On June 12, Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill was appointed to handle the four criminal cases against Minneapolis police officers over the death of George Floyd.[1]
Cahill was appointed to the bench in 2007 by Governor Tim Pawlenty (Rep.) and elected to continue in that position in 2008 and 2014. Known for being decisive and direct, Cahill has handled other significant criminal cases.
In 2019, he presided over the jury trial of Kenneth Lilly for shooting a school bus driver on a snowy winter day. After the jury’s guilty verdict, Cahill sentenced Lilly to seven years in prison, saying the judge accepted that the defendant was “not a monster,” but did not believe the defendant’s assertions that he feared for his life when his car was hit by the slow-moving bus and that he did not know a child was on the bus. Lilly was represented by Thomas Plunkett, who argued for a lower sentence because Lilly had Asperger’s syndrome and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder from two attempted robberies. Plunkett now represents one of the four Minneapolis policemen (J. Alexander Kueng) in the Floyd case.[2]
Last year Cahill also presided over the case of Thomas Incantalupo, a former ice skating coach with a local skating club. As the trial for nine counts of sexual assaults with a young girl skater was set to commence in June 2019, the defendant accepted a deal for pleading guilty to two counts in exchange for a prison sentence between 12 and 30 years. Thereafter Cahill sentenced him to 24 years in prison after saying that there was “overwhelming evidence” against the defendant, that the defendant’s apologies “ring hollow” and that the defendant’s actions were “not cheating on your wife. This is a crime against a child.” That defendant was represented by attorney Earl Gray, now the attorney for policeman Thomas Lane in the Floyd case.[3]
Plunkett and Gray and the other two attorneys in the George Floyd case now have 10 days from June 12 to move to replace Cahill, but without having any say on who might be the replacement and without having the right to move to replace the successor judge.
Before becoming a judge, Cahill was an attorney in the Hennepin County Public Defenders Office, 1984-1987, an attorney in private practice in the Twin Cities, 1987-1997 and in the Hennepin County Attorney’s office, 1997-2007, when Amy Klobuchar was the County Attorney (1999-2007). His J.D. degree was awarded, magna cum laude, in 1984 by the University of Minnesota Law School.
Cahill will replace his fellow judges Jeannice Reding and Paul Scoggin, who presided respectively at the initial hearings in the Chauvin case and the other case involving the other three policemen.[4] Cahill’s appointment was made by Hennepin County District Judge Toddrick Barnette, who will become the first African-American Chief Judge of the court on July 1, 2020.[5]
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[1] Olson, Judge Peter Cahill to oversee cases of four officers charged in Floyd killing. StarTribune (June 12, 2020); The judge assigned in Floyd’s murder trial is a former assistant to Amy Klobuchar, N.Y. Times (June 12, 2020).
[2] Walsh & Jany, Suspected gunman arrested after school bus driver shot in apparent road-rage incident near downtown Minneapolis, StarTribune (Feb. 7, 2019); Charges filed against man who shot bus driver, (Video), StarTribune (Feb. 7, 2019); Walsh, Charges: Man claims self-defense for shooting Minneapolis school bus driver with girl aboard, StarTribune (Feb. 8, 2019); Xiong, Shooter who wounded school bus driver sentenced to 7 years in prison, StarTribune (Sept. 15, 2019).
[3] Stahl, Ice-skating coach charged with sexually assaulting 14-year-old student, StarTribune (Jan. 11, 2018); Walsh, Twin Cities skating coach admits sexually abusing girl he instructed, StarTribune (June 19, 2019); Xiong, Minneapolis-area figure skating coach gets decades in prison for girl’s sex abuse, StarTribune (Sept. 27, 2019).
[4] Initial Hearings in Criminal Cases for Killing George Floyd, dwkcommentaries.com (June 10, 2020).
[5] Xiong. First chief judge of color elected in Hennepin County, StarTribune (May 5, 2020).
