I have heard many people speculate about the jury in the Derek Chauvin trial. Was the case really a slam dunk for the prosecution? Did jurors feel pressured to bring back a guilty verdict on all counts? Did the Trump Justice Department’s pressure to disallow the state of Minnesota to accept a third-degree murder plea from Derek Chauvin influence the jury during the trial that then was required to be held? Did the public and social media comments of activists or the multimillion-dollar civil settlement that was awarded to George Floyd’s family during the trial by the City of Minneapolis influence the jury’s decision? Did the protests in Brooklyn Center in response to the shooting of Daunte Wright place increased pressure on the jury to convict Chauvin? I do not know the answers to these questions, which are all valid and will be addressed during the appeal process – Derek Chauvin’s attorney has already filed an appeal. What I do know is that the verdicts were just, and that the jurors were likely quite confident in regard to them even if they had mixed feelings about having to render them.
I know this because I served on a jury in a high-profile first-degree murder trial in November of 2006. The case involved a young Chaska, Minnesota man named Grant Everson who along with friends plotted to kill his parents in order to collect life insurance money so that they could move to Amsterdam to open a coffee and marijuana shop – recreational marijuana was legal in the Netherlands.
Here is the story of the crime itself as presented in court, and my experience as a juror during the trial:
Everson and his friend, Joel Beckrich, intended to fatally cut Everson’s parents’ throats in the early morning hours of Sunday, January 15, 2006 as they slept, and failing that, to shoot them with a shot gun in their beds while stealing items of value to make it look like a burglary. But they lost their nerve at the last moment for either plan and retreated to huddle in a mud room closet to discuss abandoning the task for that night to try again another time. But their discussion was interrupted when Everson’s mother Nancy woke up, came to investigate, and recognized her son even behind his ski mask as he pointed a loaded shot gun at her in a hallway outside the mud room closet, where Beckrich remained concealed.
As Nancy Everson waited in the kitchen for her son to come and talk to her, Grant Everson pressured Beckrich to take the still loaded shot gun and kill Nancy Everson, then quickly go into the master bedroom and kill Everson’s father so as not to leave behind any witnesses. Reluctantly, Beckrich took the shot gun, confronted Nancy Everson with it and asked her twice if she preferred to be shot “in the head or chest.” She instead swore at her son by name to “get the hell out of my house,” and lunged for the gun. Beckrich pulled the trigger, and the blast hit Nancy Everson in the head, killing her instantly. He then charged into the bedroom, but the father, Tom Everson, had heard the commotion and the shot gun blast, knew his wife was likely dead, and exited out of the master bathroom window and fled to a neighbor’s house to call police.
Everson and Beckrich rendezvoused in the nearby woods, returned to their van, stripped off their outer clothing, masks, and gloves, and put them in the empty shot gun case – Beckrich had left the gun in the woods and they did not bother to retrieve it that night, intending to come back for it later since it was mid-January and not likely to be found in the meantime. They dumped the clothing filled shot gun case into a commercial dumpster at a random business in Bloomington on their way back to Beckrich’s townhome in Burnsville. Unfortunately, the dumpster was emptied on Monday morning before the gun case could be found, and as a result the case and its contents were never recovered. The two men drove to Beckrich’s townhome that he shared with another friend, Chris Fuhrman, to whom they recounted what had happened, hoping to use one another and Fuhrman as alibis for their whereabouts that night. Although horrified that his friends had actually gone through with their plan, Fuhrman agreed to be part of their alibi at that time, as did another friend present who was still a juvenile.
Because Grant Everson was living with and working for his parents and was expected to work on Sunday morning for their insurance business, in order to feign normality he left Burnsville in his van in time to make it back to his parents’ home by 8:00 AM that morning. The Chaska Police and Carver County Sheriff Departments had been dispatched to the scene of the murder, and the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) had also been called. Everson was stopped at a check point a few blocks from his parents’ house and upon identifying himself was detained and arrested for the murder of his mother because his father had heard his mother shout Everson’s first name just before she was killed. Everson insisted that he was innocent and that he had been at the Burnsville townhome overnight.
