also objected to the gag order, in which Judge Peter Cahill said continuing pretrial publicity would increase the risk of tainting the potential jury pool and “will impair all parties’ right to a fair trial.”

2:11 New transcript reveals Derek Chauvin told George Floyd: it takes ‘a lot of oxygen to talk’

Cahill will hold a hearing Tuesday on the gag order and requests by the coalition and defence attorneys to release and allow publication of the body camera videos of two of the ex-officers, which show the fatal confrontation close-up. A limited pool of reporters was allowed to watch but not record the videos Monday.

Floyd, a Black man who was handcuffed, died May 25 after Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck for nearly eight minutes as Floyd pleaded that he couldn’t breathe. All four officers involved were fired the day after his death, which set off protests that spread around the world and turned into a national reckoning on race in America.