Honestly, people get this twisted all the time because presidential pardons sound like they could let someone like Derek Chauvin walk right out the door, but that's not how it works, especially in big, messy cases like his. The president can only pardon someone for federal crimes, not state charges. Chauvin got convicted for both: federal civil rights stuff and also murder in Minnesota. Even if the president swooped in and wiped out his federal sentence, he’d still be stuck serving his Minnesota murder time, no questions asked. So, he wouldn’t be free either way. I remember chatting with my friends about this, and people didn’t get that the feds and the state work like two totally separate games. Keith Ellison, the state attorney general, even went on record saying Trump couldn’t wipe out the state conviction. Bottom line: no president, not even Trump, can erase those state years for Chauvin, and he’d be in prison till at least 2035 regardless. Wild how people think pardons are a magic get-out-of-jail card!