Chaska police detectives attempted to verify Everson’s alibi by going to the Burnsville townhome. After separating Beckrich, Fuhrman, and the juvenile friend for questioning, Fuhrman took the opportunity to confess that Everson and Beckrich had both been involved in the murder, and that Beckrich was the actual shooter. Fuhrman claimed that he was afraid of Beckrich because Beckrich had threatened to kill Fuhrman if he turned them in to police. Beckrich subsequently admitted that he was the shooter and was arrested for first-degree murder and first-degree attempted murder, and Fuhrman and the juvenile were arrested as accessories to those crimes. Beckrich led the detectives to the shot gun that he had left in the woods in Chaska, and it was booked into evidence as the murder weapon. In the end, Fuhrman and the juvenile exchanged their own testimony against Beckrich and Everson for the dismissal of all charges (Fuhrman) and probation and record expungement after a certain number of years (the juvenile) for themselves. Beckrich eventually pled guilty to second-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder in exchange for testifying against Everson at trial. Beckrich was sentenced by a judge to 45 years in prison, with the possibility of parole after 30 years. Everson’s was the only case that went to trial.
Since I did not live in Chaska, I had heard only a few details of the case by the time that I received the very first and only jury duty summons of my life, but the timing made me pretty certain that it was the case for which I was being summoned. The jury pool was quite large – 100 people from all areas of Carver County. Jury selection took several days, and with so many in the pool I felt that my chances of being chosen to serve on the jury were slim, which would have been fine with me. But after answering the initial written questionnaire I ended up in the final group for additional oral questioning by both the prosecution and the defense attorneys and was eventually selected as one of the final twelve jurors. There were two alternate jurors, and their importance was reinforced when one of them had to step in as a regular juror when one of the twelve experienced a family emergency and had to be excused from jury service.
The trial lasted several days, with a break in the middle for the long Thanksgiving weekend. Like the Chauvin trial jurors, we were not sequestered during the trial, but were sequestered in an undisclosed area hotel for one night during jury deliberations as we were trying to arrive at a verdict. Witness testimony included family and friends of both Everson and the victims, police officers and detectives, and the three friends who had also been charged with involvement in the crime. Everson’s father and girlfriend testified that Everson had stolen his father’s handgun from its hiding place in the master bedroom – his mother had discovered it hidden in the garage the evening just prior to the murder and it resulted in a heated argument with both of his parents in front of his girlfriend, which she testified that Everson found especially humiliating. Everson’s father took back the handgun, but Everson replaced it by taking the shot gun (which was often used by Everson himself for hunting) with him to the Burnsville townhome, determined to convince his friends to help him kill his parents that very night.
There were also several expert witnesses. One was the Medical Examiner who performed the autopsy on Nancy Everson and determined her cause of death to be a shot gun blast to the head. Another was a ballistics expert who testified that the shot gun held in evidence was indeed the gun that killed Nancy Everson. A blood spatter pattern expert walked jurors through the complex mathematical 3-D mapping process that pinpointed the exact point in space where Nancy Everson was shot, as jurors and only jurors were showed actual, and quite graphic, crime scene photos. This witness made me realize how one might actually use the trigonometry and calculus courses that I, a historian by training, had reluctantly slogged through in high school and college.
