Trial lawyer Jerry Blackwell ’84 sat down with Catalyze hosts Sarah O’Carroll and Benny Klein ’24 to share his story of joining the prosecution team, some of the strategies behind the case, and what it was like to deliver the closing remarks of the trial.

Jerry has been nominated by President Biden to become a federal judge for the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota. The alumnus is the founding partner, CEO, and chairman of Blackwell Burke P.A.

The double Tar Heel earned his undergraduate degree in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, followed by a J.D. from the UNC School of Law in 1987.

Listen to the episode.

“You were told . . . that Mr. Floyd died because his heart was too big,” Blackwell said to the jury on April 20, 2021.

“And now, having seen all the evidence and having heard all the evidence, you know the truth, and the truth of the matter is that the reason George Floyd is dead is because Mr. Chauvin’s heart was too small,” he said.

Jerry will deliver the keynote address at the 2022 Morehead-Cain Alumni Forum this October. Listen to his Alumni Speaker Series talk from fall 2021.

Read more about Jerry’s work on the trial.

Music credits

The intro music for this episode is by Scott Hallyburton ’22, guitarist of the band South of the Soul. This episode also includes the song, “Jazz Mango,” by Joey Pecoraro.

How to listen

On your mobile device, you can listen and subscribe to Catalyze on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. For any other podcast app, you can find the show using our RSS feed.

Catalyze is hosted and produced by Sarah O’Carroll for the Morehead-Cain Foundation, home of the first merit scholarship program in the United States and located at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can let us know what you thought of the episode by finding us on Twitter or Instagram at @moreheadcain or you can email us at communications@moreheadcain.org.

Episode Transcription

(Sarah)

Jerry, Catalyze listeners are so fortunate that you’re in town. What a luxury and a delight to speak with you in person.

(Jerry)

I am honored to be here this morning, and I look forward to our conversation.

(Sarah)

So you get the call from Keith Ellison, the Minnesota attorney general. You’re asked to take on what you know is going to be a very high-profile case with very high stakes. Can you take us into that moment and what was running through your mind?

(Jerry)

I was first surprised to get the call from the attorney general. I had, like everybody else, seen the killing of George Floyd and had the sense of moral outrage, and I had the sense that I wanted to do anything I could do to help to bring about accountability for what I had seen there. So the call from attorney general surprised me because I’d only formulated this feeling of myself that I wanted to be able to help to do something about this. And when he called and asked if I would help, I said yes immediately. Count me in, not knowing what I could do, how I would do it, or how my life would function if I’m going to depart from it for what will be a very extended period of time getting ready for trial.

(Sarah)

So when you were speaking with Morehead-Cains, you connected this decision to take the case to Aretha Franklin in your comments. Can you tell us what you meant?

(Jerry)

What I meant by that, when Aretha Franklin stepped in for Pavarotti, whose voice was failing, she simply asked, “Could I listen to his rehearsal of the song?” And then she just did it. And I said it’s because Aretha Franklin is a boss. Aretha Franklin can do that. And then I thought, “Well, I’ve tried a lot of cases. I can do this. I’m certain I can do this.” And I think in our conversation, when I was making this analogy about Aretha Franklin, she was boss with a capital B. And then the more I learned about the challenges of trying the Derek Chauvin case, my idea of being a boss became a lower case B, and a lot of other small letters, too, as I came to see how daunting the challenge would be. But it is an inspiration that if there’s a skill set you have, if there’s something you excel at, to be willing to just offer it up and say, “I can do this.” And I said to myself, “I can do this. I’ve never tried a criminal case before. I’ve never had a criminal case before, but I can do this.”

(Sarah)

So even though there was some hesitation with this case being a bit different, and by that I mean a criminal case, it still felt like this is something that you needed to do.

(Jerry)

No, that’s right. And if you’re trial lawyer, there’s no such thing as a criminal jury, a civil jury, there’s just a jury. And there’s just a group of citizens who come together to determine the facts of what happened and who should be accountable for it. And the nature of the narrative, the need to have compelling themes, is the same, whether it’s a criminal case or, as my career has been, a civil case.

(Sarah)

So young people thinking about going into law imagine themselves on the grand stage one day making the opening statements and then delivering the closing arguments to seal the case. Can you share how that decision was made and how did you prepare for the opening and closing remarks? There’s just so much, I’m sure, that you wanted to say, but ultimately it’s about persuasion. So how do you decide how to use those opportunities?

