Calls to Free George Floyd’s Murderer Grow — Here’s Why It’s Unlikely to Happen

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow

Bibliography – One Hundred Years Of Jim Crow

Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

An Iconic Lynching in the North

Claxton Dekle – Prosperous Farmer, Husband & Father of Two

Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali

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Some Exhibits to Come – The Middle Passage

What I Saw Aboard a Slave Ship in 1829

Life After Hate: A Former White Power Leader Redeems Himself

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March 6, 2025

By Christina Carrega, CapitalB

George Floyd Mural — Some on the right are calling for Trump to pardon George Floyd’s murderer (The Guardian)

As calls for a pardon for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin are growing in right-wing circles, the real question is it even possible?

The short answer: not quite.

Earlier this week, right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro urged President Donald Trump to extend clemency for Chauvin’s convictions related to the 2020 murder of George Floyd. Less than two months into Trump’s second term, he has granted clemency through executive orders more frequently than any other president.

Even if a pardon for his federal conviction was issued, it would not affect Chauvin’s murder case because the president has no jurisdiction over state criminal convictions. Trump does have the authority to pardon one of Chauvin’s convictions for violating the federal civil rights of Floyd.

Decarceration and legal advocates have expressed concerns to Capital B in previous reporting that Trump’s selection process for pardon and commutation recipients from his first term, which includes celebrities and loyalists, could continue — it already has.

Floyd’s murder by police sparked a global racial and social justice movement, with weekslong protests erupting in multiple cities. In response, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, then under former President Joe Biden’s administration, reopened investigations into the Minneapolis Police Department and other law enforcement agencies accused of misconduct. These investigations, which had been paused during Trump’s first term, focused on allegations of systemic civil rights violations.

Shapiro, Musk, and other MAGA conservatives have downplayed the role of race in Floyd’s death since, dismissing the video evidence and condemning the jury’s verdict.

On Friday, Trump said he wasn’t considering pardoning Chauvin, multiple news outlets reported.

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Learn about the history-making ruling against Chauvin.

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