Perhaps the most unexpected BCA witness was one that we jurors called the “tape lady” because she specialized in different types of tape that are commonly used in crimes. In the case of the Everson trial, she testified that the distinctive thread and adhesive patterns of duct tape found in Grant Everson’s van matched a sliver of tape that had remained on Everson’s pant leg after he and Beckrich had removed it from their clothing. Beckrich testified that the tape had been used to seal socks around the bottoms of their inner pant legs so as not to leave or pick up any trace evidence at the scene. Everson did not realize that a sliver of tape remained on his inner pant leg after he had removed his outer clothing and discarded the tape seal and sock into the empty shot gun case. The tape sliver was discovered on his pant leg and processed as evidence when Everson was booked into the Carver County Jail after his arrest. In the absence of the actual outer clothing, socks, and most of the tape that was stashed in the never recovered shot gun case, the testimony of the “tape lady” was intended to reinforce the premeditated nature of the murder, back up Beckrich’s testimony regarding how the tape was used in the murder, and to link physical evidence – the duct tape – to Everson.
Throughout the trial jurors were only allowed to take our own handwritten notes, and we were instructed that we would only see or hear most evidence once. We had to always leave our notes in the jury room, both during and after the trial. Although all the witness testimony was fascinating, it was also extremely tragic and brought home the serious nature of the task that was charged to jurors. The media attention also brought that home to us – we were instructed to park in the back lot each day and enter and leave the court via the employee entrance to avoid members of the media, who were kept to the front area of the government center by sheriff’s deputies. In hindsight I am very thankful that this was prior to the explosion of social media use and the complications that has raised for high profile cases like this one. But the fact remained that after all evidence and testimony had been presented and closing arguments had been made, we as jurors retired to the jury room to deliberate a verdict, and the media and all the other “noise” was left outside those doors as we were instructed by the judge to choose between a first-degree or a second-degree murder conviction and told that we would be sequestered until we reached a verdict. We had been advised the day before to bring to the court house with us that day a suitcase packed with a few days’ worth of personal items so that if the trial ended we would be prepared for sequestration.
Conviction for at least the second-degree murder charge was highly likely – Everson’s defense attorney (who was quite impressive and did not fit the stereotype we tend to envision for a public defender) did not argue that he did not commit a crime – the witness testimony against him was too compelling and pervasive to deny he was involved. But because Everson was not the actual shooter and Beckrich testified that they had intended to leave the premises until Nancy Everson woke up and confronted Everson, the defense claimed this undermined the premeditated nature of the crime because the original murder plan had been abandoned. Because of this the defense argued that second-degree murder and the possibility for eventual rehabilitation was the appropriate conviction for Everson, as it had been determined for Beckrich, the actual shooter. The prosecution in response argued that just because plans go awry does not mean that there were no plans at all, and that plans can be altered and carried out in the span of just minutes – they do not have to completely adhere to the original plans to be considered pre-meditation. The prosecution emphasized that Everson had heavily pressured Beckrich into shooting Nancy Everson, and that Everson had shown no remorse and exhibited an extremely inflated sense of entitlement and a callous disregard for anyone but himself – even his own family and friends.
After the jury foreman was elected (he was a Minnesota state trooper at the time – a natural choice to serve as foreman), we jurors did an early anonymous poll regarding guilt or innocence on both counts. That poll showed that all jurors believed Everson was guilty of at least the second-degree murder charge. Most also believed he was guilty of first-degree murder, but a few were uncertain of that, and so the ensuing discussion and reviews of evidence centered on the first-degree murder charge, particularly the element of pre-meditation. We did not reach a unanimous verdict by dinner time, and so we ate dinner and then were transported via minibus to an undisclosed area hotel to stay overnight. We were accompanied by sheriff’s deputies, who confiscated our cell phones and reminded us that we were not to use the hotel phones to call anyone, either. If we needed anything, we were to ask the deputies, who were stationed outside our rooms in the hallway. We returned to the courthouse jury room the next morning to continue our deliberations.