(Jerry)

It’s almost a lifetime of stuff that goes into that—packed into that one question. It’s living, in my view, a lot of life, having a broad swath of life experiences. It gives you a sense of how normal people might respond to situations. I found that normal people oftentimes don’t think the way lawyers do. And I do understand—did understand—that most people make decisions, first and foremost, on an emotional/moral level. It’s what I call the politics of the belly. What is the story and how do I feel about it first, and then, what do I think? But how do I feel first? And I feel that this is right; I feel that this is wrong. And then I want to know, OK, tell me what the law says. And then I try to conform the law to how I feel. And that’s why it’s so important to have a compelling narrative that speaks first and foremost to what I call the politics of the belly, and then get focused on what are the elements of unintentional murder, second-degree murder? What are the elements of second-degree manslaughter? That’s second. But first, what is the story and how compelling is the story? And that, to me, is simply calibrating your dial to the way most people make decisions.

(Sarah)

So much of a trial is also tactical, the choices that a legal team makes. So was storytelling part of how you played that, or tactically, what was the game plan?

(Jerry)

Well, definitely storytelling is a part of that. The Chauvin trial, the video was so poignant and so compelling that the lawyer, in my view, needed to be overwhelmingly the master of ceremonies, that you don’t need to add anything to the drama, if you will, that’s in the video. So I was intentionally relatively flat and very factual because there was all the emotion that any lawyer could want or need just in the video itself. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a compelling video is worth a thousand pictures any day, just even a segment of video. And we had broad swaths of video. So it was to me very important to not overplay it, to not guild it, but to simply present the evidence and let the video speak for itself and show for itself.

(Sarah)

I mean, you’re known to take complex things like medical concepts into understandable terms. So was that also part of the calculus in how you wanted to prosecute, in addition to storytelling and appealing to people’s humanity, in carrying these arguments?

(Jerry)

Definitely. I think a trial is really not the time for a lawyer to want to show the jury of the public how smart the lawyer is. And you would be amazed—maybe you wouldn’t be amazed—at how often lawyers work so hard to master complex medical or scientific terms, and they’re so happy that they’re able to do it that they can’t wait to tell the jury, and they speak to them on a college level. Well, one study I’d read that said that any time a lawyer uses a word, a term, a phrase that the jurors don’t understand, you lose the next seven seconds with that jury just trying to figure out what did you just say. So it’s important to be relatable, extremely important to be understandable. And so I don’t spend a lot of time talking about hypoxia, asphyxia, paraganglioma, anoxic seizures. I may talk about low oxygen, for example, because everybody gets low oxygen. I want to be understood. So you have to understand the case on a minute, very detailed level with all of the hyper-complex language. But then you’ve got to be able to pan the camera back and to discuss it in basic terms, and you have to be able to scale the case. It’s got to be true. What you say has to be true at two inches, and it’s got to be true at 30,000 feet. And so I scale it back to the 30,000 feet so I can talk to the jury about it so that they will understand it.

(Sarah)

So I’d like to go to the legal team. I’m sure that you all have to present a united front, but I bet the internal meetings are often very contentious. Can you take us into those meetings, and how did you wrestle with differences of opinion on key questions, and then back to tactics, how to ultimately be successful?

(Jerry)

I loved the team meetings. You know, the discussions were always very respectful. There were times when I thought, “Hey, this reminds me of MMA in the way that we would kind of go at it.” But it was always with the understanding that everybody in the room—number one, they were used to being leaders on teams. Every team member was used to being a leader of a team. And then second, everybody had the desire to put on the best case. And so that was the framework for sort of mixing up the ideas. And sometimes I joked that we had moments that were like mixing oil and water in a bowling ball within the team because we had a lot of things to basically kind of homogenize there. I’m coming from civil practice totally. I’ve got career criminal prosecutors. We have different life experiences. The saying that where you stand in the world depends on where you’ve been sitting. Well, I’m an African American. My experience had been, I had rarely had, frankly, I couldn’t remember before the trial when I had any random positive experience with the police. I’ve been stopped for no reason, followed for no reason, et cetera, and not just once, repeatedly.

I had other team members who had never had an untoward experience with the police. And so we had different life experiences. And that translates into what your thoughts are about what may be in the hearts, minds, the bellies of jurors informed largely by your own sort of personal experience. So those had to get blended together strategically within the team also. And we had different practice habits that had to get sort of blended because now we were one team. So the attorney general was instrumental. He led all the meetings. He was in with both hands, feet, arms, legs, ears—was totally in. And we had plenty of things that were just judgment calls. And, at the end of the day, he made the judgment calls. And the result is what you saw in the trial. And I thought we came together, the team, wonderfully around the trial. It was very cohesive. We had carefully vetted things. We had done our best to be prepared for what we call “prebuttal,” which is anticipating what the other side is going to do before they even present. And then it gets addressed affirmatively in our case before they present. And so it was to me a wonderful team that way and still is.

