July 8, 2022 02:00
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was convicted last year in the murder of African American George Floyd, was sentenced Thursday to 21 years in prison.
Chauvin was convicted on separate federal charges related to violating Floyd’s civil rights during his arrest that led to his death in May 2020.
The judge said the former policeman acted unscrupulously.
Chauvin, who pleaded guilty last December to these federal charges, is already serving a 22-and-a-half-year sentence in a Minnesota prison after being convicted of Floyd’s murder in a state trial last year. The federal sentence will be executed concurrently and Chauvin will be transferred to a federal prison.
The ruling was announced by Judge Paul Magnuson in US District Court in St. Paul, Minnesota, saying that he had counted the seven months Chauvin had already spent in state prison, deducting this from his 21-year federal sentence.
After serving the sentence in a federal prison, he will be released on probation for five years.
“It is wrong to kneel on someone else’s neck until he dies. Therefore, you should be punished severely,” Magnuson said.
Chauvin, 46, admitted that he violated Floyd’s right when he knelt on his neck handcuffed for more than nine minutes in a murder that was filmed on a mobile phone. Floyd’s death led to protests in many American cities and around the world.
The judge also ordered that Chauvin pay compensation, the amount of which has not yet been determined.
Chauvin’s decision to plead guilty avoided a second criminal trial, but he is almost certain to spend many years behind bars.
Source: AFP
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