Derek Chauvin's attorney has filed a new petition to throw out the former Minneapolis officer's murder conviction in the death of George Floyd, and Elon Musk posted on X one day later calling Chauvin "unjustly convicted" and demanding his freedom.
Attorney Gregory Joseph filed the petition in Hennepin County District Court on Tuesday, asking the court to vacate Chauvin's 2021 conviction on second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. The filing marks Chauvin's third attempt at post-conviction relief in the state case. A judge denied his entire post-conviction petition on May 1, and an earlier petition was dismissed in late 2025.
A day after the filing, Musk weighed in publicly on X.
As The U.S. Sun reported, Musk wrote:
"Derek Chauvin was unjustly convicted of murder, therefore he should be freed. The facts show that he was not the cause of death, nor did he at any time intend for a death to occur. Whatever else he may be, he is not a murderer. That is the truth."
Musk also reposted other messages questioning the conviction. It was not his first public statement on the matter. In March 2025, he amplified conservative commentator Ben Shapiro's call for President Trump to pardon Chauvin's federal conviction, adding: "Something to think about." Days later, Trump said he had not considered such a pardon.
The new petition raises several procedural arguments. Joseph claimed that then-Governor Tim Walz unlawfully reassigned authority over the prosecution to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a move the defense characterizes as a due process violation. Chauvin's legal team has framed this as a "non-waivable structural error," a legal term meaning a flaw so fundamental that no amount of evidence at trial can cure it.
The petition also argues that Hennepin County District Court should have convened a grand jury before charging Chauvin and that prosecutors should have obtained a formal indictment. Grand jury proceedings, where a panel of citizens reviews evidence and decides whether charges are warranted, are required in some jurisdictions for serious felonies. Chauvin's team contends their absence undermined the legitimacy of the entire case.
On the medical evidence, the defense challenged what it called the prosecution's "bogus theory of 'asphyxia,'" claiming there was no evidence to support it. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner officially ruled Floyd's cause of death as "cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression" and classified the manner of death as homicide. That ruling stood at trial and was central to the jury's guilty verdict.
If the court rejects the petition outright, Joseph has asked it to at least hold an evidentiary hearing on the claims, a proceeding where both sides could present witnesses and argue the merits.
Chauvin has exhausted the conventional appeals process. The Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld his conviction and his 22-and-a-half-year sentence for second-degree murder. AP News reported that Chauvin then appealed to the Minnesota Supreme Court, arguing the trial judge's refusal to move the case out of Minneapolis amid massive pretrial publicity denied him a fair trial. His attorneys also cited a juror's undisclosed participation in a civil rights event commemorating Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington as potential juror misconduct.
The Minnesota Supreme Court declined to hear the case. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review it.
Beyond the state case, Chauvin pleaded guilty in federal court to violating Floyd's civil rights and received a 21-year federal sentence. He is serving both terms concurrently at a federal prison in Big Spring, Texas.
Back in 2021, Minnesota prosecutors pushed back forcefully against Chauvin's earliest bid for a new trial. The New York Post reported that prosecutors filed papers in Hennepin County calling his arguments "scattershot and unavailing."
Prosecutors wrote at the time:
"He did receive a fair trial by an impartial jury, and nothing requires this court to take the extraordinary step of overturning that jury's lawful verdict."
A jury found Chauvin guilty on all three counts on the second day of deliberations in April 2021. Prosecutors had sought a 30-year sentence; the defense asked for probation. The judge settled on 22 and a half years.
George Floyd, 46, died on May 25, 2020, after Chauvin restrained him on the ground for approximately nine and a half minutes during an arrest in Minneapolis. Video showed Floyd repeatedly saying he could not breathe before becoming unresponsive. The footage sparked protests across the United States and around the world.
The trial drew intense national attention. Judge Peter Reyes of the Minnesota Court of Appeals, in upholding the conviction, said: "No one is above the law. When they commit a crime, they must be held accountable just as those individuals that they lawfully apprehend."
Musk's call to free Chauvin and the earlier Shapiro-driven push for a presidential pardon run into a basic structural limit: a presidential pardon can only reach the federal conviction. It cannot undo the Minnesota state murder sentence. That means even if Trump were to act on the federal side, Chauvin would still face the bulk of his prison time under state jurisdiction.
The latest petition targets the state conviction directly. But Chauvin's track record in post-conviction proceedings is 0 for 2, and neither the Hennepin County District Court nor the Minnesota Attorney General's office has publicly responded to the new filing.
Chauvin's legal team has the right to keep filing. Courts have the right to keep saying no. So far, every appellate body that has reviewed this case, from the trial court to the U.S. Supreme Court, has let the verdict stand. Whether the third petition fares any differently remains an open question, but the pattern is clear.
Due process matters in every case, no matter how politically charged. If Chauvin's rights were violated, a court should say so. If they weren't, no amount of outside pressure, from billionaires or anyone else, should change the outcome.