(Sarah)

Of course, strong legal arguments come down to precision. And there’s what you share in the courtroom, and then what kind of becomes the larger story that’s shared with the public and media coverage. And we know this was such a high-profile case that there were all sides and all types of organizations covering this. Can you speak to any of the misconceptions of the case, and can you help us identify and even clear up some of those since they occurred?

(Jerry)

Interesting question. The one misperception of the case that comes to mind that kind of aired publicly was the sense that this was a fight between David and Goliath. And look at the Goliath that the state of Minnesota has in this with all of these lawyers, all of these resources. And on the other side of the courtroom is a lone attorney who’s attempting to defend Derek Chauvin. That was a misleading optic in that the defense counsel had essentially the same number of attorneys defending the case as on the prosecution. They just decided to present it with just him in the courtroom, but he had an army sort of behind in the preparation of the case. And even beyond that, the difficulty of convicting a police officer in a death and custody case involving an African American, the difficulties are historic. It is rarely done. It is hardly done. So really in my mind, it begs the question of who’s the David and who’s the Goliath when you’re fighting against that kind of history in order to get a conviction? And I had never heard, frankly, of a person of color who’s being defended by a lone defense counsel and the entire resources of the state are being wielded to convict that person. I’ve never heard anybody raise a concern about that being a David and Goliath. So that struck me, too.

(Sarah)

Were there any other big surprises when the trial was occurring? And has there been a big surprise since then?

(Jerry)

In the trial itself, the verdict, despite my sense that the evidence was compelling, the witnesses had gone in very well, we had anticipated most of what the defense had to say. I still was on the edge of my chair thinking, “I don’t know what this jury will do because of the history, the difficulty.” So when they came back, and he was guilty on all accounts, I was pleased. I was so pleased. I think it was borderline surprised because you just didn’t know what was going to happen. The other major surprise for me was the ways in which this verdict meant so much to so many all over the world. And I mean, I heard from China to Sweden, Turkey, Peru, all over Africa, so many—not only just concerned about what’s happening in America, but the very challenges that many people face all over the world about the relationship of the people to the persons who are imbued with authority over the people, and the concerns about how that power gets wielded and whether the people are being abused by those in authority. The case, the trial, resonated with so many all over the world, and I heard from many people. That, to me, was also surprising.

(Sarah)

Can you share what it was like to be with the Floyd family after hearing the verdict? And can you share their reaction?

(Jerry)

The Floyd family, I just don’t have enough positive words to talk about what wonderful people they were. When you think about them not only losing their loved one this way, their brother this way, their uncle this way, but having to sit through a trial this long and watch him die every single day. I never heard a venomous word; I never heard an attack of any sort. They were just very gracious people. They wanted accountability. They wanted to know, and for a jury to decide, that their brother’s life meant something, that you can’t simply just snuff him out in a brazen way like he was a nobody to everybody, meaning he meant nothing to anybody. They wanted that kind of accountability. I was happy and the attorney general and team were happy to be a part of that process of bringing about accountability. I don’t call it justice because justice to me means he would still be alive. That would be the just thing. He would not be dead. But it did bring accountability. But the family was just a wonderful family. I wish everybody had an opportunity to know that family, to see just, to me, what a loving and caring and thoughtful, humble family George Floyd came from.

(Sarah)

You said that, of course, this couldn’t bring George Floyd back, and so justice ultimately couldn’t be delivered. And they say that law is a blunt instrument. So if justice in these circumstances isn’t possible, or, to put it another way, there are limits to our approach to law. What is the sort of best case that the court of law can give given these circumstances?

(Jerry)

That’s probably it. You know the law can do many things, but I don’t know that it will ever be able to resurrect the dead. The law can’t do that. And so the law can mete out penalties, which is what happened here on the criminal side. It is a blunt instrument in the sense that how do you, with any kind of surgical precision, mete out just the proper degree of justice, of accountability, in a given case? You have sentencing guidelines which, to some extent, are kind of a-one-size-fits-all within certain categories for sentencing. The judge has some discretion, but the discretion exists within balance that are meted out. There’ll be arguments about whether or not was it too little for Mr. Chauvin, but it has its own sort of crudeness to it. Oftentimes the law has to intervene in things that are pure tragedies. This is a pure tragedy. George Floyd should not have been killed. On the other hand, if you have to sit in the courtroom across from Mr. Chauvin for weeks and weeks, and you hear the sheriff’s deputy say to turn around, and you hear the click of the handcuffs on the wrist, and you know this man is about to be shipped away to the human warehouse where years and years of his life are going to pass away, that’s tragic, too.