In the end, it was a second review of Fuhrman’s testimony that convinced the few reluctant jurors to convict on the first-degree charge. Fuhrman had been the only witness who had spoken with both Everson and Beckrich immediately after the murder. Fuhrman testified twice – once in a video recording of his initial police interview immediately after he was arrested, and once in person during Everson’s trial. Fuhrman consistently claimed both times that both Everson’s and Beckrich’s stories matched when they spoke to him separately, and that Everson had freely admitted to Fuhrman that he had heavily pressured Beckrich to be the shooter during their final exchange in the mud room closet, even going so far as to push the loaded shot gun with the safety off into Beckrich’s hands and then letting go of it, telling Beckrich, “I can’t – you HAVE to do it.” Beckrich himself testified at trial that he took the gun from Everson in the end because “you don’t let a loaded shotgun drop to the floor in an enclosed space.” Beckrich also claimed that he agreed to be the trigger man just to “get it over with” and because he knew that because his mother had discovered them Everson would be in big trouble with his parents if he did not kill them. Beckrich said that Nancy Everson had not seen him and may not even had known that he was there and so he would have preferred to leave and not have committed the murder if Everson had not insisted so strongly that Beckrich carry it out in that moment. In my opinion, both were guilty of first-degree murder but Beckrich, unlike Everson, had shown immediate remorse upon his arrest and cut a plea deal for a lesser charge.
We jurors reached a unanimous verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree by lunch time that second day of deliberations, and we ate lunch together in the jury room while the court assembled the necessary parties in the court room to hear the verdict. We all were troubled about sending a young man to prison possibly for life (sentencing would be up to the judge), but confident in the verdict itself and relieved to finally be able to go home and resume our lives. But we soon found out that our duties as jurors were not over, and you could feel the entire jury box mood deflate as the judge instructed us that we were not yet done – that we needed to deliberate in regard to three aggravating circumstances that would aid the judge in regard to sentencing – to justify a maximum sentence, which in Minnesota was life in prison without parole. So back to the jury room we went – for three additional hours. All decisions had to be unanimous, and we eventually convicted on two of the three aggravating factors. After that we were finally released to go home.
Less than two months later the judge sentenced Everson to life in prison without parole, citing the aggravating factors, the calculated callousness of the crime, and his lack of remorse and seeming lack of understanding or acknowledgement of the pain he had caused and the lives that he had effectively ruined or irreparably altered. The judge said that Everson instead still seemed resentful for being held accountable for his own choices and actions, which did not bode well for society should he ever be released from prison. Because it was a capital murder case, the conviction was immediately appealed to the Minnesota Supreme Court, which upheld the conviction and denied Everson any further appeals for a new trial. To my current knowledge Everson remains incarcerated at the super-maximum security state prison in Oak Park Heights.
Throughout my time as a juror in this case, I can say with all honesty that I dutifully avoided talking about it outside of the court room once I reported for jury duty, and with no one during the actual trial, not even with family over the Thanksgiving break. Quite frankly it was nice to get a break from the all-consuming nature of the trial and be able to say “I can’t discuss it” if anyone mentioned it in my presence. I avoided media coverage of it, and I know that I would have avoided social media like the plague had it existed back then – I would have turned off all my notifications and taken a complete social media hiatus. Once you are in the thick of having to weigh evidence and make a decision that will literally determine someone’s future and affects the lives of so many people connected to the crime allegedly committed, you understand the seriousness of the task and adhere to it as best you can. You are giving up your normal life to do this task along with your fellow jurors – you may as well do it well. And quite frankly the attorneys and court staff are very skilled at weeding out those people who they feel will not adhere to those duties and the rules imposed by them. We jurors all took our task seriously and no one doubted each other’s integrity. It was clear that although none of us truly wanted to be there, we understood that the stakes were high and so we were all fully committed together for as long as it took to come to a unanimous and just decision.
Although there were no racial aspects to the Everson trial, I am confident that the jurors in Derek Chauvin’s trial felt the same way that I and my fellow jurors did in 2006, and were equally as confident in the verdicts that they rendered, even if were troubled by the implications of those verdicts and the fact that they had to be the ones to render them. Theirs was neither a racist 1950s all-white jury looking to acquit a white police officer, nor an anti-police jury looking to find any reason at all to convict a white police officer. They considered and reviewed all the evidence they felt they needed to, and their internal debate most likely concentrated on whether or not to convict for the most serious charge of second-degree murder. After ten hours they unanimously and confidently rendered the three verdicts they believed to be just. Thankfully, they were not asked to deliberate in regard to five aggravating factors – the judge will do that unassisted by the jury prior to sentencing Chauvin in a few weeks.
