Judges Regina Chu and Peter Cahill Batted for Crooked Cops. With Chu Gone, Cahill Needs to Lose His Job.


     Originally, Judge Peter Cahill seemed like an average, respectable judge. That changed pretty quickly after the Derick Chauvin case. I won't get into Chauvin's sentence: 22.5 years is a fairly good sentence for a murdering cop to receive when compared to other sentences around the country. Still, earlier this month, with the trial of Chauvin's fellow officers Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng fast approaching, Cahill postponed the trial yet again, this time until January 2023. His reasoning? He believed the February federal conviction of the three officers on civil rights charges punishable by life in prison and the May guilty plea of Thomas Lane, who will be sentenced in September to three years in prison for accessory to manslaughter in the state case, would cause a jury to be unfairly prejudicial against the remaining two officers in their state trial. The officers are all set to be sentenced on federal charges by the end of the year.

     This means it could take three years for the family of George Floyd to see a conviction for homicide charges for all four officers. Cahill has again and again delayed these proceedings and again and again forced the Floyd family to endure more suffering. This is not even the worst thing Peter Cahill has done: he signed the no-knock warrant in January that resulted in the murder of an innocent black man named Amir Locke who was exercising his constitutional right to carry a firearm, an incident for which the officers faced no consequences.

     That's not even as cold as Judge Regina Chu was in the trial of Kim Potter, who was convicted of manslaughter and illegal use of a firearm for killing Daunte Wright. She claimed to sympathize with the young man's family before sentencing Potter to just two years in prison (she will be eligible for release in a matter of months) and going on and on about how Kim Potter made the world a better place and pinning the blame on Daunte for his murder, directly contradicting the findings of the jury. She added insult to injury by going below the sentencing guidelines, going to bat for a murderer, and victim blaming in a case where Potter clearly showed no remorse for her actions. The woman looked like an overweight Amber Heard, for God's sake.

     In the Ahmaud Arbery case, Travis and Gregory McMichael and William Roddie Bryan will die in prison. However, charges were also filed against DA Jackie Johnson for covering for the three men, Georgia reformed its citizen's arrest law and passed a hate crimes law, and the Emmett Till Antilynching Act was signed at the federal level. It's about changing the system, not just holding killers accountable, if we want to see real justice.

     In this case, Judges Peter Cahill and Regina Chu are part of that system. Cahill's term doesn't end until 2027, but we need to be ready to make sure he doesn't run unopposed again as he did in 2020. Chu was set to face reelection in 2023, and calls were already brewing for her to face a punishment at the ballot box after her coddling of Kim Potter provoked outrage. Thankfully, she took care of that herself, resigning in May 2022 at the age of 68. With Chu gone, Cahill needs to lose his job. If he has his way, he may still be presiding over the trial of Thao and Kueng in 2027, anyway.

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