Even though it’s the right thing that happened here, it’s still tragic. The law has to try to intervene and bring about accountability in those kinds of difficult contexts to bring finality, resolution, and so that we are able to move forward societally from some of these situations.

(Sarah)

Something that I think many of us are wrestling with is how can we both support law enforcement and officers of the law, recognizing that their job is so dangerous and so difficult and perhaps sometimes even impossible, but at the same time champion social justice. How can we understand these two imperatives as not being mutually exclusive?

(Jerry)

Well, we do it all the time in other contexts. I mean, a doctor’s job, the surgeon’s job, is difficult. You have to have a steady hand. You sometimes make a wrong diagnosis. That’s not the same thing as injecting somebody with a chemical substance that’s known to kill people. It’s nothing to do with good doctoring. And to put your knee and your full body weight on somebody’s neck who’s unarmed, who’s defenseless, who’s calling out for his mother, who is unconscious, who doesn’t have a pulse, and then to do it for four and a half minutes, has not one thing in the world to do with proper policing or the kind of exercise of judgment or discretion that you’re referring to. That was just over the line. And frankly, I think it’s a dishonor to the police who are making those kind of hard decisions to use the example of somebody who is that brazen and just dishonoring the badge. It was just totally rogue, renegade behavior and had nothing to do with proper policing.

(Sarah)

Well, Jerry, I appreciate your answers. I’m going to turn things over to Benny Klein. He is a second-year scholar at Morehead-Cain, as well as an incoming scholar host for Catalyze, and he’s here with us at the Carolina Inn. Benny, thanks so much for also joining this Catalyze interview with Jerry.

(Benny)

Thank you. Jerry, it’s a pleasure to get to speak with you. In coming aboard on the podcast, I’ve heard from a lot of alumni, but sometimes it’s hard to imagine myself in their shoes or getting to be what you guys have become. And so my question for you is, could you think back to when you were 18 or 19 years old as an undergraduate at UNC? What were some of your goals, your fears, anxieties, and aspirations? And if you could go back and talk to yourself now, what would you tell that undergrad?

(Jerry)

You know, back when I was 18, 19 years old, when I might have been a second-year then “Morehead Scholar,” as I said, that was the old school “Morehead-Cain“ today, I had the sense that I was supposed to go out and do something in the world. I’m supposed to do something that matters in the world. It should be bold; it should be audacious; it should change the world in some way. I had no idea kind of what that meant or how I would go about doing it, but I had to figure it out because after all, I called them like the Order of the Green Lanterns, that they all have these power rings to do extraordinary things. And I never feel more ordinary than when I’m around a bunch of Morehead-Cain Scholars. So the one thing I would tell myself going back is relax . . . relax. It is not that serious. Now, the best thing you can do as an undergraduate, in my view, is to use that time to not just be a good student. You learned how to be a good student even before you got here. But to take the time to explore what you think you might really love to do. What do I really love to do? And that may not be a stressful exercise any more than you learn what ice cream you like and learn the things that you really love to do, and then kind of lean in that direction for the way that you might earn a living doing it, the thing that you love to do, because you’ll have to do it a long time. And if you love it, if you love what you do, then you never work a day in your life. And so I say that’s the main thing. And then just simply understand that wherever you are planted, you will sprout and you will blossom, wherever that is. And to follow what I call the wisdom of Arthur Ashe. Start with where you are. Do what you can with what you have. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. If you kind of put in your mind just the idea of some big, hairy, audacious goal, I call it the B-HAG, a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. Just put it in your mind. Don’t fret on it. Don’t worry about it. Just kind of have it playing in the background music, occasionally kind of look at it. Am I making an effort? Doesn’t have to be a perfect effort, doesn’t have to be a strenuous effort. I water it with my attention every once in a while and just lean in that direction. The universe will help you, and opportunities will present themselves. You never know when or how. I most certainly never saw a Derek Chauvin trial coming. I couldn’t see a Derek Chauvin coming. Who would want to see a killing of George Floyd that way coming? But one day you’ll see the confluence of all the circumstances will have arrayed themselves in such a way that there is a moment that seems to be calling just for you. And then you will realize that all those times that you were watering with your attention and leaning in that direction, that it was for a certain moment, then here it is. And then you simply walk into it. And even walking into it, you didn’t have to stress, strain to do that either. It was simply just there. So I’d tell myself to relax. You’re all right. It’s not that serious. Get off the perfectionism thing. And life to me is full of tremendous progress. Most of it isn’t in the realm of perfectionism and never ever live life, in my view, letting the perfect get in the way of the good. Good is good enough, quite often, and that good to me marks most progress. And perfect is to me an ideal. Good may be what is actually achievable, and that is more than good enough in this world.

