George Floyd murder lands Derek Chauvin only 21 years in prison

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
8 Jul 2022 10:30
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Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was only sentenced to 21 years in prison for his brutal, cold-blooded murder of George Floyd.

Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin during a court hearing (AP)

Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, one of the cops behind the murder of George Floyd, has been sentenced to 21 years in federal prison for "violating Floyd's civil rights." Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck for over nine minutes in May 2020 until he died.

Chauvin later pled guilty in December. During the sentencing, US District Judge Paul Magnuson said Chauvin "must be held responsible" for his actions, including destroying the lives of three other officers involved in Floyd's death.

"I really don't know why you did what you did," the judge said. "To put your knee on a person's neck until they expired is simply wrong. … Your conduct is wrong and it is offensive."

Magnuson had accepted Chauvin's plea deal in May, which called for a sentence of 20-25 years. The judge took seven months off the already short sentence for time already served. Chauvin was convicted in a state court on murder and manslaughter related to Floyd's death, which led to widespread protests all over the United States and the world as a whole. He was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison.

The former policeman will be serving the state and federal sentences concurrently in federal prison.

Floyd's death was filmed by a bystander and sparked months of protests in the United States against racial injustice and police brutality.

The three men in question whom the judge accused Chauvin of destroying are police officers Thomas Lane, 38, Alexander Keung, 28, and Tou Thao, 36.

The video footage which went viral showed Keung and Lane helping Chauvin hold Floyd down - Thao, meanwhile, kept bystanders away. Chauvin was Keung and Lane's field training officer.

The policemen were charged with expressing "deliberate indifference [to Floyd's] serious medical needs" during the arrest that happened in May 2020, when Derek Chauvin kept kneeling on Floyd's neck while the latter couldn't breathe and soon died as a result.

Floyd's brother, due to the cruelty George suffered, asked the judge for a life sentence, adding that his brother's death still gave him nightmares until this day.

Prosecutors were pushing for the full 25 years sentence, arguing that his actions during the incident were cold-blooded and needless. They also brought up how Chauvin had a history of misusing restraints, while his plea also saw him admitting to violating the rights of a then-14-year-old Black boy whom he restrained in an unrelated case in 2017.

The defense asked for a reduced sentence of 20 years, claiming that Chauvin accepted responsibility for what he did.

Check out: US police killings remain high

Through his plea, Chauvin admitted for the first time after two years since the killing that he kept his knee on Floyd's neck, subsequently resulting in his death, keeping it on there even after the victim became unresponsive. The former police officer admitted he willfully deprived Floyd of his right to be free from unreasonable seizure, including unreasonable force by a police officer.

What led to the widespread nationwide and global anti-racism and anti-police brutality protests was not just one act of police officers murdering a Black person via unreasonable force, as police brutality has long been rampant, especially in the United States, and Floyd's murder acted as the main catalyzer for the Black Lives Matter protests.