Certain things that could have swayed jurors most in regard to the case happened prior to jury selection and thus were not much different from any other high-profile case. One was having the Barr Justice Department intervene in the summer of 2020 to discourage Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison from accepting a third-degree murder and minimum ten-year prison sentence plea from Chauvin. The plea meant that Chauvin’s attorneys were pretty certain that he would be convicted of at least that charge. But U.S. Attorney General William Barr wanted the case to go to trial, and so it did. The release of the video of George Floyd’s death and the resulting protests and occasional violence in the days and weeks that followed were two other influencing factors, but they affected everyone who heard about, participated in, or saw them, not just jurors. And the video footage of George Floyd’s death, including additional previously unseen footage from police body cameras and area security cameras were introduced by the prosecution as key evidence in the case – the jurors were destined to see the video, and more, in graphic detail anyway. The reinstatement of the third-degree murder charge as preparations for the trial were about to begin was another possible influencing factor, but since it was less than the more serious second-degree murder charge it could have swayed potential jurors in either direction.
As jury selection was being finalized, the announcement of the $27 million civil settlement that the City of Minneapolis reached with the family of George Floyd was unfortunate timing and perhaps should have been avoided until after the trial. But it was likely no more prejudicial to jurors than Barr’s intervention in the initial plea deal had been, and jurors were asked if the settlement impacted their opinions regarding the case. Civil suits are treated separately from criminal trials, and a verdict or settlement in one does not preclude the same result for the other – just ask O.J. Simpson, who was acquitted of murdering his ex-wife but lost a costly wrongful death civil suit brought against him by her family.
As you critique the Chauvin trial and verdict, please consider that it is really difficult to put yourself in the shoes of a juror in a high-profile murder case unless you have been one yourself – but even then one must remember that every case, trial, and jury situation is unique. Even though the Chauvin murder trial was thousands of times more high profile than the capital murder trial for which I served as a juror, the jury’s task is always the same: to consider the evidence presented by both sides, confidentially discuss that evidence as a group during deliberations, and render a just and unanimous verdict. Jurors are asked to do this while they are learning about the trial process and the law itself and trying to remain aware of and keep their own biases in check. And in high-profile cases, jurors must do this while also doing their best to ignore things being said or events happening outside of the court room setting. No one says this is easy to do, but it is quickly realized by all involved to be quite necessary, and so jurors do their best to comply not just out of duty, but also because the stakes are so high in these types of cases.
The jurors in the Chauvin trial did their civic duty under very difficult circumstances – we owe them the benefit of the doubt and a certain measure of respect not to second guess them or make assumptions in regard to jury dynamics and discussions about which we have no direct knowledge. Simply thank them for their service and leave the second guessing to the legal appeals process.
https://apnews.com/article/minneapolis-pay-27-million-settle-floyd-family-lawsuit-52a395f7716f52cf8d1fbeb411c831c7
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/derek-chauvin-files-motion-new-trial-george-floyd-case-alleging-n1266341
https://www.wctrib.com/news/284473-four-suspects-charged-shooting-death-52-year-old-chaska-woman
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2006/11/30/chaskakilling
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2008/05/29/minn-court-refuses-new-trial-for-chaska-man-who-killed-mom
https://www.swnewsmedia.com/chaska_herald/news/everson-and-beckrich—where-are-they-now/article_13135980-aefa-58bf-9038-81ca3ae4a91d.html
https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2021-04-30/prosecutors-ask-judge-to-consider-aggravating-factors-when-sentencing-chauvin-for-floyd-murder