(Benny)

Thank you very much. My next question would be—you mentioned that you were in the same dorm as Michael Jordan. Is that correct?

(Jerry)

That’s right.

(Benny)

Everyone’s got a Michael Jordan story. Do you have a Michael Jordan story you could share with us?

(Jerry)

Do I ever have a Michael Jordan story I can share! So back in 1981, when I was a second-year, Michael Jordan wasn’t yet Michael Jordan then, because if he were, I’d have gotten his autograph instead of going, “Why would I want his autograph?” So Michael Jordan was a freshman. We were both in Granville South, and I was an orientation counselor of some kind. So we had a meeting there of the freshmen, and he was late to the orientation meeting. So he comes in to the meeting late. We’d already done the “tell us who you are and where you’re from.” And so he comes in late. “Who are you and where are you from?” “Michael Jordan from Wilmington.” “All right, Michael Jordan from Wilmington. What happened to you? You’re late to the meeting.” And he said, “Oh, I had practice. I’m on the team.” I said, “What team?” He said, “The basketball team.” I said, “Yeah, right. If you’re on the team, I’m on the team.” So my first discussion with Michael Jordan was questioning whether he was even on the team. And, okay, maybe it was more than questioning whether he was on the team. I was making a statement, he wasn’t on the team—because please—because he wasn’t that tall then at the time.

And so that was the year that we beat, I believe, Georgetown in the championship. And from then on, this is how he spoke to me. “Scrub . . .” My name is not Scrub, but my name was Scrub. “Do you think I’m on the team now? I think I’m on the team now.” And so that was our joke. Michael Jordan story. The basketball team was on the first floor in Granville South then. But you hung out quite a lot with them. There was a game room downstairs in Granville South, there was a pinball machine. And most people had what I call their “magic quarters” that you would super-glue dental floss onto a quarter. You could put it in a pinball machine and then get your quarter back. He had his, and I will not say whether I had mine, but I will say he had his. So we would hang out together there, shoot pool, and play on the pinball machine there occasionally. Because back then, Michael Jordan wasn’t yet Michael Jordan, and he was just somebody you hung out with. So given who he has become—the most decorated player in NBA history—I wondered whether my question to him was a statement about the way my life was going to turn out.

(Sarah)

Benny, any other questions for Jerry?

(Benny)

I was just going to say, I think I’d be honored to have Michael Jordan call me a scrub.

(Jerry)

Well, on his behalf, I’ll call you a scrub.

(Sarah)

Jerry, thank you so much. I feel like I would be remiss without asking about your sweatshirt. You have a Peace Haven Farms [shirt on], and I know you’re into beekeeping. So why bees?

(Jerry)

Why bees? Because the bee is interesting, and I took up beekeeping 20-something years ago, and beekeeping really is learning about bee biology more than anything, and I found it just fascinating. It started off because I have a very intense, pressurized job as a trial lawyer representing big companies and what we call complex litigation, and I wanted something that was a contrast to that, that would get you away from the office, away from the analytics of being a lawyer, where you could just decompress. And I saw a program late at night on bees, and it was the funniest thing in the world to me to learn what male bees do. I just couldn’t stop laughing. The answer is they don’t do anything. They won’t even feed themselves. Well, they do one thing, and that’s a whole different interview. And from then I learned more and more about them and got into it as a wonderful way to help the environment, but also to learn all kinds of life lessons I call lessons learned from the hive, which would also be another wonderful talk to have. So out of it grew this creation. I started Peace Haven Farms. Peace Haven Farms is a place to learn, a place to grow, to engage children—younger minds and adults, too—in outdoor education lessons—from hands on, whether it’s beekeeping or gardening, et cetera, and translating that into certain life skills and lessons. But it started with the beekeeping.

(Sarah)

Well, Jerry, thank you so much for making time with us on your visit to Chapel Hill. I hope that you enjoy the rest of your stay.

(Jerry)

Thank you very much.

(Benny)

Thank you so much.