Alan Dershowitz Says Maxine Waters Used KKK Tactics to 'Intimidate the Jury' in Chauvin Trial

Lawyer Alan Dershowitz said Representative Maxine Waters used Ku Klux Klan tactics to "intimidate the jury" in the Derek Chauvin trial.

"First of all, the judge should have granted the motion for a mistrial based on the efforts of Congresswoman Waters to influence the jury," Dershowitz said during an interview with Newsmax.

"Her message was clearly intended to get to the jury: 'If you will acquit or if you find the charge less than murder, we will burn down your buildings. We will burn down your businesses. We will attack you. We will do what happened to the witness—blood on their door,'" Dershowitz said Monday.

Waters has recently come under fire for her appearance at the protests in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, where crowds have gathered for more than a week following Daunte Wright's death in a police shooting.

Asked what should happen if the jury finds Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, not guilty in the murder last May of George Floyd, Waters responded, "Well, we've got to stay on the street. And we've got to get more active. We've got to get more confrontational. We've got to make sure that they know that we mean business."

Her remarks drew a backlash from Republicans who accused Waters of inciting a riot, with several members of Congress calling for her expulsion from the House.

The nation is awaiting the verdict in the landmark case now that the jury is in deliberations. It has been sequestered and will remain so until it reaches a verdict.

Dershowitz said Waters' comments were "an attempt to intimidate the jury" so that it finds Chauvin guilty. "It's borrowed precisely from the Ku Klux Klan of the 1930s and 1920s when the Klan would march outside of courthouses and threatened all kinds of reprisals if the jury ever dared convict a white person or acquit a black person," he said.

"And so, efforts to intimidate a jury should result in a mistrial.... The judge, of course, wouldn't grant a mistrial because then he'd be responsible for the riots that would ensue, even though it was Waters who was responsible," Dershowitz continued.

The attorney added that he thinks there will be a conviction charge, at least on the manslaughter charge if not the second-degree murder charge. Chauvin is also charged with third-degree murder.

Dershowitz said if this happens, it would then be up to an appeals court to reverse the conviction on the ground that the jury was "subjected to intimidation tactics, not only by Waters but by others as well, who threatened violence in the event of an acquittal or a lesser charge than murder."

Newsweek reached out to Waters' office for comment but did not hear back before publication.