This afternoon, a federal jury in St. Paul, Minn., convicted three former Minneapolis police officers of civil-rights charges in connection with the May 2020 killing of George Floyd.
The panel of eight men and four women (three African-American, one Hispanic, and eight white) deliberated for two days before announcing that it had reached a verdict about 3:45 p.m. Central Time. The jury convicted all three men of all counts — two against J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao, one against Thomas Lane. The fourth former cop, Derek Chauvin, had already pled guilty in the case. He was convicted in a state murder trial last spring.
As I previously outlined (here and here), the Justice Department’s indictment singled Chauvin out as the most culpable. He alone was charged in Count One with violating Floyd’s Fourth Amendment right to be free of unreasonable seizure by using excessive force in executing an arrest. Infamously, Chauvin knelt across Floyd’s neck and back while holding him prone on a hard street during a nine-and-a-half-minute stretch, caught on video. Floyd died of asphyxiation, which expert medical testimony attributed to the deprivation of oxygen caused by the hold.
As they awaited an ambulance that the police had called, Kueng and Lane helped Chauvin hold Floyd down. Tou held back the increasingly agitated group of bystanders.
Count Two of the federal indictment charged Kueng and Tou with violating Floyd’s Fourth Amendment right by failing to intervene to stop Chauvin’s use of excessive force. Lane was not charged in this count, evidently because he suggested to Chauvin that they reposition Floyd to make it easier for him to breathe — although, like Kueng and Tou, he did not stop Chauvin.
Count Three charged all four defendants with violating what the government describes as Floyd’s due-process right “to be free from a police officer’s deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs.”
Statutorily, the three defendants convicted today face lengthy prison terms because the controlling statute prescribes a potential penalty of life imprisonment if death results from the civil-rights violation alleged. They are likely, however, to get significantly less time than Chauvin, who faces a maximum of 25 years under his plea agreement — which runs concurrently with the 22-and-a-half-year sentenced he received in Minnesota state court.
Kueng, Tou, and Lane still face charges of aiding and abetting Chauvin’s murder of Floyd. That is scheduled to occur in state court in Minneapolis in June.
I believe there are significant appellate issues in the Justice Department’s theory of the case. They are addressed in the above-linked columns, which I won’t belabor at this point.
The Civil Rights Division has had a historically successful week. A few days ago, a jury in Georgia convicted the three killers of Ahmaud Arbery in their federal civil-rights trial.