By Marie Fazio

Before Judge Peter A. Cahill sent jurors in the Derek Chauvin trial home on Thursday, he gave them short and vague instructions on what they might need to pack for deliberations next week.

“If I were you, I would plan for long and hope for short,” he said. “Basically, it’s up to the jury how long you deliberate, how long you need to come to a unanimous decision on any count. And so because that’s entirely up to you — whether it’s an hour or a week — it’s entirely within your province.”

After jurors hear closing arguments from both sides and receive further instructions from the judge on Monday, they will seclude themselves for deliberations, where they are tasked with coming to a unanimous verdict based on the evidence and arguments presented in court.

The jury will remain sequestered in a hotel, ideally secluded from outside influences, until reaching a verdict. If the jury is hung, or cannot reach a decision on one or more charges, the judge may declare a mistrial.

During deliberation, the jury will have access to the evidence and exhibits that were presented in court. On Thursday, Judge Cahill said that jurors would be given laptop computers to view the video that had been presented.

So how long could the deliberations take? It could be minutes, hours, days or weeks.

Eric Anderson, senior trial counsel at Early Sullivan Wright Gizer & McRae in California and a former prosecutor, said that jury deliberation lengths vary widely.

“There’s no way of telling how long this will take, particularly when I think that the jurors will try to do the right thing, whatever they think that is,” he said. “And to get to the right thing, they’re going to want to look very closely at the evidence. They’re going to want to look closely at every possible angle.”

It took a jury in Chicago less than eight hours in 2018 to convict Jason Van Dyke, a former Chicago police officer, of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm in the death of Laquan McDonald, a Black teenager who was carrying a knife but heading away from the police.

In the case of Mohamed Noor, the former Minneapolis police officer who fatally shot Justine Ruszczyk in 2017, jurors took 11 hours to reach a verdict, MPR News reported. They found him guilty of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter but not second-degree murder.

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