Derek Chauvin sentenced to 22 1/2 years for the killing of George Floyd
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has been sentenced to 21 years in prison on federal civil rights charges Thursday in the death of George Floyd.
He had previously pleaded not guilty to the charges but in December 2021, he claimed guilty to disregarding Floyd’s civil rights and admitted that he kept his knee on Floyd’s neck even after he became unresponsive.
Chauvin’s plea arrangement called for a 20 to 25-year sentence and for him to serve the federal sentence at the same time as the state one in federal prison.
Chauvin also pleaded guilty to depriving a then 14-year-old child of his constitutional right to be free from the use of unreasonable force by an officer, which resulted in physical injury to the teen, according to the Justice Department. U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson made the final decision.
In April 2021, Chauvin was also found guilty on three counts in Floyd’s death second-degree involuntary murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree killing for pressing his knee against Floyd’s neck for more than 9 minutes. He had already been sentenced to 270 months, minus time served, which equals about 22 1/2 years in prison.
In a statement Derrick Johnson the president of the civil rights organization NAACP called for justice in other instances of police violence in the U.S. While today’s federal sentence for George Floyd’s murderer is a step toward accountability, America’s policing crisis continues to crush and devastate Black families, Johnson said. Holding police officers accountable is crucial.
But meaningful justice, for the countless Black people murdered by police, is desperately needed. Police should serve and protect, not lynch. We need to reform policing in America. Former officers J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, and Tou Thao were also charged for their roles in Floyd’s death.
