A district judge in the state of Minnesota found former officer Tou Thao guilty of “complicity” in the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. Thao, the last of four officers implicated in the case to stand trial directly for his cooperation in the murder, is already serving a sentence of three years and six months in federal prison after being sentenced in 2022 for “violating the civil rights” of Floyd.
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Three years after the murder that went around the world and generated a new era in the movement against police brutality in the United States, the officers responsible continue to pay the legal consequences for their actions. District Judge Peter Cahill in Hennepin County sentenced Thao to four years and nine months in prison for his role in the death of George Floyd.
In his defense, Thao claimed that he acted as “a human traffic cone” and that he would have only held onlookers of the event while officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck, causing his death. The former officer sentenced on August 7 stressed that, on that fateful day, he “did not intend to harm anyone.”
“I had no intention of doing any harm or trying to harm anyone. That was never my intention. I did the best I thought I could (…) I did not commit those crimes,” Thao said moments before the revelation of the opinion in his against.
The former agent had already been held in a federal prison for approximately 11 months, paying his sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rights. This new ruling will run concurrently with his federal case, although Thao’s lawyer, Robert Paule, said his legal team will challenge both sentences.
The judge expected “a little more remorse”
The defendant’s defense asked the judge for a sentence of only three years and nine months, but Cahil, lamenting the lack of “repentance and responsibility” in Thao, imposed the highest sentence allowed under current legislation in relation to the charge for which he was found guilty. The judge stressed that, after the three-year sentence that the former police officer is serving for violating Floyd’s civil rights, he hoped that Thao would reconsider the “irrationality” of his actions.
Thao’s actions were even more unreasonable in light of the fact that he had a duty to intervene to stop the other officers’ excessive use of force and was qualified to provide medical assistance, the Minneapolis judge added in the written judgment against the former police officer of said city.
With this Monday’s ruling, Thao joins Thomas Lane, alexander kueng and Derek Chauvin as the officers involved in Floyd’s death. Thao was the only one of the four officers who refused to plead guilty to his complicity in the murder, stating that he “would be lying” if he did. A decision that cost him a longer sentence than that of Lane and Kueng, who pay three years and three years and six months respectively.
For his part, Chauvin, the direct author of Floyd’s murder, was sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison for second-degree manslaughter. In addition, he is simultaneously serving a concurrent sentence of 21 years for violating Floyd’s civil rights.
“George Floyd narrated his own death”
During the hearing, the representation of the State Attorney’s Office was headed by Erin Eldrige, assistant attorney general of Minnesota. Eldrig celebrated the judge’s sentence and assured that the ex-policeman was trained to “do better”.
“George Floyd narrated his own death in the course of a hold that lasted more than nine long minutes until he lost consciousness, stopped breathing and his heart stopped beating (…) [Thao] stood by and allowed it to happen,” Eldrige said.
The murder of George Floyd turned three on May 25. A date that has marked contemporary American society and that has promoted the fight for respect for the civil rights of African-Americans. It has also put the spotlight on the systematic abuse and institutional racism on the part of the police forces to this sector of the population.
With Reuters, AP and local media
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